By Susana V. García

Grass specimen collected by Teodoro Stuckert at his Estancia San Teodoro (Argentina) and detail of its label. Meise Botanic Garden: https://www.botanicalcollections.be/specimen/BR0000033013411 © copyright Meise Botanic Garden. Usage permitted under a CC-BY-SA license
The Herbarium of the Meise Botanical Garden holds several specimens collected on estancias in Argentina in the last third of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Among the grass species are those gathered by the Swiss-born pharmacist, Teodoro Stuckert (1852-1932), at his estates called Estancia San Teodoro, in the province of Córdoba (Argentina). The term estancia in the Rio de la Plata region refers to a large territorial property dedicated to livestock farming. The observation and identification of the flora on these estates, especially the grass that could serve as food for the animals or cause diseases, was a frequent practice promoted in the manuals for estancieros (landowners) in the latter part of the 19th century (García, 2023). The estancias also functioned as places for observing nature, recording weather conditions and collecting fossils, plants, birds, insects and historical artefacts. Some estancieros who personally managed their estancias, developed an interest in natural history and participated in the exchange of natural specimens and information, contributed to transforming their lands into an area of scientific interest or to placing them on the map of species distribution (García, 2023).
Stuckert was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1852 and at the age of 17, he migrated to South America, settling in Argentina. He was employed at a pharmacy in Rosario and later in Tucumán, where he became owner of an apothecary’s shop and an estate in the northeast of that province. He traveled through the neighboring provinces, collecting samples of wood, observations of trees and their uses. In 1878 he went to Europe carrying samples of the bark of the quebracho blanco, a native tree he had found on his land in the province of Tucumán and that was used as an antifebrile medicine. Their chemical analysis in Europe generated some scientific and commercial interest. After 2 years in Argentina, Stuckert made another trip to Europe, where he worked for 3 years in a pharmacy in Paris. (Molfino, 1932). On his return to Argentina, he settled in Córdoba, where in 1884 he graduated as a pharmacist and bought a pharmacy called Botica del León. Along with the preparation of medicines prescribed by doctors, he sold indigenous medicinal plants. This business allowed him to acquire a country house on the outskirts of Córdoba and later the Estancia San Teodoro, spaces that would serve him for the observation and collection of specimens.

Stuckert with his daughters and a nephew at Estancia San Teodoro in the early 20th century. Source: Archivo de Mariano B. Berro, Archivo General de la Nación, Uruguay
Stuckert’s growing interest in the study of plants led him to contact around 1894 with the botanist of the University of Córdoba, the German Federico Kurtz (1854-1920), to whom he provided specimens, while Kurtz initiated him in botanical classification and the formation of an herbarium. However, the relationship between the two deteriorated a few years later. As a result, Stuckert was deprived of that professor’s opinion and of the material of comparison from the university museum and library, all important elements for scientific practice and building up a good collection. To fill these gaps, Stuckert began to send specimens for determination to naturalists in Buenos Aires and later abroad, developing a broad network of contacts between amateurs and botanical specialists (García, 2023). At the turn of the century, he began to publish some botanical works reporting the existence of new species or expanding the knowledge about the geographical distribution of others.
In 1900 he sold his apothecary’s shop and devoted himself to managing his Estancia San Teodoro. There he found some 500 species, according to what he told the Uruguayan landowner Mariano B. Berro (1838-1919), who would also make a botanical inventory of his land. Stuckert and Berro corresponded for almost 20 years, sharing their interests in botany. These letters, preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación in Montevideo, constitute an interesting historical source for studying botanical practices and the formation of private herbaria (García, 2023). Both made their excursions and collected specimens during the spring and summer, when they spent a season at the estancia with the family. In the fall they dried and poisoned the specimens, while in winter they arranged, catalogued and labelled them, work that they carried out in the cabinets of their urban homes. Stuckert was a prolific collector, and his herbarium grew to more than 24,000 numbers, which, after his death, was sold to the University of Córdoba (Molfino, 1932).
The Meise Herbarium database lists 20 specimens of grasses collected by Stuckert in Argentina between 1900 and 1907. The oldest come from his Estancia San Teodoro in the northwest of the province of Córdoba, while the labels of other specimens only indicate Córdoba, which perhaps refers to the same place or to his country house outside the city of Córdoba. Others come from his visit to an estancia in the province of La Rioja in 1907. These specimens came to Meise from the University of Ghent and had been part of a collection called Gramineae exsiccatae, organized by the German Johann Andreas Kneucker (1862 – 1946), a schoolteacher of Karlsruhe linked to several German botanical associations. An exsiccata refers to a carefully prepared, numbered and labeled set of dried plant specimens that form an herbarium of identified material for various purposes, e.g., education, exemplification of taxonomic or floristic conclusions. Specimens are usually accompanied by printed labels and a catalogue. Several collections were made with similar specimens collected in the same place and time for sale or offered by subscription by the collector or publisher. Each exsiccata could refer to the flora of a region or a taxon. Produced in a standardized form and with their taxonomic classification verified by a botanical authority, they served as reference documents and tools to facilitate the work of botanists (Bange, 2012). They were part of scientific exchange networks and were used as comparison material for plant identification, complementing descriptions of floras and engraved figures. They emerged in the middle of the 18th century, but were more popular in the following century when they became a lucrative business with the rise of natural history. There were also non-commercialized modalities, organized from botanical exchange societies which multiplied in the second part of the 19th century and whose exsiccata were collected and redistributed among members through a committee and some rules (Bange, 2012; Gavioli et al. 2024).
Kneucker’s exsiccata series were produced between 1896 and 1915. Collectors from different countries and continents participated in them, sending specimens with ecological data and the date and place of their findings. German and Austrian specialists verified the taxonomic determinations and identified the questionable species. The production of these duplicates, acquired by various institutions and individuals, constituted a collective work of private international cooperation that was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Only Stuckert participated from Argentina, which gave him greater visibility in botanical circles and international contacts. For each species, he sent between 120 and 150 specimens collected at the same place and date, many in prepared sheets and others unprepared, which allowed their cultivation in Karlsruhe.
Most of his shipments were gramineae, which were reviewed by the Austrian professor Eduard Hackel (1850-1926), an expert in that family of plants, especially the South American species, since most of the botanists of Argentina and Uruguay sent him specimens for determination. Thanks to Hackel’s help with the classification, Stuckert published his most important botanical work: “Contribución al conocimiento de las Gramináceas argentinas” (Contribution to the knowledge of Argentine Graminaceae), in four issues published between 1904 and 1913. This work condenses his botanical and pharmaceutical knowledge with his experience at the estancia. The specimen labels that refer to the Estancia San Teodoro remind us of the diversity of agents, spaces, activities and factors that were involved in the production of knowledge and circulation of scientific objects. Their story and that of his collector tell us how the mobility of collections helped to forge scientific vocations and relationships.
References:
Bange, C. (2012). “Travail collectif en botanique et validation scientifique: les sociétés d’échange de plantes.” Bulletin d’Histoire et d’Épistémologie des Sciences de la Vie, 19 : 175-189.
García, S. V. (2023). “From Livestock Farming to Amateur Botany in the Rio de la Plata: The Case of the Uruguayan Mariano B. Berro (1838–1919)”, Centaurus, 65 (3): 577–601, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.CNT.5.142010
Gavioli, L., Nualart, N., López-Pujol, J., Catalá-Gorgues, J. I., & Ibáñez, N. (2024). “Redes y sociedades de intercambio en el siglo XIX a través de las exsiccatae del herbario Trèmols”, Dynamis, 44 (2): 383–414. https://doi.org/10.30827/dynamis.v44i2.31695
Molfino, J. (1932). “Teodoro Stuckert (1852-1932)”, Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina, 113-114: 116-121.
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alexiacomte (April 23, 2025). Teodoro Stuckert (1852-1932) and the Meise Botanic Garden. SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved May 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13slw