Talk:Rautanen s.n., Ondonga (1889)
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Evidentiary scope
The label records a plant that Wird gezogen, wächst nicht wild (is grown, does not grow wild) in Ondonga, under the local name Epangua, in 1889: a crop of the place, under its own name. Drug-type cannabis from different regions began to be cross-bred, and its seed carried into old growing areas, in the 1970s (McPartland and Small 2020, pp. 84–85), so a hybrid origin is not considered for a sheet gathered in 1889. The accession is classified Landrace, by inference from the label. It gives no use. The sheet does not show what became of the crop or whether its seed survives, and no conservation priority is assigned.
Label reading
Read twice, independently, from the Zurich image of the sheet (4152 × 6227 pixels; read and not uploaded, see below); the page states only what the two readings agree.
- Label: handwritten Kraut. / Epangua. / (Wird gezogen, wächst nicht wild.) / Ondonga. Ambaland, S.W. Afrika, / Cannabis sativa L. / Dec. 1889. / M. Rautanen.; stamp Sublimatisirt.
- Stamps: BOTANISCHER GARTEN / BOTANISCHES MUSEUM der UNIVERSITÄT ZÜRICH; BOT. MUSEUM der Universität Zürich eingereiht 1 NOV. 1907.
The local name's first letter is a large looped capital, read as E by both readings (C is an alternative).
Georeferencing
No point is given. The label's Ondonga is not resolved to an area that can be measured. It is the land of a traditional kingdom of the Ovambo people in northern Namibia, with its capital at Ondangwa (English Wikipedia, Ondonga), and OpenStreetMap has no outline for it. The only place named Ondonga in OpenStreetMap is a hamlet in Kunene Region (node 13039676454), 338.7 km from Olukonda, where Rautanen's mission was; it is not the kingdom. The label names no place within Ondonga.
Editorial treatment
Collector. Martti Rautanen (1845–1926), a Finnish missionary in Ovamboland who directed the mission station at Olukonda from 1880 and collected plants after the botanist Hans Schinz's visit of 1885–86 (English Wikipedia, Martti Rautanen), is the catalogue's collector. The collector field takes the label's M. Rautanen.
Local name. Epangua is entered as the label writes it. The page does not say what language it is.
Place. The label's Ambaland is Amboland, an old name for Ovamboland; S.W. Afrika is German South West Africa, today Namibia.
Image. The catalogue publishes the sheet's image but states no licence for it; the image was read for this page and is not uploaded.
Source discrepancies
- The catalogue gives no date; the label gives December 1889.
- The catalogue gives the place as Amboland; the label writes Ambaland.
These notes were recorded during accession preparation. Source citations remain in the article. Éloise 00:24, 17 October 2026 (+07)