Biography

German plant collector for Veitch & Son. Wilhelm Kalbreyer began collecting plants for the Veitch nursery in 1876, travelling first to West Africa. From Calabar, Bonny, the Cameroon mountains and Sanaga River basin he sent many exotic plants back to the nursery in Chelsea. Hostility towards foreigners prevented him from travelling far into the interior, however, and he returned in 1877.

Malaria took hold of Kalbreyer while in West Africa, described by James Veitch as an "unhealthy country", and thus his employers decided to send him to a "more healthy country" to collect. Before the year was out he was enjoying the delightful climate of Colombia's highlands, collecting in the Eastern Cordillera near Ocaña, La Cruz and Sierra Palado, gathering Odontoglossum for the Veitches which to their disappointment had largely perished by the time he got back to England in 1878 due to an arduous journey along the low waters of the River Magdalena.

He made a third trip later that year, travelling further east into Colombia, through the towns of San Pedro, Salazar and Pamplona, finding more extraordinary forms of Odontoglossum which pleased his employers very much and provided new material for the orchid expert H. Reichenbach. In the autumn of 1879 he again sailed for the country of these successes, travelling down the River Magdalena to the Central and Western Cordillera. He was struck by the rich vegetation he found as he passed from the watershed of the Valle de Atrato to the plains in the west, which included luxuriantly large Anthurium veitchii Mast. and many palms, of which he collected specimens of over 100 species.

Again he brought back curious orchids for the nursery, but also a great collection of dried ferns comprising some 360 species, including nearly 20 new types described by John Baker in the Journal of Botany (1881). He arrived in Colombia early in 1881 on his last plant collecting mission, which provided more orchids for Messrs Veitch, before leaving their service to commence business in Bogota as a nurseryman and exporter of orchids.

Sources:
J.H. Veitch, Hortus Veitchii: 71-73.