Günter Gerlach

• PhD
• Senior Curator at Botanical Garden Munich

Bei Dracula denken die meisten vermutlich zuerst an Graf Dracula aus Siebenbürgen (Transsylvanien), den bekanntesten Vampir der Literaturgeschichte. Die Romanfigur gilt als furchterregendes, blutsaugendes Monster. Wie kommt es, dass manche Orchideen ebenfalls diesen gruseligen Namen tragen?

Floral volatiles play key roles as signaling agents that mediate interactions between plants and animals. Despite their importance, few studies have investigated broad patterns of volatile variation across groups of plants that share pollinators, particularly in a phylogenetic context. The “perfume flowers”, Neotropical plant species exhibiting exc...

Houlletia lowiana can be easily distinguished from the other species in the genus by its unspotted pale yellow sepals and petals together with patent wide opened flowers. Its most related species, H. sanderi Rolfe, has a very similar coloration, but possesses cam- panulate flowers. The species has a wide distribution, from Norte de Santander in Col...

Acineta superba is recognized by the saddle shaped central callus with the basal and distal parts elevated, of intense vinaceous color. The lip has dolabriform (axe shaped) lateral lobes and near the apex of hypochile, the osmophore, a very pronounced structure in the form of a thick curved horn. The pollinarium is characterized by a bi-pointed or...

Peru ist flächenmäßig nach Brasilien und Argentinien das drittgrößte Land in Südamerika, durch seine Äquatornähe beherbergt es weitgehend tropische Klimata. Durch die Anden und das Amazonische Tiefland ist es geografisch reich gegliedert. So weist es eine Vielzahl ökologischer Nischen auf, in denen sich eine extrem diverse Flora und Fauna entwickel...

Nachdem Stefan Vogel in den späten 1950er-Jahren bewiesen hatte, dass bei den Kesselfallenblumen von Ceropegia (Apocynaceae-Asclepiadoideae) winzige Fliegen als Bestäuber agieren (Mikromyiophilie), konnte er zwanzig Jahre später eine weitere und ganz spezielle Fliegengruppe als Bestäuber ausmachen: Pilzmücken (Mycetophilidae, Sciaridae u.a.). Vogel...

https://www.ecotropica.eu/index.php/ecotropica/article/view/64/21

Conducting pollination studies on neotropical orchids is a complicated task as several difficulties (e.g. inappropriate weather, difficult accessibility, rare events) must be overcome to be able to observe pollination events. This explains how the reproductive biology of many orchids is completely unknown. Descriptions are presented of fortuitous o...

Species new and old in Epidendrum

Resumo É apresentado o estudo taxonômico de Gongora para o estado de Mato Grosso. Foi constatada apenas a ocorrência de Gongora nigrita, registro inédito para o estado, bem como para a Região Centro-Oeste brasileira e ampliação do limite austral da distribuição geográfica conhecida da espécie. No estado, G. nigrita foi encontrada em quatro municípi...

The identity of Polycycnis barbata is discussed and, upon examination of the type, the name is lectotypified and synonymized under the species with erect, small-flowered inflorescence traditionally known as P. muscifera. The large-flowered species of Polycycnis from Costa Rica and northwestern Panama is described as P. grandiflora and illustrated b...

Bei den Monokotyledonen haben sich Ölblumen in zwei Familien entwickelt: Iridaceen und Orchideen. Bei ersteren (mit Trichom-Elaiophoren) zweimal, bei letzteren mindestens 10 mal voneinander unabhängig (sowohl Trichom- als auch Epithel-Elaiophoren). Wichtige Vertreter aus beiden Familien, die bereits von Stefan Vogel entdeckt wurden, werden näher da...

Ölblumen haben sich im Laufe der Evolution in 11 Pflanzenfamilien entwickelt und selbst innerhalb dieser Familien sind sie oft mehrfach und voneinander unabhängig entstanden. Im vorliegenden Artikel werden, aufbauend auf den morphologischen Analysen und Bestäubungsbeobachtungen von Stefan Vogel, wichtige Vertreter der Dikotyledonen vorgestellt. Die...

Orchids of the subtribe Stanhopeinae are renowned for their strongly fragrant "perfume flowers" and pollination by scent-collecting male orchid bees (Euglossini). Interestingly, there are exceptions to the rule, in which taxa in different genera have faint floral scents or none at all-at least to the human nose. This raises the question if they fol...

Nach der Entdeckung der Parfümblumen hat Stefan Vogel einen weiteren neuen Blumentypus erkannt und erforscht: die Ölblumen. Hier wird von den Blüten fettes Öl als Sammelgut angeboten, das in den sogenannten Elaiophoren gebildet wird. Das Öl wird von spezialisierten Bienen (Vertreter mehrerer Gruppen der Apidae-Apinae und zwei Gattungen der Melittid...

Although common among orchids, pollination by perfume‐gathering male euglossine bees is quite rare in other neotropical families. In Gesneriaceae, for example, it is reported in two genera only, Drymonia and Gloxinia. Flowers of G. perennis are known to emit perfumes, thereby attracting male euglossine bees as pollinators. However, detailed reports...

Mit der Entdeckung der „Parfümblumen“ (zahlreiche Orchideen sowie vereinzelt Gattungen und Arten der Araceae, Gesneriaceae, Euphorbiaceae und Solanaceae) und ihre Bestäubung durch hochspezialisierte, männliche Prachtbienen (Apidae-Euglossini) hat Stefan Vogel einen bahnbrechenden Beitrag zur Blütenökologie geleistet. Nachdem mehr als 250 Jahre lang...

Poor morphological and molecular differentiation in recently diversified lineages is a widespread phenomenon in plants. Phylogenetic relationships within such species complexes are often difficult to resolve because of the low variability in traditional molecular loci, as well as various other biological phenomena responsible for topological incong...

Poor morphological and molecular differentiation in recently diversified lineages is a widespread phenomenon in plants. Phylogenetic relationships within such species complexes are often difficult to resolve because of the low variability in traditional molecular loci, as well as various other biological phenomena responsible for topological incong...

Species Orchidacearum is a serial publication. It is published in volumes, freely available online, and peer-reviewed. Icons from any author are received, they may treat any species of the Orchidaceae family, from any country, previously published or not, as long as they comply with the author’s instructions. The main goal of the series is to make...

Prosopanche panguanensis, from the Peruvian lowland rain forest, is proposed as a new species. The species is similar to Prosopanche costaricensis but differs with solitary flowers (vs. flowers in fascicles), a perigonial tube prolonged above the insertion point of the synandrium (vs. perigonial tube not prolonged), and staminodes cucullate and ses...

We present additional information on and illustrations of Koellensteinia lilijae, a species previously known only from the holotype. A new historical report of Warreopsis colorata from northern Venezuela is presented in an appendix.

Premise of research. The relations between orchids and their pollinators are so specialized that the pollination of some of these flowers depends solely on specific groups of bees. Members of Stanhopeinae are pollinated exclusively by fragrance-collecting male euglossines. Although many studies have documented the pollination biology of various Sta...

The orchid bee collection of the Übersee-Museum Bremen (UMB), which is reported here in detail, currently comprises 399 specimens representing 50 species in 5 genera. The specimens originate from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Surinam, and Venezuela with the oldest records dating ba...

The neotropical orchid genus Catasetum embraces about 180 species that produce perfume as reward for pollinators (i.e. male euglossine bees). Among the ca. 1000 perfume-rewarding plants, Catasetum species are the best studied with respect to their natural history. Nevertheless, the pollination ecology of most species (> 80%) remains unknown. Here,...

Orchids of the subtribe Stanhopeinae are renowned for their strongly fragrant “perfume flowers” and the pollination by scent collecting male orchid bees (Euglossini). Interestingly, there are exceptions to the rule, where taxa in different genera have faint floral scents or do not smell at all – at least to the human nose. This raises the question...

Floral volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play important roles in plant-pollinator interactions. We investigated the reproductive ecology and floral VOCs of Zygopetalinae orchids to understand the relationship between floral scents and pollinators. We performed focal observations, phenological censuses and breeding system experiments in eight specie...

Environmental sex determination (ESD) − a change in sexual function during an individual life span driven by environmental cues − is an exceedingly rare sexual system among angiosperms. Because ESD can directly affect reproduction success, it could influence diversification rate as compared with lineages that have alternative reproductive systems....

Orchids are one of the most diverse, prominent, and endangered components of the Neotropical flora. The Neotropical Orchidaceae have evolved an astounding array of interactions with a diverse set of organisms, upon which they entirely rely for essential biological services. This is particularly true for pollination, which is predominantly carried o...

Environmental sex determination (ESD) a change in sexual function during an individual life span driven by environmental cues is an exceedingly rare sexual system among angiosperms. Because ESD can directly affect reproduction success, it could influence diversification rate as compared with lineages that have alternative mating systems. Here we te...

The Andean uplift is one of the major orographic events in the New World and has impacted considerably the diversification of numerous Neotropical lineages. Despite its importance for biogeography, the specific role of mountain ranges as a dispersal barrier between South and Central American lowland plant lineages is still poorly understood. The sw...

The Andean uplift is one of the major orographic events in the New World and has impacted considerably the diversification of numerous Neotropical organisms. Despite its importance for biogeography, the specific role of mountain ranges as a dispersal barrier between South and Central American lowland plant lineages is still poorly understood. The s...

Interspecific phylogenetic relationships in the Neotropical orchid genus Mormodes were assessed by means of maximum parsimony (MP) and bayesian inference (bI) analyses of non-coding nuclear ribosomal (nrItS) and plastid (trnL–trnF) dNa sequences and 24 morphological characters for 36 species of Mormodes and seven additional outgroup species of Cata...

Pollination effectiveness in Cycnoches is directly dependent on osmophores. Euglossine-bee pollinated orchids produce a bucket of fragrances acting as attractant and reward for pollinators, which collect these fragrances and use them during courtship. Despite the importance of scent glands in orchids, few studies on their anatomy and morphology hav...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> Las flores de las especies de la subtribu Stanhopeinae pertenecen a las más fascinantes y extravagantes de todas las orquídeas. No son de las más bellas, pero debido a su polinización tan particu- lar a veces han creado flores bizarras con mecanismos de polinización muy extraños. </div

div class="page" title="Page 1"> Se describen e ilustran dos especies nuevas de Stanhopeinae (Orchidaceae): Polycycnis blancoi , de Costa Rica, y Coryanthes maduroana de Panamá. </div

We present a revision of all the species and available names of Eriopsis, a long misinterpreted genus of Orchidaceae described by John Lindley in 1847. A new species from the Venezuelan Guayana, E. escalerensis, is described and illustrated. An additional species from the Andes is circumscribed morphologically and geographically, but it remains und...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> Stanhopea ruckeri se interpreta y se reestablece. Después de examinar el Herbario de Lindley, el nombre S. inodora se transfiere a la sinonimia de S. ruckeri . Se descubrió que Stanhopea gibbosa auct. no es igual que el holotipo de S. gibbosa Rchb.f.; por tanto, se describe una especie nueva, que debido a la con- f...

Endophytic fungi of tropical orchids have been relatively understudied and could end up having an interesting series of applications in orchid conservancy and propagation. One of the less studied groups is the genus Stanhopea. In healthy roots of Stanhopea tricornis we were able to isolate 12 fungi belonging to at least 4 genera: one isolation of C...

The interaction between floral oil secreting plants and oil-collecting bees is one of the most specialized of all pollination mutualisms. Yet, the specific stimuli used by the bees to locate their host flowers have remained elusive. This study identifies diacetin, a volatile acetylated glycerol, as a floral signal compound shared by unrelated oil p...

The genus Cycnoches encompa sses around 34 species distributed from southern Mexico to eastern Brazil and Bolivia. One of the most interesting traits of Cycnoches is the marked and variable sexual dimorphism present across its species, which in turn define its two infrageneric sections: sect. Cycnoches and sect. Heteranthae. In spite of the taxonom...

Background and Aims A significant proportion of orchid species assigned to subtribe Oncidiinae produce floral oil as a food reward that attracts specialized bee pollinators. This oil is produced either by glabrous glands (epithelial elaiophores) or by tufts of secretory hairs (trichomal elaiophores). Although the structure of epithelial elaiophores...

Se presentan análisis de aromas florales de 12 de las 13 especies de Stanhopea de México. Algunas, como S. hernandezii, S. martiana, S. tigrina, S. intermedia y S. graveolens, se pueden caracterizarar muy fácilmente por su olor, mientras que otras dos especies, S. ruckeri y S. intermedia, presentan dos quimotipos. Además, existen dos grupos con tre...

The sexual dimorphism of the genera Catasetum and Cycnoches is now common knowledge to orchid growers and investigators. Female flowers of Catasetum are all non-resupinate with a hooded lip, whereas the male flowers can be non-resupinate with a hooded lip or resupinate with a differently shaped lip, depending on the species. Only with male flowers...

Most flowering plants establish mutualistic associations with insect pollinators to facilitate sexual reproduction. However, the evolutionary processes that gave rise to these associations remain poorly understood. We reconstructed the times of divergence, diversification patterns, and interaction networks of a diverse group of specialized orchids...

Since Darwin, the pollination biology of Coryanthes has fascinated naturalists, but other aspects of its biology are equally interesting. Herman Crüger, Director of the Trinidad Botanical Gardens, first described the pollination process in 1864. He talked about the strong attraction of the floral scent to some kind of Hymenopteran, but the true nat...

El supuesto origen híbrido de dos orquídeas del sur del Ecuador es propuesto. La especie de Stanhopea probablemente tiene S. connata como uno de los padres y S. anfracta o S. fl orida como otro. La especie de Chaubardiella presentada esta intermediario entre C. tigrina y C. dalessandroi, así dando la alusión de un hibrido natural entre ellos.

The descriptions of Coryanthes hunteriana and Coryanthes powellii described by Schlechter are critically compared. We conclude that the same species was described twice. Because of the loss of the holotypes, the specimens collected by Powell with the same collection number at AMES, K and MO are discussed in detail. resumen: Se comparan críticamente...

Catasetum moorei was described in 1970 based on a plant collected near Iquitos, Peru. Here we provide a line drawing based on a flower from the holotype and photographs of a plant from Ecuador. Orchid growers and sellers have incorrectly assigned this name to plants of C. discolor, a species from the Guayana Shield (in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela,...

The floral oils of Diascia purpurea, Diascia vigilis, Diascia cordata, Diascia megathura, Diascia integerrima and Diascia barberae (Scrophulariaceae) were selectively collected from trichome elaiophores. The derivatized floral oils were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), whilst the underivatized samples were analysed by elect...

The phylogenetic relationships of the orchid subtribe Zygopetalinae were evaluated using parsimony analyses of combined DNA sequence data of nuclear ITS 1 and 2 (including the 5.8s region and portions of the flanking 18s and 26s regions) and of the plastid trnL intron plus the trnL-F intergenic spacer and the plastid matK. Analyses of the three sep...

New, partially acetylated dihydroxy fatty acids could be identified in the floral oil of Malpighia coccigera (Malpighiaceae): 7-OAc,3-OH 20:0, 7-OAc,3-OH 22:0, 9-OAc,3-OH 22:0, 9-OAc,5-OH 22:0, 3,9-diOAc 22:0, 9-OAc,3-OH 24:0, and 11-OAc,5-OH 24:0. The substitution patterns of all hitherto undescribed dihydroxylated and additionally identified mono...

Stanhopea ruckeri Lindl. is new interpreted and so reestablished. The name S. inodora is transfered to its synonymy, because of investigations in the Lindley Herbarium. Stanhopea gibbosa auct. is found to be not identical with the holotype of S. gibbosa Rchb.f., so it was necessary to describe it as a new species. Because of the confusion around it...

The new and old species of orchids in Mexico

div class="page" title="Page 1"> Se describen, ilustran y comentan dos nuevas especies de la subtribu Stanhopeinae: Coryanthes kaiseriana , de Costa Rica y Panamá, y Paphinia vermiculifera de Panamá. </div

The pollination strategies of Anthurium (Araceae) were investigated in the field in Ecuador. Three different pollinator types (viz., Cecidomyiidae, Drosophilidae and Euglossini) were observed in wild plants in habitat. Floral fragrances of 10 Anthurium species grown in a greenhouse were sampled and analyzed. Species visited by Cecidomyiidae in the...

The relationships between potential seed productivity, pollinia structure, methods of pollen reception, the sizes of the stigma, and the visitation frequency of orchid flowers were studied. The method of pollen reception by the stigma has a more dominant influence on the ovule number than the structure of the pollinia. Although Cephalanthera specie...

Fragrance composition of flowers from 101 plant species, especially orchids, were analyzed. Several compounds, including allo‐aromadendrene, β‐bourbonene, α‐copaene, α‐cubebene, 1,2‐dimethoxybenzene, 1,3,5‐trimethoxybenzene, epoxygeranyl acetate, 7,11‐epoxymegastigma‐5(6)‐en‐9‐one, two γ‐lactones, germacradienol, germacrene D, humulene, methoxy‐phe...

All members of the investigated genusCoryanthes (subtribeStanhopeinae) are pollinated by male euglossine bees. The different fragrance profiles are the primary reproductive isolating mechanisms, because the flowers are interfertile. The fragrance patterns of 17 species ofCoryanthes were analyzed by gas chromatography as a means to improve the class...

During 1998 an investigation of the life of wild bees of the Munich Botanical Garden was carried out. A total of 78 species was recorded containing 17 oligolectic specialized and 13 parasitic species. A list of the bees together with the plants on which they are collected is included. The importance of Botanical Gardens for bees is discussed. At th...