Biography

German botanist and horticulturalist whose expertise lay in palms, aroids and cycads. Wendland followed his father and grandfather as Director of the Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen in Hanover. He received his early training in gardening here and also gained experience at the Botanic Gardens of G⟶ttingen, the Imperial Gardens at Sch⟶nbrunn (Vienna) and Kew Gardens in England. He left the latter in 1849 and worked as an assistant to his father at Herrenhausen until his father's death in 1870, when he took over the head role.

During these years he developed a keen interest in palm botany, publishing a list of cultivated palms in European collections in 1854 and travelling to Central America to collect monocot specimens and live material. The expedition, in 1856-1857, took him to Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, where he gathered a large number of type specimens, though they were mostly described by other botanists. His palm collections were studied by authors including Richard Spruce (Geonoma), Max Burret (Bactris) and Udo Dammer (Chamaedorea).

Following his trip, Wendland made taxonomic studies of palms from all over the world, especially from tropical America, Africa and Australia, and became the acknowledged authority on the family, naming around 130 species. With Oscar Drude he published the first detailed treatment of Australian palms, 'Palmae Australasica', in Linnaea in 1875 and was particularly interested in the genus Chamaedorea. He collaborated with many other botanists and collectors working in the tropics such as J.R. von Warscewicz and built up a living orchid and palm collection at Herrenhausen to rival that of Kew. Herrenhausen's palm house, built in 1880, was then the tallest in Europe; it was bombed in 1944.

Wendland is credited with introducing many plants now cultivated indoors, such as Anthurium scherzierianum (the Flamingo Flower), which he found in Costa Rica, and with cultivating the African violet, Saintpaulia ionantha H. Wendl., named for Baron von Saintpaul who first brought it to Europe from Tanzania. Many palm taxa are named after Wendland, and several for his forebears. Wendlandiella gracilis Damm., is one such named for Hermann Wendland; it is a dwarf understorey palm from the western Amazon.

Sources:
Anon., 1903, Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, 1903(1): 29
Palm and Cycad Society of Australia:
http://www.pacsoa.org.au/places/People/wendland.html.