Alfred Graf, 100, Botanist And Author of Plant Books

Alfred Byrd Graf, a globe-trotting botanist, collector and photographer who compiled some of the world’s most elaborate and expensive plant books, died Dec. 14 at his home in Dusseldorf, Germany. He was 100.

He returned to his native country three years ago after living in the United States, most recently in East Rutherford, N.J.

Mr. Graf was a world authority on tropical and subtropical plants, and added at least 120 to the known varieties. As a plant hunter, he searched vast regions and traveled to remote islands.
His knowledge and the specimens he brought back befitted horticulture as well as indoor gardeners. He found new species of Chinese evergreens, dracaena, Begonia exotica, sansevieria of Ceylon and the first white African violet.

His comprehensive illustrated inventories of the world’s flora were expensive, though the cost did not seem to discourage aficionados.

They first took notice with the appearance of his “Exotica: Pictorial Cyclopedia of Indoor Plants” (Roehrs Publishing, 1958), also known as the “Exotic Plant Manuel.” With 4,200 illustrations, it covered imported plants known to American horticulturists, their backgrounds, descriptions and instructions on growing them.

His bibliography bloomed. A two volume “Exotica 4,” as it became known, went into a 12th enlarged edition at 2,606 pages with 16,300 photographs.

Another, “Tropica” (Roehrs), went trough several editions, as well, with 1,140 pages and 7,000 illustrations. It listed virtually all significant cultivated plants originating in tropical or subtropical climates.

Mr. Graf’s “Hortica: Color Cyclopedia of Garden Flora and Exotic Plants Indoors” has been in print at Roehrs since 1992. it describes in detail more than 10,000 ornamental for indoors and for every climate.

His trips, he recalled, had their close calls, from unforgiving terrain to tribes who resented his intrusion in New Guinea. He visited the giant lobelias of Mount Kilimanjaro, the azaleas and rhododendrons of Sikkim and the bamboos of China, where he savored the country’s ornamental horticulture.

Alfred Graf was born in Nuremberg, where his father owned greenhouses. He came to the United States in the 1920’s and spent two years as a ranch hand in Nebraska.

He started a small nursery and flower shop in Sioux City, Iowa, but was driven out of business by a hailstorm that destroyed his greenhouse. He married Lieselotte Vorweck, who became his life long helpmate.

Growing orchids was just catching on in this country. Mr. Graf, having learned about orchid tissue culture in Germany, was in demand and chose a job at the Julius Roehrs Company of New Jersey, a large commercial nursery, where he spent the rest of his career.

He became general operations manager for the company’s sprawling greenhouses and made the company, now in Farmingdale, the base for his travels and research.

A wall in his library displayed a map of the world with a pin dot for every place he and his wife, had gone plant hunting. Few areas were left dotless.

Interest among customers in the company’s retail catalogue prompted Mr. Graf to broaden it into book form in 1953. That let him elaborate on the plants for sale and add others he had photographed overseas.

This, in turn, led to his “Exotic Plant Manuel,” a standby for professionals and aesthetes, with more than 7,000 plant photos. It went into its fifth edition in 1978 and remains in print.

Mr. Graf kept working in his library in New Jersey until he moved to Dusseldorf. Besides his wife, his survivors include a daughter, Doris G. Matthews of Vista, Calif.

Aside from the perils of traveling untrodden paths, Mr. Graf coped with a more persistent bane: nomenclature updates by the hundreds.

“They always seem to be changing plant names every time you turn around,” he lamented to an interviewer. To keep the names straight, Mr. Graf was in touch with specialists everywhere for updates.

Surrounded by boxes of categorized photo negatives and the mementos of his travels, he worked late, reading “everything from everybody these days,” he said in 1986. “Just keeping up is what gives me gray hairs.”

From: NY TIMES 1/18/02 author: Wolfgang Saxon