TRIANA, JOSé GERóNIMO (OR JERóNIMO)

(b.Zipaquirá, Colombia, 1826; d. Paris, France, October 1890)

botany

The botanical sciences were not firmly established in Colombia until the 1930’s, when the Colombian National Herbarium and the Botanical Institute of the National University were founded at Bogotá. Until then the investigation of the rich and interesting Colombian flora had been carried on by a series of more or less self-taught individuals without institutional affiliation. Working with very little bibliographical information, they had to deal with an extremely mountainous area in which each climatic zone and mountain range posed different problems. Thus it is all the more extraordinary that from the arrival of José Celestino Mutis at Cartagena in 1760 until the 1930’s botanical study was uniterrupted in Colombia.

Triana began the study of botany at Bogotá as the private pupil of Francisco Javier Matis, the last survivor of the Mutis botnical expedition. In 1850 the government appointed him associate botanist on the commission (headed by Agustín Codazzi) charged with preparing and publishing a geographical map of Colombia that would establish its borders. Triana traveled with the commission throughout Andean Colombia collecting plants in order to verify his catalog of the flora, and recording the place and date of collection, barometric pressure, common name, and popular use of each species. Triana’s herbarium, amassed through tedious observations, was presented to the government in 1855 in thirty-eight volumes, each containing about 100 species. He also gathered data on the ethnobotanic legacy of Colombia: botanic medical traditions of the native medicine men, the raw materials of primitive industries, and the home remedies of the mestizo societies. Together with his herbarium, Triana’s data on economic and medicinal botany established his scientific reputation both in Colombia and in Europe.

While still in Colombia, Triana had begun correspondence with foreign botanical explorers of Colombia, including Luis Schlim, J. Linden, Julian Warscewiez, J. J. Jewies, H. Holton, and Herrmann Karsten. Interest in the Colombian flora increased in the botanical centers and gardens of France, England, Belgium, and Germany: and in 1850–1857 Triana benefited from the company of explorers sent from Europe to be trained as botanists.

In 1856 Triana was commissioned by the government to go to Europe for two years in order to publicize Colombian plants of economic value. When he reached Paris, Triana met the botanist Descaine. He collaborated on the publication of the Flora de la Nueva Granada with Jules Planchon, with whom he worked at Montpellier in 1858 and 1859; at the end of this time he left ready for the press Mémoire sur la famille des guttifères, which appeared in 1860. At the end of his career he won the esteem of Filippo Parlattore, professor of botany at Florence.

In 1865, at the Horticultural Exposition of Amsterdam, Triana presented his Monografía de las melastomáceas, which was published at London in 1871 and was awarded the Candolle Prize.

Traina’s greatest ambition was to publish a flora of his country; but the government, impoverished by civil wars, withdrew financial support. He therefore chose to prepare a systematic work in collaboration with Planchon and others, Prodromus florae Novogranatensis, ou énumération des plantes de la Nouvelle Grenade. Triana used the illustrations and descriptions prepared by Mutis and Francisco José Caldas for their Historia de los árboles de quina, which were in Madrid, when he published his Nouvelles études sur les quinquinas (1870).

Triana’s study of the bibliographical sources started in London (1865–1867). He traveled to Madrid twice in order to study Mutis’ material on quinine and prevailed upon Queen Isabella II to instruct the administrators of the Madrid Botanical Garden to give him access to the icons. Triana immediately made a new and extensive systematic recesion of the Cinchona species. He also obtained permission to present Mutis’Quinología at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1867. This exhibit brought him many honors and prizes.

Two of Triana’s most valuable botanical works are still unpublished, “Catálogo metódico de los dibujos de la Flora de Nueva Granada hechos bajo la dirección de don JoséCelestino Mutis “and “Catálogo de los ejemplares que componen el herbario formado por José J. Triana. . . .”

In 1889 Triana was struck by a carriage, an accident that apparently aggravated some of his preexisting ailments. He underwent an operation in 1890 and died that October. In 1857, fifteen days before his departure from Bogotá for Europe, he married Mercedes Umaña, who bore him fifteen children.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Triana’s writings include Nuevos jeneros i especies de plantas para la flora Neo-Granadina (Bogotá, 1854); Prodromus florae Novogranatensis, 2 vols. (Paris, 1862–1867), written with J. E. Planchon, which also appeared as a series of memoirs in Annales des sciences naturelles (Botany), 3rd ser., 17 –4th ser., 17 (1862–1873); Nouvelles études sur les quinquinas, d’après les matériaux présentés en 1867 àl’Exposition universelle de Paris (Paris, 1870); and “Les mélastomacées,” in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, 28 (1871), 1–188, also published separeately (London, 1871).

On his life and work, see Abhandlungen herausgegeben vom Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein zu Bremen, 3 (1873), 393–403; and 5 (1878), 29–33; and Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, 29 (1891), 46–47.

Enrique PÉrez ArbelÁez