en:kiesling_dsw

Roberto Kiesling — Daniel Schweich

Under copyright

This is an e-book of 592 pages published by Au Cactus Francophone and devoted to articles by Cárdenas that were published in various journals and books. A brief introduction presents the life of Cárdenas and the structure of the e-book. His articles contain certain errors and raise questions that remains unanswered; they are discussed in an appendix. Synonyms (either nomenclatural or tentative) proposed for Cárdenas' plant names, references to original articles, and an index are also given. The e-book uses certain pdf tools (multilayer, hyperlinks, searchable text…) that work well with Adobe Reader; other pdf viewers may give unexpected results.




Under copyright

This is the second e-book (416 pages) published by Au Cactus Francophone. It is devoted to Castellanos and Lelong articles. The introduction presents the life of both authors – who were husband and wife in the daily life – and then the structure of the e-book. After the series of articles, some original pictures by Castellanos are given. An appendix discusses some problems encountered along the articles. The e-book uses certain pdf tools (multilayer, hyperlinks, searchable text…) that work well with Adobe Reader; other pdf viewers may give unexpected results.




Under copyright

This is an e-book devoted to some rare documents by Sanzin, Ruiz Leal, Hosseus, Spegazzini, and Bruch about Argentinian plants (With a few exceptions however). A brief presentation of each author introduces either articles or pictures. As in other e-books edited by “Au Cactus Francophone”, Adobe Reader is recommended for using the search tool, hypelinks, and layers. Other free pdf readers work but they may give unexpected results.






The story of the first Cactus Francophone ISBN book

It all started on the 9th August 2011 when Roberto Kiesling, from Mendoza in Argentina, sent an email to biblio2@cactuspro.com to express his pleasure with his access, via CF, to some books about cactus for which he previously had to travel to Buenos Aires1. To thank our site, he offered his own articles and books, and told us that he had scans of almost all the publications of Cárdenas.

Thus were gradually made available five articles and a book by Roberto in the library, and a book co-authored with Jim Mauseth and Carlos Ostolaza2. Meanwhile, he sent me the Cárdenas publications, and the idea arose to make a compilation that would be offered to all. What a crazy idea! It took three years of work to achieve this with the help of many people3 to find quality originals, to compare some originals that differed, detect typos and other errors, design the book …

Of course, to “facilitate” the work, Roberto does not speak French, and I do not speak Spanish. We communicated in Patagon4 resembling English but heavily spiced with Franglais and Spanglish; a delight that always emerged and emerges happily because of the Latin roots of our native languages.

Gradually the compilation was built. Some items still posed a problem for us, especially a Japanese article in Succulentarum Japonia. Apart from the photos, what could the characters in this article mean? As a chemist, I thought I could maybe contact Hideki Shirakawa5, above all a Japanese cactus amateur but also a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry in 2000. This high distinction assured us in advance of the quality of what he would tell us! And Hideki led us to discover another article by Cárdenas published in the same journal.

Our disappointment was not being able to create a chapter with good pictures of original Cárdenas plants identified without ambiguity6. Nevertheless, I would still like to thank Karl Augustin, Brian Bates, Lothar Diers, Willi Gertel, Johan de Vries for their kindness and the time they spent with us. Unfortunately, it is clear that very little original Cárdenas material, clearly identified as such, is available in our collections. So we abandoned this chapter. However, we show below some pictures of plants sent by Cárdenas to known European specialists.

After much activity (cactus hunting in the pouring rain, confrontation with the administration of Argentina7, operation of the retina and the heart …), the compilation took shape and stretches to over 592 pages and finally is available in three languages. It will, we hope, be useful to the community, especially for rare articles from Folia Universitaria and Revista de Agronomía. Anyone wishing to contribute to the continuation of this work (or correcting any inevitable mistakes) will be welcome.

Some pictures of original plants of Cárdenas

zevaletae.jpg parodia-mairanana.jpg
Left: Sulcorebutia zavaletae MC 6142, clone 1 DeHerdt who received the plant from Cárdenas as canigueralii. When DeHerdt told Cárdenas that he was surprised by the purple flower colour, Cárdenas told him that it should be zavaletae8 Collection & Photo: Daniel Schweich.
Middle: Parodia mairanana MC 5085 original clone, collection and Photo Lothar Diers.
Right: Sulcorebutia tiraquensis original MC 5493, Cárdenas gave Donald in 1964. Probably the only remaining clone. Collection & Photo: W. Gertel.

SONY DSC breviflora-mc6140_86.068_5326_1997.jpg
Left and centre: Sulcorebutia breviflora MC 6140, Donald plants. Cárdenas clone 3 left, clone 1 in the center. Collection & Photo: W. Gertel.
Right: Sulcorebutia inflexiseta MC 6308, only known existing clone from L. Diers. Collection & Photo: W. Gertel.


1 2 hour flight,15 hours by bus 1045 km …
2 See A Cactus Odyssey; little known book, exciting and spiced with humour.
3 See the list in the acknowledgement chapter.
4 This is the least we can do!
5 It was only later that I thought of Yuko Barmon … I hope she will forgive me!
6 Not only plants with labels showing names published by Cárdenas.
7 The French administration is a pleasure in comparison!
8 Anecdote reported by Willi Gertel.

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