Gustav Wallis

Gustav Wallis (1 May 1830 – 20 June 1878) was a German plant collector, who introduced over 1,000 plant species to Europe, many of which were named after him.

Wallis was born in Lüneburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany, where his father was an advocate. Wallis was deaf and mute until six years of age, and it was not until 1836 that he was able to talk. As a consequence, he suffered from a speech defect during his entire life.

In about 1836 his father died, leaving his mother a widow with six children. With no means of support, she found it necessary to leave Lüneburg and move to Detmold, her native town. It was here that Wallis attended school and, in the surrounding mountains and forests, developed the love of nature and botany which later gave him the desire to travel abroad and visit the tropics. As a youth, Wallis had great energy and an indomitable will, and despite his speech impediment he acquired considerable proficiency in foreign languages, an accomplishment which stood him in good stead during the course of his career.

At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith but, disliking the work, he quit and took an apprenticeship with a gardener at Detmold. At the end of his apprenticeship, he obtained employment in Munich, from where he often visited the Alps to collect and study plants.

In 1856, Wallis went to southern Brazil, where he set up a horticultural establishment for a German firm but, following the bankruptcy of the parent company, the branch was forced to close and Wallis was left practically penniless.

In 1858, he was engaged as a plant-collector by Jean Linden’s orchid company, L’Horticulture Internationale, of Brussels. Wallis then began a hazardous journey, crossing the continent of South America, starting at the mouth of the River Amazon and traversing the total length to its source, exploring the river and many of its more important tributaries.

In 1866, Wallis was exploring the low-lying areas where the Rio Negro meets the Amazon, when he came across an unknown Cattleya species growing among the branches of macucus trees. Wallis was able to send a large shipment to Linden, who named the new species Cattleya eldorado, and the following year had more than 700 plants of the new species in bloom on display in Paris.

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