Odoardo Beccari

Odoardo Beccari.

Odoardo Beccari (16 November 1843 – 25 October 1920) was an Italian naturalist perhaps best known for discovering the titan arum, the plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world, in Sumatra in 1878. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Becc. when citing a botanical name.^[1]

Life

An orphan from Florence, Beccari studied at a school in Lucca and the universities in Pisa and Bologna. After graduating, he spent a few months at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he met Charles Darwin, William Hooker and Joseph Hooker, and James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak. The latter connection lead to him spending 3 years from 1865 to 1868 undertaking research in Sarawak, Brunei and other islands off present-day Malaysia and New Guinea. He discovered many new species of palms.

After an expedition to Ethiopia, he made a second trip to New Guinea, this time with ornithologist Luigi Maria d'Albertis in 1872. Here they collected zoological specimens, especially birds of paradise and ethnographic materials.

Beccari founded the Nuovo Giornale Botanico Italiano (New Italian Botanic Journal) in 1869, and also published his results in Bolletino della Società geografica Italiana.^[2] He found the Corpse Plant in 1878, located in Sumatra. In the same year, on his return to Florence, he became Director of the Botanic Garden of Florence as successor to Filippo Parlatore but resigned in the following year, 1879, after conflicts with the administration. In 1882 he married and had 4 sons.

Beccari's botanical collection now forms part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze.

The botanical journal Beccariana from Herbarium Manokwariense, Universitas Negeri Papua (Unipa), Papua, Indonesia, is named after Beccari, see external links below

Selected works

• Malesia, raccolta d'osservazioni lese e papuano (three volumes, 1877–1889).
• Nelle Foreste di Borneo. Viaggi e ricerche di un naturalista (S. Landi, Florence, 1902).
• Asiatic Palms (1908).
• Palme del Madagascar descritte ed illustrate (1912).
• Nova Guinea, Selebes e Molucche. Diari di viaggio ordinati dal figlio Prof. Dott. Nello Beccari (La Voce, Florence, 1924).

Species named after Odoardo Beccari

Plants:

• Dryobalanops beccarii or Kapur Keladan, tree in the Dipterocarpaceae family
• Dacrydium beccarii, a conifer in the Podocarpaceae family
• Haplolobus beccarii, a plant in the Burseraceae family
• Bulbophyllum beccarii, an orchid

Animals:

• Acanthopelma beccarii, a tarantula
• Conraua beccarii, frog in the Ranidae family
• Crocidura beccarii, a shrew
• Varanus beccarii, a monitor lizard

References

1. ^ Brummitt, R. K.; C. E. Powell (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4. 
2. ^  "Beccari, Odoardo". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

• O. Nalesini, L'Asia Sud-orientale nella cultura italiana. Bibliografia analitica ragionata, 1475-2005. Roma, Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 2009, pp. 17–18 (Biography), 64-65 (travels), 385-390 (Botany) ISBN 978-88-6323-284-4.

External links

• IMHS
• Palm and Cycad Societies of Australia
• [1]

Persondata
Name	Beccari
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	16 November 1843
Place of birth
Date of death	25 October 1920
Place of death