INTRODUCTION

by
G.D. Rowley
 LEMAI RE
Iconographie Descriptive des Cactées

Introduction to Strawberry Press Edition

by Gordon Rowley

The study of cacti, in particular their naming and identification, has always been heav-
ily dependent upon good illustrations. As essentially three-dimensional objects, cacti
cannot be readily preserved in a herbarium, as Bradley knew in compiling the first book
on succulent plants in 1716, and as L’Héritier also appreciated later in the same century
when he turned the attentions of the aspiring flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté to
these prickly plants especially in need of an illustrator. Cactus flowers are short-lived,
and lose many of their recognisable features if dried or pickled. One would anticipate,
therefore, a great number of picture books to aid the botanist and plantsman. But this is
not the case, at least not until the age of photography and colour-filled coffee-table
handbooks. One reason is apparent to anyone who has ever attempted to draw a well-
armed Ferocactus or Echinocereus. A rock-steady hand and total mastery of parallel lines
and perspective are called for to produce the type of accuracy demanded by a botanist.
In the hands of less than a master the result can be mere stiffness and an exercise in
geometry, or, worse, fuzziness and lack of diagnostic detail.
During the grand era of florilegia, from the time of Ehret and Redouté to the middle
of the nineteenth century, cacti were little favoured by botanical artists. Exceptions
were the epiphytes: the ‘Rat’s-tail Cactus’, Aporocactus flagelliformis, and especially the
‘Queen of the Night’, Selenicereus grandiflorus, which could hardly fail to excite any artist,
especially by the challenge of capturing the huge white bloom at its brief peak of perfec-
tion around midnight. Many fine portraits immortalize this floral beauty, from the
minutely accurate documentations of Ehret to the romanticised grandeur of Thorn-
ton’s “Temple of Flora”.
Stapelieae were splendidly portrayed in the works of Masson (1796) with 41 plates and
Jacquin (18o6-19) with 64, and the mesembs and Alooideae found an able illustrator in
Salm-Dyck (1836-64). Redouté had painted a few cacti for de Candolle’s Plantarum Succu-
lentarum Historia (Plantes Grasses) of 1797-1837, although one gets the impression that the
artist was more at home with leafy succulents that lent themselves more nearly to the
same unexcelled technique he lavished on roses and lilies. Other artists successfully cap-
tured the unique appeal of cacti, making a virtue of the ferocious armature and height-
ened symmetry of spine clusters and areoles. Flowers, indeed, are revelatory when they
appear, contrasting in softness and purity with the spines through which they somehow
push out unharmed. But every true cactus lover knows that flowers are just a bonus, an
additional thrill that can be seen, drawn, photographed or filmed for a brief period each
year–perhaps for just a single day. For the rest of the year there is the plant, and its own
peculiar brand of beauty persists unchanged, to be admired at a season when the lilies
vanish below ground and the roses are ugly leafless skeletons.
 Up to the third decade of the nineteenth century the selection of cacti available in
cultivation in Europe was limited and untypical of the Family as a whole. The dwarf
globular kinds, subsequently most acceptable to amateurs with little space and in
search of flowers, were almost unknown. The West Indian Melocacti and Mammillaria
mammillaris, indeed, gave cacti a bad name as they need much warmth and care and are
notoriously difficult to acclimatise as imports. The riches of Mexico and South America
had been barely sampled. But the pioneer travels of Alexander von Humboldt had stim-
ulated interest, especially back in Germany where an increasing number of field collec-
tors followed in his lead and opened the floodgates. George Ackermann, Jean Ber-
landier, Thomas Coulter, Karl Ehrenberg, Henri Galeotti, Theodor Hartweg, Wilhelm
Karwinski, Charles Mackenzie, John Rule, Christian Schiede and others shipped cacti
back from Mexico, sometimes in large consignments, while South America was simi-
larly searched by George Gardner, John Gillies, William Harrison, Joseph Pentland,
Friedrich Sellow, John Tweedie and, later, Thomas Bridges. Thus began “the first cactus
cornucopia”, at its peak in the 184o’s, with botanical gardens and private enthusiasts
vying with each other for the size and diversity of their collections. It was a pastime for
the wealthy, and some enormous barrel cacti and cerei were shipped over, with varying
degrees of success. But the life of large imported cacti is usually short. Even if they
arrive in perfect condition the roots are inevitably cut back and slow to regenerate, and
rot can meanwhile set in unnoticed. Seed raising was still in its infancy, and it took
a long while to realise that, slow as it is, it offers better hope of raising fine show speci-
mens away from the habitat. By the 185o’s, cactomania had passed its peak and was not
to revive until the end of the century. But botanical gardens continued to preserve many
of the species, and some of the largest and best-endowed collections continued for
decades: those of Salm-Dyck in German; Monville and Cels in France, Makoy and Par-
mentier in Belgium, and Haworth, Thomas Hitchin and the Duke of Bedford at Woburn
Abbey in England. There were nurseries, too, of which that founded by Friedrich Haage
in Erfurt in 1822 was the most famous for succulents and the longest lasting.
The flood of new cacti needed new names, and these were supplied in super-
abundance. In Germany the gardening weekly Allgemeine Gartenzeitung, which had its
counterpart in England as the Gardener’s chronicle, brimmed with descriptions of new
cacti by a score or more writers. In the rush for priority, many did not wait for flowers
and fruits, and in absence of illustrations we are left with hundreds of names that can
never be certainly attached to any plant today. This list of indeterminate names has
been a problem to botanists ever since, and further gave the cactus Family as a whole a
bad name. Where the description was ample, and accompanied by diagnostic pictures,
as in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in England or Lemaire’s Flore des Serres in Belgium,
recognition is easier. The hand-coloured plates in these publications are works of art,
although costly to produce. Cacti make up only a small part of these periodicals, along
with other exotics then competing for attention.
Inevitably, with such interest in Cactaceae, someone would attempt an all-cactus
picture-book or iconography, to give it the grander name. The first to take the plunge
were two outstanding German botanists, Louis (Ludwig) Pfeiffer (18o5-77) and Chris-
toph Otto (1783-1856). The former was the author in 1837 of an unillustrated monograph
of Cactaceae, and the following year collaborated with Otto in launching their Abbil-
dung und Beschreibung Blühender Cacteen (Pictures and Descriptions of Flowering Cacti;
Pfeiffer & Otto 1838-50‹; see Stearn 1939) with large, coloured lithographs. Because of
the high cost of colouring, the standard issue had only partly coloured plates: one
flower and sometimes part of a stem only. There were a few sets with fully coloured
plates at a higher price. To spread the cost, they issued the work in parts over a twelve-
year period, each part or fascicle comprising five plates with accompanying text. With
60 plates it provided a reasonable sample of the best of the novelties but was far from
complete. Otto dropped from the scene halfway through, and by 1850 the fashion for
cacti had subsided, so perhaps a fall-off in subscriptions determined the end.
All this has a bearing on a parallel venture of even grander lines in France – the sub-
ject of the present facsimile – but first we need to know something about the man
behind it: Charles Antoine Lemaire.

Charles Lemaire

Charles Antoine Lemaire was horn in Paris on November 1, 1800. He went to university
and became a Professor of Classical Literature. Nobody has Written a biography, and
much of the material that might have helped to reconstruct a picture of the man seems
to have vanished at the time of his death, as will be mentioned later. I have not been
able to trace any portrait of him. Yet through a life of journalism and authorship he was
to leave his mark on the world of horticulture and on the study of cacti in particular.
We do not know when he first became interested in botany, but it seems to date
from the time when he made two unsuccessful attempts to found a school. One of the
attempts was made near the celebrated Jardin des Plantes which he visited and admired.
The Director of the garden was M. Carrière, who, with the help of a local nurseryman M.
Mathieu, was then building up a large collection of succulents from recent importations.

Monville et Lemaire
We know that cacti in large quantities were being introduced into France by Henri
Galeotti in the 1830’s. At least one nursery, that of F. Cels, was specialising in supplying
cacti. Among the more distinguished figures caught up in the fashionable addiction
was Hippolyte Boissel, the second Baron Monville, whose residence was just north of
Rouen (Rowley 1991). Just how and when Lemaire came to make his acquaintance we
do not know, but already the Baron had an outstandingly fine collection and turned to
Lemaire to become its cataloguer. This Lemaire duly did in two Latin volumes pub-
lished in 1838 arid 1839 – his first books on cacti. The earlier, a slim quarto volume with
a single huge folding plate of Echinocactus [Gymnocalycium] monvillii, is a series of de-
scriptions of 52 species, all but one purportedly new, with “Echinocactus lemarii” (sic!)
credited to Monville. It is dedicated not to Monville but to Salm-Dyck. Despite the subti-
tle “Fasciculus primus”, nothing further was published in this series. Instead, under a
confusingly similar title the following year, Lemaire produced a thicker octavo book
reviewing the entire cactus Family with a tabulation of 13 genera (4 of which were new)
and systematic survey of species including further novelties. His new method of classifi-
cation involved dividing the Family into two heterogenous groups based on the mode of ’
germination and the form of the cotyledons (see review in Loudon Gard. Mag. 16: 32-33,
1840): the Phyllariocotyledoneae and the Phymatocotyledoneae, names which by them-
selves are enough to deter anyone from adopting this system. It is a pity that Lemaire
tells us so little about Monville and his plant collection. Monville himself published little,
and the auction catalogue of his collection had long been regarded as a lost publication
until a copy came to light in Paris in 1991.
Lemaire left Paris for Belgium in 1845. The following year the Monville collection
was sold; to whom we do not know, but the Cels Nursery would seem to have been the
most likely buyer. A freak storm struck the peaceful countryside of Clères and Cailly on
August 19, 1845, causing great loss of life in the spinning mills. The name of the Baron
was subsequently drawn into a scandal regarding the handing of relief funds. He
sold up and we hear no more of him after his removal to Paris where lie died in 1863. It
could be that the discontinuing of Lemaire’s Iconographie after 1847 resulted from his
lost contact with Monville and his plants.

Horticultural periodicals

Lemaire’s principal publishing activity, spread over the last thirty years or his life, was
in the field of horticultural journalism. Gardening papers of the time were few and
poorly illustrated. Lemaire was to raise the standards and include high-quality colour
plates, some original and some copied from Curtis, Engelmann and other sources. As
editor or part-editor and prolific contributor, he was associated with several high-class
journals, including:
L’Horticulteur Universel 1839-44
Flore des Serres 1845-52 [-80]
Jardin fleuriste 1851-54
L’Illustration horticole 1854-69 [-96].

The last-mentioned may be taken to represent his chosen format: a blend of flori-
legium and gardening newssheet, each part having a section for colour plates and
descriptions of new plants (including many hybrids), and another part for general or
topical news on nurseries, shows, pest control and so forth. Succulents turn up at inter-
vals, with accompanying colour plates, original or copied, and several new species and
genera are described.
Around 1845 Lemaire moved from Paris to Ghent in Belgium at the invitation of Van
Houtte to take over the editing of the latter’s Flore des Serres. He stayed in Ghent until
1870, and became a Professor of Botany. Lemaire collaborated on the publication of
L’Illustration horticole owned by A. Verschaffelt. Lemaire returned to Paris after Ver-
schaffelt died and he must have been amazed at the changes brought about by the self-
declared Emperor Napoléon III. But the Emperor’s aggressive foreign policy soon led
to his downfall. He had declared war on Prussia, and Paris was under siege. Lemaire
was already in his final illness, being nursed by his daughter. Following France’s defeat
there were uprisings and massacres, in the midst of which Lemaire died almost unno-
ticed on June 22, 1871. His library was “dispersed by sale” (Stafleu & Cowan, 1979). In
more favourable times he would no doubt have been honoured with extended obituar-
ies, and one wonders what manuscripts and other memorabilia were lost to us in such
troublous times. He was commemorated by Britton & Rose in the genus Lemaireocereus,
although ironically that name has fallen victim to the Code of Nomenclature, being pre-
ceded by Stenocereus or Rathbunia. Of the species named after him, Hylocereus lemairei
Hook. B.&R., Melocactus lemairei (Monv) Lem and Opuntia lemaireana Cons. are gen-
erally recognised, Euphorbia lemaireana Boiss. is queried and Agave lemairei Versch.
seems to have passed unnoticed by later commentators.

The Iconographie Descriptive des Cactées

It is not on record when Lemaire first conceived the idea of a full-scale illustrated
monograph of Cactaceae, which he estimated would run to 200 plates. We know that he
was hard at work on it in 1840. He had seen the early issues of Pfeiffer and Otto’s Abbil
dung, and he mentions this work in 1841 and 1868, when he compares the illustrations
 APERÇU DE L’OUVRAGE.

L’Iconographie descriptive des plantes de la famille des Cactées se composera d’au moins 200 planches, et
d’autant de feuilles de texte.
Planches.

Toutes les planches seront supérieurement gravées sur cuivre par M. Duménil, tirées en couleur et finement retouchées au pinceau. Les
dessins, entièrement originaux, seront exécutés par un peintre habile (M. Maubert), d’après nature, et représenteront chaque plante de gran-
deur naturelle, toutes les fois que son volume ne s’y opposera pas ; dans le cas contraire, une portion seulement en sera figurée , et le port de
la plante entière sera donné au trait. Presque toutes les Cactées seront figurées en fleurs et en fruits, sur format grand in-folio. La plupart des
dessins représenteront des plantes entièrement inédites ou mal figurées ailleurs, et arrivées directement de leur pays natal ; point essentiel, afin
de ne pas figurer des plantes dénaturées par une longue culture.
Texte.

Chaque feuille de texte, format grand in-folio, comme celui des planches, sera imprimée, recto et verso, en beaux caractères neufs
et variés, et contiendra, en deux colonnes (texte latin et français), et par paragraphes distincts, l’histoire, l’étymologie du nom, la
synonymie, la diagnose, la description proprement dite, les affinités , etc., de chaque plante. Chaque fin de page contiendra en ou-
tre, en deux colonnes, texte également latin et français, un traité de la partie historique, physiologique, systématique, critique, etc., des
plantes de cette famille, de leur classification, de leur culture, etc. Comme cette dernière partie comprendra de longs développements, si elle ne
se terminait pas avec le nombre de feuilles de texte annoncé, le reste formerait des feuilles supplémentaires données gratis, mais seulement
aux cent premiers souscripteurs inscrits.

CONDITIONS DE LA SOUSCRIPTION.

Les cent premiers souscripteurs, seuls, recevront gratis toutes les livraisons dépassant le nombre de cent, nombre pour lequel ils s’enga-
gent en souscrivant. Leurs noms seront inscrits sur la couverture de chaque livraison, avec la date de leur demande, afin de constater leur or-
dre d’inscription et le droit inhérent aux cent premières souscriptions.
Le prix de chaque livraison, composée de deux planches, de deux feuilles de texte, et d’une belle couverture imprimée, est de 5 francs.
Lorsque le nombre de cent souscriptions sera atteint, les nouveaux souscripteurs paieront les livraisons supplémentaires.
Il parait régulièrement une livraison tous les 20 jours.

On souscrit, sans rien payer d’avance,

A PARIS,

Chez H. COUSIN , libraire-éditeur, rue Jacob, 21  ;

Chez MM. CELS, horticulteurs-pépiniéristes, barrière et chaussée du Maine, 77  ;
Et chez les principaux Libraires de France et de l’étranger.

Imp. de guiraudet, Saint-Honoré, 315.

 Avis aux Souscripteurs.

La première livraison de l’Iconographie descriptive des Cactées a paru il y a déjà

plusieurs mois, sans avoir été immédiatement suivie par d’autres. Le retard apporté à
l’apparition des livraisons suivantes avait pour but de consulter, sur le mode de rédaction
adopté, tant les hommes compétents en la matière que les amateurs éclairés qui s’occupent
de la collection et de l’éducation de ces intéressantes plantes. Ce même retard doit prouver
en même temps aux souscripteurs qui ont accueilli favorablement cet ouvrage quels soins
l’auteur et l’éditeur se proposent d’y donner et avec quelle sollicitude ils prétendent veiller
à y apporter toutes les améliorations désirables.
Une telle oeuvre, en effet, devant demander plusieurs années pour son achèvement to-
tal, et répondre à la fois à l’état actuel de la science et aux exigences typographiques de
l’époque, nécessitait de mûres réflexions et le concours bénévole des illustrations en ce
genre.
Ainsi, nous avons été assez heureux pour obtenir les conseils de M. le prince de Salm,
l’auteur de la belle Monographie des Aloès et des Mesembrianthèmes, et de M. le baron
de Monville, dont chacun connaît la riche et magnifique collection de Cactées. Ces mes-
sieurs ont bien voulu nous permettre de puiser à même dans les savantes observations
qu’ils ont faites et font chaque jour, sur ces plantes ; le second, en entre, met généreuse-
ment à notre disposition, pour 1es décrire et les faire figurer, les beaux individus qu’il
possède dans ses serres.
C’est aussi d’après leurs sages avis que nous nous sommes décidé à modifier la partie
descriptive de notre Iconographie, comme nos souscripteurs peuvent le voir par les folios
ci-contre. A l’avenir cette forme de texte ne variera plus, et quant à la partie historique et
scientifique de l’ouvrage, que nous avions commencé à écrire au bas des pages de descri-
ptions, nous la donnerons sur des feuillets séparés et paginés, lesquels, par la suite, for-
meront un tout complet qui précédera l’ouvrage général.
A l’avenir encore, nos folios de texte descriptif et nos planches ne porteront aucun chif-
fre. Cette négligence apparente est toute, au contraire, dans l’intérêt des souscripteurs, et
nous nous sommes déterminé à cette mesure par des causes d’une haute importance. Entre
autres motifs de cette détermination, c’est que, dans l’état actuel de la science, une classi-
fication systématique des Cactées en tribus, leur dénomination générique rigoureuse mê-
me, tout est, sinon impossible, du moins encore incertain, et que rien aujourd’hui, à cet
égard, ne peut certainement être constitué d’une manière rationnelle et définitive.
Or, comme, grâce aux écrits nombreux et contradictoires de plusieurs auteurs éminents
qui s’occupent de ces plantes, on doit espérer, dans un avenir assez prochain, pouvoir
poser des bases solides d’une classification satisfaisante et vraiment naturelle des Cactées,
nous nous réservons, avant l’achèvement total de l’ouvrage, de donner à nos lecteurs cet
important travail, lequel sera tout à la fois le complément et l’analyse critique de tous les
écrits qui ont été publiés sur la matière.
A cette époque aussi la première livraison de l’Iconographie sera remplacée gratuite-
ment pour tous les souscripteurs, et mise en harmonie avec notre nouveau mode de ré-
daction. Rien ne sera épargné pour la confection matérielle de cet ouvrage de la part de
l’éditeur, qui est désormais en mesure d’en publier rapidement et sans interruption les li-
vraisons suivantes.
C. LEMAIRE
unfavourably with his own. He must also have known de Candolle and Redouté’s
Plantes Grasses and took over from it the same format of serial publication in parts com-
prising loose plates and text. However, there was a difference. Redouté, the celebrated
artist, had sponsors to cover the enormous costs of printing his works; Lemaire was
never well-to-do and must, have had greater problems. Ever optimistic, he announced:
“The plates, to be number of about 200, painted from nature by M. Maubert
are engraved on copper by M. Duménil, printed in colour and finely retouched with a brush.
The work will form about 100 fascicles in large folio which will appear regularly over 20
years; the 100 first subscribers only will receive gratis all the fascicles exceeding the num-
ber 100.” The price is given as frs. 5.– for each part containing two coloured plates and
two pages of text.
As we know from L’Horticulteur Universel (1841, p. 320) the first part had then been
published–or had it? The announcement, was repeated in the following volume
(3, 1842, p. 96) and it is also noted in Bibl. de la France 30: 594 n. 5790 for Dec. 1841. What-
ever the exact date of issue, it is certain that a long cold silence descended–so long that
Lemaire was obliged to circulate an “Avis aux Souscripteurs” to boost subscriptions
and encourage those who waited in vain for further issues.
In this notice he explained away the long delay as being caused by the need to take
stock of the new cacti arriving and to seek the help of Baron Monville and Prince Salm-
Dyck in working on them. Following their advice he had made a number of changes in
the format of the Iconographie.
The first change concerned the “historical and scientific part of the work” which
had initially consisted of running footnotes to the first four pages – the ideal way to
confuse and infuriate readers. He stated accordingly that in the future this information
would appear on separate pages which would eventually form the introduction to the’
whole work. As no separate pages ever appeared, about which we know, we are left with
the tantalising fragment that ends in the middle of a sentence on page 4.
Second, he stated that henceforth plates would not be numbered, allowing sub-
scribers to rearrange them according to a future, promised classification which never
materialised. Lastly, he indicated that Part 1 would eventually be replaced free of charge
to subscribers by a version in the new format.
Although so few copies of any of the Iconographie survive, there are to be found two
different states of Part 1. The text is identical in both, but the captions differ on the
plates. State 1 (as represented by the facsimile here) has the spelling “horizonthalonius”
on Plate 1, the same as when first published by Lemaire in 1838, and the spelling
“Hechinocactus” on Plate 2. In State 2 (as seen in the copy now at the Royal Horticultural
Society – see below) “horizonthalonius” became “horizontalinus” and “Hechinocactus” was
corrected to “Echinocactus”. For some unknown reason Plate 1 had become Plate 2, and
Plate 2 became Plate 1, although the accompanying text was unaltered! The remaining
parts all adopt the new simplified format with the text all on one sheet and no running
footnotes, and I have seen no variant versions to date.
A nomenclatural issue arises here: are we obliged to take up the author’s “correc-
tion” of horizontalonius in place of the familiar horizonthalonius? I am indebted to Prof.
W.T. Stearn and Nigel Taylor at Kew for confirming my belief that we are not. Lemaire
was not correcting but substituting a new and hence invalid, epithet: “horizontalonius” is
not, the same as “horizonthalonius”, a better and correctly compounded epithet which
Lemaire himself explains as derived from the Greek horizontos, horizon, and halonion, a
halo, small circle or, in cactus context, an areole.
 LEMA I RE I CONO GRA P H I E 1 8 4 1 CO LLAT IO N O F P LAT ES

date plate plate lemaire’s karl schumann’s britton & roses’s i.o.s. consensus
“not before”1 number name name 1898-19022 name 1919-19233 name 19944

1839 1841 1 1 Echinocactus Echinocactus Echinocactus Echinocactus

horizonthalonius horizonthalonius Lem. horizonthalonius Lem. horizonthalonius Lem.
(horizontalonius)

1838 2 Echinocactus Echinocactus Thelocactus Thelocactus

hexaedrophorus hexaedrophorus Lem. heaxaedrophorus heaxaedrophorus
(Lem.) Br.&R. (Lem.) Br.&R.

1843 2 3 Mammillaria Mammillaria Coryphantha Coryphantha

May erecta erecta Lem. erecta (Lem.) Lem. erecta (Pfeiff.) Lem.

1843 4 Echinocactus Echinocactus (not cited) Parodia erinaceus

erinaceus erinaceus Lem. (Haw.) Tayl.

1843 3 5 Echinocactus Echinocactus Gymnocalycium Gymnocalycium

gibbosus gibbosus P.DC. gibbosum (Haw.) Pfeiff.? gibbosum (Haw.) Pfeiff.

1842 6 Cereus Cereus Cereus Cereus

perrot(t)etianus jamacaru P.DC. hexagonus (L.) Mill. hexagonus (L.) Mill.

1842 4 7 Echinocactus Echinocactus Malacocarpus Parodia concinna

concinnus concinnus Monv. concinnus (Monv.) Br.&R. (Monv.) Tayl.

1842 8 Echinocactus Echinocactus Echinocactus Stenocactus

coptonogonus coptonogonus Lem. coptonogonus coptonogonus
(Lem.) Lawr. (Lem.) Hill.

1841 5 9 Mammillaria Mammillaria Coryphantha Coryphantha

elephantidens elephantidens Lem. elephantidens (Lem.) Lem. elephantidens (Lem.) Lem.

1842 10 Mammillaria Mammillaria Neomammillaria Mammillaria

dolichocentra dolichocentra Lem. tetracantha (s.d.) Br.&R. polythele Mart/

1841 6 11 Echinocactus Echinocactus Echinofossulocactus Stenocactus

pentacanthus pentacanthus Lem. pentacanthus (Lem.) Br.&R. obvallatus (P.DC.) Hill.

1837 12 Echinocactus Echinocactus Malacocarpus Parodia erinacea

sellowianus sellowii Link & Otto tephracanthus (Link & Otto) (Haw.) Tayl.
K. Sch.

1839 1845 7 13 Echinocactus Echinocereus Echinocereus Echinocereus

pectiniferus pectinatus Eng. pectinatus (Scheidw.) pectinatus (Scheidw.)
Eng. Eng.

1841 14 Echinocactus ? Echinocactus Echinocactus Echinocactus

(Astrophytum) myriostigma s.d. myriostigma Lem. myriostigma Lem.
myriostigma

1841 1847 8 15 Echinocactus Echinocactus Gymnocalycium Gymnocalycium

monvillianus monvillei Lem. monvillei (Pfeiff.) Br.&R. monvillei (Lem.) Br.&R.
and monvillii

1843 16 Mammillaria Mammillaria Coryphantha Coryphantha

sulcolanata sulcolanata Lem. sulcolanata (Lem.) Lem. sulcolanata (Lem.) Lem.

1 That is, the latest date cited in the references in the text, before which it could
not have been published.
2 Ex Gesamtb. d. Kakt. 1898-1902 (omitting Nos. 3 and 13), and Monatss. f. Kakt. 8:51,
1898.
3 Ex The Cactaceae.
4 Ex European Garden Flora 3: 202-301, 1989.

In the preceding table, I have adopted the same sequence of parts as in my 1966
article, that is, the order of the bound copy at the Natural History Museum Library used
for the present facsimile. The one crumb of evidence to suggest that this is the order as
published is that it is non-alphabetical. In the bound copy at Missouri, and in the plate
assigned by Schumann and Britton & Rose (Rowley 1966), there is some attempt at
regrouping alphabetically the species in the later parts. Beyond this we have no water-
marks on the paper, dates on wrappers or lists of contents, and the best I have been able
to supply is “not before” dates gleaned from scrutiny of the references cited for syn-
onyms under each species. This merely tells us, for instance, that, the text to Mammillaria
erecta (No. 3) could not have appeared before May 1843, but it could have been later. In
L’Horticulteur Universel 5 (1845) Lemaire claimed that parts had already been published,
and two years elapsed before the eighth part (present only in the British Library copy)
was published. But that is not the end of the story. In L’Illustration Horticole 5 (1858, p. 128)
Lemaire claimed that 9 parts with 18 plates had appeared, and in his 1868 book, Les Cac-
tées p. 137 he admits that it had been discontinued, but cites it as 10 parts with 20 plates.
Unfortunately no copy with more than 8 parts is currently known to exist.
Lemaire never seems to have explained why the venture was curtailed – one can
only guess that it could have been the high cost of the artwork and a failure to attract
sufficient subscribers. Or perhaps he found it too difficult to manage in Paris after his
removal to Belgium? So we have to be thankful that at least we have the tantalizing frag-
ment that remains: the rarest of Lemaire’s publication, indeed, the rarest of all major
work on Cactaceae.
Why do so few copies survive? Large, thin folios are not the easiest of items to store
in a library without crumpling, and a glance at the Royal Horticultural Society copy will
reveal that the soft paper becomes brittle and easily crumbles. Did the publishers go to
so much expense to produce just a mere handful of copies, or did they have scores of
unsold sets mouldering in a basement somewhere that were eventually destroyed in a
moment of pique? We shall probably never know.
In Sotheby’s auction catalog of the Library of Robert de Belder, offered for sale
April 1987, Lot 209 was the only set of Lemaire’s Iconographie to come on the market for
many years. The accompanying coulour plate is No. 2 Thelocactus hexaedrophorus. The set
comprises just the first 7 parts, with one leaf of text in duplicate and another missing,
and it is in a fragile state with the paper near to crumbling. Still, it fetched £5,280 and is
now happily housed in the renowned Library of the Royal Horticultural Society in
London, to whom I am grateful for allowing me to examine it and confirm that, like the
copy at Missouri, it has Part 1 in the revised state. The catalogue does not exaggerate in
stating that this “is the rarest work on cacti ever published, and is virtually unknown
in any State” and contains “the finest depictions of cacti ever published.” The artist
M. Maubert and engraver M. Duménil produced work always of the highest quality fur-
ther displayed in Lemaire’s horticultural periodicals. The Iconographie plates were
printed in colour and the finer details retouched with a brush. Cacti are presented life
size or even larger, as in the case of No. 14 Astrophytum myriostigma, which has tre-
mendous visual impact and has never been better figured.
Lemaire’s Iconographie was overlooked by Stapf in his Index Londinensis, but the
plates are cited by Schumann and by Britton & Rose in their respective monographs of
Cactaceae. Despite their rarity some plates have been copied in black-and-white and
used to illustrate other books, such as Watson’s Cactus Culture for Amateurs (1889; plates
7, 8, 9 and, in reverse, 16, and Nicholson’s Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening (1884-1900;
plates 8, 9, 16). Such is the excellence of the originals that they give an authentic record
of the plants known to Lemaire, and some plates have accordingly been designated as
pictotypes (iconotypes) in absence of herbarium specimens – Thelocactus hexaedrophorus
No. 2. for instance, by E.F. Anderson in Bradleya 5: 71, 1987.
 In view of the scarcity of copies of Lemaire’s Iconographie (1841-47), it may be useful
to note the locations of seven copies that are on record:

location number of plates information source

Natural History Museum, London 16

Royal Horticultural Society, London 14

(Lacks Part 8)

Bibliothèque de la phanérogamie, Paris 14

(Lacks Part 8) J. Callé

Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis 14 Stafleu & Cowan

Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris 10

“L’exemplaire… possède seulement (Parts 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 only) J. Callé
des planches noires. ”

Jardin Botanique de l’Etat, Brussels 6

(Parts 1, 2, 3 only) A. Lawalrée

Bibliothèque Générale du Muséum, Paris 2

(Parts 1 only) J. Callée

The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints Vol. 325 page 445 notes four further
copies at the U.S. Library of Congress (14 plates), Arnold Arboretum, Huntington
Library, and Yale University, without further details.

Later Work on Cacti

After time folio-sized Iconographie proved a non-starter Lemaire set his sights lower
and began a cactus monograph in octavo. He must have been encouraged by the poor
reception given to the only other attempt in French, that by Labouret in 1858. In the
bibliography added to Lemaire’s Les Cactées of 1868, p. 138, we read:
13°–Cactac. Monogr. Tentamen. ou Essai d’une monographie d’une famille des Cactées.
un vol. in-8° (inédit). Dédié à M. Frédéric Schlumberger, etc., 1854-1868. C’est l’ouvrage
le plus complet publié jusqu’ici sur ces plantes, et le plus au courant de la science, et
dont celui-ci peut donner une juste idée.”
This book, “the most complete up to now on these plants, and the most in accord
with science”, was still not published at the time of his death three years later, and noth-
ing more was heard of it. However, he did publish samples of it so that we can get an idea
of the format, resembling the Iconographie in miniature. Thus, there is an article on Pele-
cyphora aselliformis in L’Illustration horticole 5: t. 186, 1858, accompanied by an excellent
plate, and another on the genus phyllocactus in Rev. Hort. 35: 377-379, 1864.
As it is, we are left with two small cactus books by Lemaire, written for gardeners:
Manuel de l’Amateur de cactus (1845), which mainly dealt with cultivation, and Les Cactées
(1868) which included the new names and groupings of his projected monograph and
thus has nomenclatural importance in spite of its humble format. A companion volume
Les Plantes Grasses autres que les Cactées in 1869 was his final book and also introduced a
number of new or newly revived generic names, most now long sunk in synonymy, but
Adromischus Lem. (Crassulaceae) survives.
 Lemaire as botanist

Later generations have been quick to point out Lemaire’s shortcomings as a self-
taught botanist (Hunt 1976). He was headstrong and pedantic, over-sensitive to the
faults of others while blind to his own, some say. If he made any herbarium specimens
to document his many new species, they have apparently not survived his death. He no
doubt thought, with good reason, that a good colour plate was the best record of a new
succulent. He prided himself on his classical background and fluency in languages, and
wrote lengthy critiques on nomenclature. Lemaire took Salm-Dyck to task over the lat-
ter’s new name Diotostemon (=Pachyphytum) in L’Illustration horticole 2: 26, 44, 1855. In
view of this fastidiousness, it is curious to note that Lemaire was so careless about his
own names, both in spelling and derivation. Thus we have, often within the same paper
Echinocactus horizontalinus, E. horizonthalonius and E. horizontalonius; Cereus perrotte-
tianus, C. perrotetianus and C. perrotteti; Echinocactus monvillianus and E. monvillii (the ac-
cepted modern spelling is “monvillei’). Good critics should at least try to practise what
they preach.Leighton-Boyce (1968) working on Tephrocactus and Tjaden (1969) on Schlum-
bergera both encountered problems in trying to unravel some of Lemaire’s writings. Even
if proved wrong, Lemaire preferred to extend the argument rather than back down.
Lemaire disapproved of some of the botanical terms in general use, replacing those
that he considered vague or ambiguous. Thus by 1868 he was using “tyléole” for areole
and “cyrtôme” for tubercle. Neither term has been taken up by later workers. The same
could be said of his attempted new system of classification of Cactaceae, dividing the
family into two heterogeneous groups based on the mode of germination and the form
of the cotyledons (Lemaire 1839; see Loudon Gard. Mag. 16: 32-33,1840).
But there are many good things in Lemaire, also. A glance at the sumptuous torso of
a cactus monograph presented here will at once reveal some of them – not least, his
enthusiasm and desperate urge to do justice to such remarkable plants. He excelled in
descriptive botany, and has to his credit the establishment of at least five cactus genera
that are recognised in just about every cactus collection today: Aporocactus, Astrophy-
tum, Cleistocactus, Coryphantha and Schlumbergera. His Consolea and Tephrocactus are
accepted by Backeberg, although treated by most other authorities as subgenera of
Opuntia. The abbreviation “Lem.” serves to remind us of his activities at lower levels of
the hierarchy, too.
His eagerness to provide a new genus for the ‘Old Man Cactus’, then the most
sought-after and prestigious of the novelties from Mexico, unleashed a nest of vipers
with the names Cephalophorus and Pilocereus. Currently, neither is upheld, Pfeiffer’s
Cephalocereus being championed by Hunt (1980) as having priority, and Pilosocereus
(Byles & Rowley 1955, 1957) replacing Pilocereus sensu Schumann non Lemaire, with a
different type species. Another ill-fated Lemaire genus, Anhalonium, was anticipated by
Ariocarpus Scheidw, although it persisted in wide usage in die nineteenth century for
the peyote, Lophophora (Anderson 1980).
In his Iconographie of 1841-47 he published a number of new varieties, distinguished
with Greek letters and a brief Latin diagnosis: three each under Echinocactus erinaceus
and Mammillaria dolichocentra and one under M. sulcolanata. Attention is drawn to them
here as they seem to have been overlooked by later commentators and deserve to be
properly evaluated.
Outside of Cactaceae, Lemaire was interested in all manner of other plants, espe-
cially the tender and tropical exotics which add spectacular bursts of colour as one
turns the pages of Lemaire’s numerous well-illustrated periodicals. But this is no place
to attempt an evaluation of his work in other fields. It cannot he denied, however, that
he made his mark in horticultural journalism over a period or thirty years, and well
earned the praise of Karl Schumann, who commends him for raising the standards.
especially in the field of high-quality illustrations.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the Trustees of the Natural history Museum,
London and the Royal Horticultural Society for allowing me to examine their copies of
Lemaire’s books, the Missouri Botanical Garden for sending me details of theirs, and
Prof. J. Callé, J.A. Janse, Dr. A.C. Lawalrée, Roy Mottram, Prof. W.T. Stearn and Dr. C.
Walker for their information, interest and help.

REFERENCES

André, E. (1871). Charles Lemaire. Gard. Chron. July 8, 1871: 870. See also l.c. p. 844.
Anderson, E.E (1980). Peyote – The Divine Cactus. Tucson, Arizona.
Byles, R.S. & Rowley, G.D. (1955 & 1957). Pilosocereus. Cact. Succ. J. Gr. Brit. 17: 32, 1955;
19: 66-68, 1957.
Crépin, F. (1878). Guide Bot. Belg. 258, 457. Brief mentions only.
De Vriese, W.H. (1841). Boekbeschouwing, Letterkundige berighten en vertaligen. Tijds.
Nat. Gesch. Phys. 8: 117-118. Announcement of the first issue of the Iconographie.
Hunt, D.R. (1976). Who was who? 5. Charles Antoine Lemaire. J. Mamm. Soc. 16: 29-30.
Hunt, D.R. (1980). A Note on the Nomenclature of Cephalocereus senilis (Haw) Pfeiff. ex
K. Schum. Taxon 29: 157-158.
Labouret, J. (1858). Monographie de la Famille des Cactées. 684 pp. Paris.
Langman, I. (1964). A selected guide to the literature on the flowering plants of Mexico:
436-437. Lemaire (includes a partial listing of his shorter contributions on cacti
to journals).
Leighton-Boyce, G.G. (1968). One hundred years back to Lemaire. in Cact. Succ.
J. Gr. Brit. 3o: 73.74
Lemaire, C. (1838). Cactearum… in Horto Monvilliano… cultarum. xiv + 42 pp. 1 folding plate.
Paris. “Fasciculus Primus”, but no more was published under
this title.
— (1839). Cactearum Genera Nova Speciesque Novae… 116 pp. 1 folding chart. Paris.
— (1841-47). Iconographie descriptive des Cactées… Folio; 8 parts with 16 plates and
text. Planned to run to 100 parts over 20 years; parts 9 and 10 may have been issued
but are lost.
— (1845). Manuel de l’Amateur de Cactus. 120 pp. 1 text fig. Paris. A facsimile edition
of this rare booklet was published in Berlin in 1988.
— (1868). Les Cactées. 140 pp. 11 text figs. Paris. Includes revisions taken from his
unpublished monograph.
Pfeiffer, L. & Otto, F. (1838-5o). Abbildung und Beschreibung Blühender Cacteen.
2 Vols. 60 colour plates. Cassel. Plates partly coloured only; a few copies issued
to special order fully hand-coloured at three times the price.
Rowley, G.D. (1966). Lemaire’s “Iconographie descriptive des Cactées”. Cact. Succ. J.
(U.S.) 38: 106-107.
Rowley, G.D. (1991). Baron Monville and the “lost” Catalogue of 1846. Brit. Cact. Succ. J.
9: 40-41.
Schumann, K. (1898). Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Kakteenkenner. II.
Charles Antoine Lemaire. Monats. f. Kakteenk. 8: 49-52.
Stafleu, E & Cowan, R.S. (1979). Taxonomic Literature Ed. II: 2: 834-837. Lemaire.
Stearn, W.T. (1939). Pfeiffer and Otto’s “Abbildung und Beschreibung Blühender
Cacteen”. Cact. Succ. J. Gr. Brit. 8: 39-46.
Tjaden W.L. (1969). Charles Lemaire (1800-1871) and the Genus Schlumbergera.
Cact. Succ. Gr. Brit. 31: 29-31.