en:prestle

Karl Heinz Prestlé

Thanks to Annette Soesanto and her father Karl Heinz Prestlé for the authorization to reproduce this book, and to Paul Laney and his Frailea website for the work done in preparing the pdf.

Under copyright (with authorization)

This is the third edition (1998) of the book. It presents the author's appraisal of the genus Frailea. About 240 pages of text and 80 pictures of plants either in cultivation or in the wild. The pdf was made with the original pictures and the text was retyped.



Karl-Heinz Prestlé was born on June 21, 1925 in Wuppertal, Germany. He started his career as a chemical analyst and engineer at Glasurit and retired from Sigma Coatings in 1980.

In the 1950s, Glasurit expanded its operations across Europe and Karl-Heinz subsequently moved to Veghel, the Netherlands with his wife and two little daughters. With their new home found in the Netherlands was a big garden which encouraged the young family to cultivate their shared love for flowers and plants.

Karl Heinz Prestle's devotion to cacti only surfaced by pure coincidence after his wife brought home a small present she received from her dentist: a little cactus. Over time, Karl-Heinz build and rebuild several glasshouses in the family's garden to experiment and give his succulents the best possible growing conditions. His fascination for the spiny plants even made him to cross the Atlantic and to explore the plains of Southern America for new species of cactus. Indeed, Karl Heinz has devoted most of his leisure time to the maintenance, observation and documentation of cacti. He wrote many articles, published several books and is corresponding with his cactus-friends all over the world. Karl Heinz passed away on 2016 May 13.

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