Erik Leonard Ekman

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Erik Leonard Ekman
naturalist
Years active1914 - 1931
Known forDescribing several new species of Cuban and Hispaniolan flora/fauna

Erik Leonard Ekman was a Swedish botanist and explorer.

Biography

Erik Leonard Ekman was born into a low-income household with five children on October 14, 1883. Due to economic difficulties, the family moved to the central-Swedish town of

Misiones collecting plants, aided greatly by the local Swedish colony. While there, he was offered a position as the Regnellian amanuensis at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm
, which he gladly accepted. He started his service at the museum in 1908. Thanks to financial support from the Regnell fund, he was able to travel widely through Europe and study with many of the prominent botanists of the time.

Ekman presented his

Lund in 1914. In the same year, he was to participate in the third Regnellian expedition to South America. His goal was Brazil, but Ekman was given an assignment from professors Ignatius Urban (from Berlin) and C. Lindman (from Stockholm) to make short stops on Cuba (one month) and Hispaniola (eight months), to collect specimens for Urban's Symbolae Antillanae botanical project. Ekman agreed to do so, but under protest. His trip to Brazil was further delayed for two years by the onset of World War I, political unrest in Haiti, and a plague epidemic
in Cuba.

Ekman landed in

black water fever
. He never returned to Sweden after having left it for the second time.

Ekman was interred in Santiago de los Caballeros, where a plaque was erected in his honor by the Dominican government and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists on October 14, 1950.[3]

Legacy

Ekman contributed to the knowledge of the Caribbean flora more than any other previous scientist. He described more than 2,000 species new to science (a great many of which are now named after him); this was remarkable, since by then the flora of the Caribbean was considered to be extensively documented. His collections are still actively used in the research on the West Indian flora. He collected around 36,000 numbers, amounting with duplicates to more than 150,000 specimens. The Haitian species collected and documented by Ekman were mostly described by Ignatius Urban or by Urban and Ekman. Ekman's published account and unpublished field notes provide detailed descriptions of the flora of the Selle and Hotte massifs as they existed in the 1920s.[2] Ekman also made some geographical discoveries: he mapped several mountains of Haiti and was among the first to measure accurately the highest Dominican (and Caribbean) mountain, Pico Duarte. Ekman also collected birds, mammals and reptiles, of which several species bear his name, e.g. the Hispaniolan nightjar (Antrostomus ekmani). There are also streets in both Santiago and Santo Domingo bearing his name. In Cuba, a special department in the Botanical Garden that is named after Ekman contains plant species related to his work.

The Swedish Foundation Instituto Ekman was established in 1991 in his honour. The aims of the Foundation are to intensify the scientific and cultural exchange between Sweden and the Caribbean countries.

An in depth biographical work on Ekman by Thomas A. Zanoni (New York) and Roger Lundin (Sweden) is ongoing.[citation needed]

The standard author abbreviation Ekman is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[4]

The genera Ekmanochloa

Trel.
Ekmaniopappus Borhidi and Elekmania B.Nord. were named for him.

Literature

B. Nordenstam & K. Oldfeldt Hjertonsson Plantae Ekmanianae Atlantis, Stockholm, 2007.

References

  1. JSTOR 1655580
    .
  2. ^ a b Judd, W.S. 1987. Floristic study of Morne la Visite and Pic Macaya national Parks, Haiti. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum 32: 1-136.
  3. JSTOR 2482108
    .
  4. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Ekman.
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