Epiphyllums were first collected from the wild in 1753 and brought back to Europe by the early explorers of South America and first described by the botanist Adrian Hardy Haworth in 1812. Britton and Rose described up to 16 original species that had been found by 1923. They appear to have been first brought into cultivation in Germany by a plants man called Ackermann in 1824. The first ever hybrids were grown in England in 1830 and were recorded by Jenkins and Smith, followed by the Lord of Liverpool and Presley’s gardener again in England in 1832 who undertook hybridising of true Epiphyllum species. Hybridising of Epiphyllum started in Germany shortly after as well as further hybrids being produced in England by Sellow the gardener to Walter Byud and two brothers called Baumann. By 1845 in France Charles Simon a cactus grower and Lorenzo Courant his client, raised a number of new hybrids. In 1840 E. crenatum had been brought to France and crossed with Heliocereus, the resultant crosses gave rise to new hybrids which were yellowish white, rose shades and shades of orange and amber. A year later Foster and a Chelsea based company Veitch used these newly created hybrids to undertake work of their own. Epiphyllum Cooperi (white) is thought to be a descendant from this work. Four years later in 1890 Johanneas Nicolai began hybridsing in Germany but he perished in 1901 before he could see the results of many of the crosses, he and his brother Woldemar Nicolai had made which resulted in over 300 new hybrids. However, most of these new introductions were regrettably short-lived as they were lost during the First World War. These crosses were made between a number of species to produce the first hybrids which were first red and then pink. They were made between Epiphyllum and other members of the cactus family including: Aporophyllum, Heliocereus, and Nopalxochia genus. In fact the hybrid we grow today known as ‘German Empress’ was one of these and gained notoriety for its profusion of small finely formed pink blooms. In 1894 George Borneberg took the surviving Nicolai’s hybrids and crossed them with the best of the English and French hybrids uniting the European hybridising efforts. Curt Knebel born in 1871 was the most prolific German hybridiser around the turn of the 20th century. He became involved with Epiphyllums in the way that many of us do, quite by chance, he was asked to look after some plants by a friend and fell in love with them. He started his own nursery at Erlau the Saxon region of Germany. It here he acquired a limited number of Nicolia hybrids, some from Borneman and others from W. O. Rothers. By the time of the First World War he had already a substantial collection of his own hybrids but like the Nicolia’s he too lost most of his work during the First World War. Undeterred he started over creating over 400 new hybrids by the outbreak of World War II and again his creations were substantially lost, however, some still survived and are still widely grown today. He celebrated his nursery in Erlau with the hybrid ‘Stern von Erlau’ others still available include: ‘Augusta von Szombathy’, ‘Sherman E. Beahm’ (formerly Adolph Hitler), ‘Epiphyllum Society of America’ and ‘Ernst Gundchen’. He produced hybrids which flowered at different times and effectively extended their flowering period to the whole year. Knebel’s aims were to produce plants that were small in size, suited to home conditions, resistant to cold and would bear a multitude of flowers. He focused some of his work on trying to produce the first pure yellow flowered Epiphyllum. Like many hybridisers he gave other hybridisers seed from his crossings some of these made their way to the USA to R. W. Poindexter and Mrs Clarion Steele who successfully raised further new hybrids from their own work and those of Curt Knebel. These include ‘Bagdad’ ‘Dolores’, ‘Imp’, ‘Inoxol’, and ‘Nellie’. Epiphyllum were still relatively unknown in the USA and they were listed by only a few growers one of whom was Mr E. O. Orpet who was one of the founders of the Epiphyllum Society of America.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 07:20:34 +0000
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