Biography

Austrian born medic, ethnobotanist and anthropologist, Blasius Paul Reko spent much of his life in Mexico where he adopted the name Blas Pablo. Based in the state of Oaxaca for many years he worked for a mining company. It was here in 1917 that his activity as a plant collector began and he worked alongside the Italian botanist C. Conzatti and the German E. Makrinius. Reko undertook fieldwork studies into the fungi of north-eastern Oaxaca with R. E. Schultes and later his excursions took him further afield, gathering specimens in Jalisco and Colima between 1922 and 1925 and Guerrero and Durango between 1926 and 1928. His collections, numbering several thousand and including mycological examples, were sent primarily to the U.S.A. where they were studied by Paul Standley at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and later at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. Reko published a number of works including two lists of Mexican phanerogamic genera: "Catologo de Generos" (1929) and "Los géneros fanerogámicos Mexicanos" (1946), contributions to the floras of Morelos, Guerrero and Oaxaca and other articles on medicinal plants and ethnobotany in Mexico.

Sources:
I. K. Langman, 1964, A selected guide to the literature on the flowering plants of Mexico
J. Rzedowski, G. Calderón de Rzedowski and A. Butanda, 2009, Los principales colectores de plantas activos en México entre 1700 y 1930.

Biography

Austrian born medic, ethnobotanist and anthropologist, Blasius Paul Reko spent much of his life in Mexico where he adopted the name Blas Pablo. Based in the state of Oaxaca for many years he worked for a mining company. It was here in 1917 that his activity as a plant collector began and he worked alongside the Italian botanist C. Conzatti and the German E. Makrinius. Reko undertook fieldwork studies into the fungi of north-eastern Oaxaca with R. E. Schultes and later his excursions took him further afield, gathering specimens in Jalisco and Colima between 1922 and 1925 and Guerrero and Durango between 1926 and 1928. His collections, numbering several thousand and including mycological examples, were sent primarily to the U.S.A. where they were studied by Paul Standley at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and later at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. Reko published a number of works including two lists of Mexican phanerogamic genera: "Catologo de Generos" (1929) and "Los géneros fanerogámicos Mexicanos" (1946), contributions to the floras of Morelos, Guerrero and Oaxaca and other articles on medicinal plants and ethnobotany in Mexico.

Sources:
I. K. Langman, 1964, A selected guide to the literature on the flowering plants of Mexico
J. Rzedowski, G. Calderón de Rzedowski and A. Butanda, 2009, Los principales colectores de plantas activos en México entre 1700 y 1930.