Encyclopedia of Bromeliads

Genus Notes:

Belgique Hort. 23: 257. 1873.
Type Canistrum aurantiacum E. Morren, Belgique Hort. 23: 257. 1873. Currently recognized in the subfam. Bromelioideae. From the Greek kanistron, a kind of basket carried on the head. Morren described the inflorescence as a flat basket of flowers similar to those carried by young girls in Athens during events such as the festival of Bacchus, as well as those carried by green vegetable growers in Morren’s home town of Liège, Belgium.

Édouard Morren (1833-1886), was a professor of botany and director of the botanical garden at the Université de Liège, Belgium from 1857-1886. Morren was the undisputed authority of the Bromeliaceae in this period, and described numerous new species in the journal he edited, ‘La Belgique Horticole’. He was preparing a much-anticipated monograph of the family when he died in 1886 at the young age of 53. These lengthy manuscripts, as well as the majority of his large collection of watercolors prepared for him at his direction were sold by his widow soon after his death to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England. These manuscripts were studied by both Baker and Mez, who described many of Morren's unpublished new species.

Contrary to nearly every reference to the “Morren collection of watercolors”, only a few sketches were actually drawn by Morren himself. Four principal artists, Cambresier, Sartorius, Stroobant, and De Tollenaere prepared the large exquisite watercolors whose style is later seen in Margaret Mee's paintings. Baker depended heavily on these paintings when preparing his ‘Handbook of the Bromeliaceae’ (1889). In fact, he uses the abbreviation “M.D.” for ‘Morren Drawing’ if there was an illustration in the collection that he examined. It is unfortunate that Morren died so prematurely because his monograph certainly would have been the most comprehensive to that date, and illustrated by numerous watercolors of the finest caliber. The manuscripts and watercolors may still today be examined in the archives at Kew.

In a short period from 1886-1887, the botanical community was shaken by the deaths of three botanists who wrote extensively on the Bromeliaceae: Édouard Morren, Franz Antoine, and Heinrich Wawra von Fernsee. With the sudden loss of these important workers, Édouard François André, John Gilbert Baker, and Carl Mez took up further research on the family.
(from Grant & Zijlstra 1998)

Taxa included

Genus Notes: