I,

Prof. Dr. A.J.G.H. KOSTERMANS



R E I N W A R D T I A

Published by Herbarium Bogoriense — LBN, Bogor
Vol. 10, Part 1, pp. 9 — 20 (1982)

KOSTERMANS SEVENTY-FIVE

M. JACOBS

Rijksherbarium, Leiden, The Netherlands

On 1 July 1981 'Doc', as he is widely known, has reached the age
of 75. Ten months earlier he returned from Ceylon to Bogor, his health
restored, largely by his own efforts. Life brought him fame as well
as frowns, of fortune and of people. On his part, he brought much to
life. A biographical sketch in the customary sense cannot be attempted
here: it would require an amount of documentation hard to obtain,
harder to sift and check. Basic facts can be found in literature *, in
addition, he gave me a number of interviews about his life. This
happened in the first half of 1978; the text was taped, and later
transcribed by me. The 5 tapes and the text will be deposited in the
Rijksherbarium files. The story in them has all the charm of spontaneity.
On it, the present account has been based. I made efforts to strengthen
the factual basis, but on several points am not sure that I succeeded.

We met for the first time about May 1955, when he returned from
a tour in Borneo, and I had just taken up duties as a young plant
taxonomist at the Herbarium Bogoriense. We made some joint excur-
sions but never an expedition together; however, at Bogor and later at
Leiden I saw much of him, and we both attended the Dipterocarp Round
Tables at Paris and Kepong. We had much fun together. He is a man
of unexpected turns. I liked the quickness of his mind, his casual
mockery, and the great ideals which shine through his deeds, if you
observe him over the years.

Professor C.G.G.J. van Steenis thought long and hard before he
would acknowledge Kostermans as the largest collector of rain forest
* For elementary biographical facts and collecting tours in Indonesia, see Flora

Malesiana i 1: 298-289 (1950), i .5: 59-60, portr. (1958), i 8: 57 (1974). In
Flora Malesiana Bulletin, so far 105 publications by him have been listed. His
name is there mentioned 77 times, with important items on pages 43, 470, 550,
623, 802, 877, 884, 976, 1116, 1248, 1396, 1516, 1773, 1883, 2150, 2312, 2339, 2756,
2759, 2976. The account of the UNESCO Symposium at Tjiawi, too, gives a
number of biographical facts, p. 162-163 (1961).

9



1 0 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL. 1 0

trees in Indonesia. In the opinion of Professor C. Kalkman, two page
of typescript would be enough for the present paper. But the drafi
had already been completed by then, and still, in my view, achievements
far outshine shortcomings. So here is the story.

Andre Joseph Guillaume Henri Kostermans was born in Poerwo-
redjo (now spelt Purworejo) in Central Java, on 1 July 1906. His
parents were by his own account, unremarkable people. His father was
a teacher at a 'Dutch-Native' primary school, subsequently in Wonosobo,
Ngawi, and Yogyakarta, all in Central Java. There were two children;
his younger brother, D.G.F.R. Kostermans, became a chemist, first in
Indonesia, and now lives at The Hague.

He grew up rather lonely, the father taught all the time to support
his family. A love for insects and minerals came spontaneously, and
in the garden he collected butterflies, but he did not receive real
stimulation before secondary school at Bandung, where he had an
excellent teacher of biology. As a boy he fell from a tree and broke
his nose; to this event it owes its characteristic, hook-like shape.

After about 1 or 1 1/2 years at the Bandung school (HBS in Dutch)
he had to leave for Holland, as the father had completed his years of
service and at 45 went on retirement. The family moved to Maastricht
in the very South of The Netherlands, whence his mother came. French
was frequently spoken in those quarters, and he learnt the language
quickly. He also perfected Dutch; from the beginning, he had been more
familiar with Javanese and Malay. Here, too, was an inspiring teacher
of biology. He three times received the prize for being the best pupil
of the class ... and about 18 disciplines were taught for the final exam,
in those days. Having passed with high marks, he could opt for an
interest-free loan to finance a study, and chose biology, at Utrecht.
He went there in 1925 and, like H.J. Lam before, was fascinated by
H.F. Nierstrasz, professor of zoology, whom he reports to have said:
"In science, you may deceive everyone except yourself." He wanted
to join the student's corporation and had his head shaven as required,
but could not persevere for lack of money.

Initially, he felt attracted to animals rather than plants, and for
a time was assistant to H.J. Jordan, the professor of zoophysiology.
However, as financial prospects looked better for botanists, he turned
to A.A. Pulle for guidance, and still recollected that Pulle sent him to
the basement of the Utrecht Herbarium and to select himself a family
to work up for the Flora of Surinam. He came up with the Lauraceae;



1982] JACOBS: Kostermans seventy-five 11

for his thesis, the Malpighiaceae and Hernandiaceae were added. He
took his Ph.D. degree on 20 January 1936.

To make ends meet, he was already teaching in secondary schools
and this he continued for the next two years, mainly at Maastricht
and Amsterdam. In 1938, he was awarded the Buitenzorg Fund, so
he went back to Indonesia and at Batavia (now Jakarta) found him-
self a job as a teacher. For the Buitenzorg Fund, he undertook collecting
beach plants on the islets in Jakarta Bay and Nusa Kambangan. This
first harvest was not particularly good; the displeasure felt at the
Bogor Herbarium has been recorded for posterity in Flora Malesiana
i 1: 299. Personally, he was none too fortunate, either; he lost his
job and had a difficult time. During it, he made a card file of Lauraceae
names; this was the beginning of his big bibliography of this family, so
Dr. Van Steenis told me.

World War II, which in Java began with the Japanese invasion
early in 1942, changed his life. He was called once again into military
service *, helped defend the small airfield of Semplak, west of Bogor,
and told me that from an ambush he killed a handful of Japanese soldiers
on bicycles, with a hand grenade. He withdrew to Bandung, and was
there made a Prisoner Of War. Like his fellows he began to suffer
from bad conditions, but learnt some Japanese and kept on the lookout
for opportunities. He was transported to Singapore, there in an aband-
oned Chinese shop discovered a lined coffin, which he used as his bed
for a month. When food became scanty and bad, he even learnt to
prepare and eat the snail Achatina fulica. Hedges by then were stripped
of their leaves by the prisoners.

He was lucky in being assigned to the advance party for construction
of the infamous Burma Railway. He was marched along the Kwae Noi
River, to the Three Pagodas Pass. From leaves of Psidium guajava
(Myrtaceae) he brewed 'tea for diarrhoea' which helped many prisoners
to get better. He always made enquiries about local medicinal plants,
went to volunteer in a camp where cholera had broken out, and thus
gradually penetrated the medical sector. He told me a number of horror
stories, with cheerful equanimity.

During the last year of the war, when he was a nurse in the large
camp at Nakon Patong near Bangkok, he set up a distillery for alcohol.

Mrs. J.C. Kostermans - Lanzing at The Hague kindly gave me several old photo-
graphs of her brother-in-law, which are now in the Rijksherbarium file. On
one of them, Andre wears military uniform; it is dated August 1924.



1 2 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL. 1 0

For the soldering of the pipes, he told me, HC1 was used which was
taken from the stomachs of just-deceased prisoners. He developed a
recipe for a kind of soup from leaves of various plants rich in vitamins.
After the war, General Spoor sent him a personal letter in acknowled-
gement of such services.

While busy along the railway he noticed interesting plants, and as
after the liberation there was not much to do at Bangkok, he made a
plan to go back for collecting. He approached E.D. Merrill for funds,
successfully; S. Bloembergen, also freed from captivity, tried Dutch
sources for the same, and they did some work together. Bloembergen
left before long, however, and Kostermans went on alone, assisted by
a crew of Japanese who now in turn were POW. The railway to Burma
had been completed but soon fell into disuse. Certain stretches could
be used, however, he had an engine at his disposal and on this, so to
speak, rode into botanical history. When passages looked risky — some
beams of bridges began to sprout already — the engine was sent across
first, followed by Kostermans and his crew running at a distance. The
Japanese gave good help, and the sergeant even offered to come over
to Java to serve him as a valet. It demonstrates Kostermans's lack of
hard feelings.

Back in Java, at last, with his collections of about 2000 numbers
from the Kwae Noi, he saw F.H. Endert again, who was a prominent
member of a long-standing committee in the Forestry Service, for the
study of useful plants, and was commissioned to prepare a new edition
of K. Heyne's book. Endert sent him to Thailand and Indo-China to
collect useful plants for introduction into Indonesia. He went
and came back with a seedless mango which he had spotted during
captivity, and with 'floating rice' which can grow on long-inundated land.

Once L.G.M. Baas Becking, then Director of the Bogor Gardens,
asked him why he mixed with all those natives. He replied that as to
him it was evident that the Dutch would never be able to hold the
country, he could as well make friends with the people.

In the course of 1947, he was appointed Forest Botanist, in the
Forestry Service, and his next destination was Momi-Ransiki in western
New Guinea, to survey an area which was singled out for transmigration
— mistakenly, as it turned out. A substantial report, Bosonderzoek
kolonisatie object Momi-Ransiki/Nieuw Guinea, 2 vol. (1948), was
published, anonymously for bureaucratic reasons, but the text on vege-
tation is nearly all his; the calculations were made by P. Tideman. This



1982] JACOBS: Kostermans seventy-five 13

field work done, he had a month to spare before the ship would be back
to pick him up. He had some food left, and decided to explore the
Arfak Mountains. His two Javanese assistants, who did not want to
come with him, were stationed on the beach to dry the plants, in ovens
manufactured from discarded oil drums. So with a few Papuans he
went up the Arfak, 2000 m. Instead of drying paper, which he did
not have, they took big leaves of a Macaranga species (Euphorbiaceae)
and these served to keep the plants fresh as they were carried down
to the ovens, in makeshift bamboo presses or 'sasak'.

On hearing that the famous 'massoi' tree might occur in the Namtu
Mountains, further South, he went there, barefoot. He took to eating
grubs, and small birds which were roasted quickly and consumed half-
raw; the feathers were spat out. He found the tree, Cryptocarya
aromatica (Lauraceae) at 800 m, fully fertile. The bark is medicinally
important, and plantations are now said to exist in Papua New Guinea.
When he returned to the coast, his Javanese had dutifully dried c. 3000
plants, but the party had to wait another fortnight until the boat came.
Meanwhile they survived on leaves, lizards, ants, &c.; there was no
habitation whatever. (See W. Vink, Nova Guinea 10, Bot.: 488 - 489.
1965; according to him, Kostermans was accompanied by at least one
European assistant.)

Now that he had mastered field work under such conditions, and
loving it, he looked for more, and found it with the Division of Planning
('Planologie') in the Forestry Service. For many years, this agency
had commercial 'strip-surveys' made of forest lands. Tracks 10 m wide,
projected in straight lines with the aid of a compass, and stretching for
kilometres, were inventorized with the help of knowledgeable natives
('boomkenner'), who identified the trees on the spot by vernacular names.
Using lists of tree names, in which the vernacular names were referred
to scientific ones, the results could be mapped and tabulated. Kostermans
was to conduct botanical checks in the field, and to collect herbarium
material as proof. According to the tradition set by Endert, it was
considered sufficient in most cases to bring back sterile material, for
which Endert had devised keys. Kostermans, characteristically, did
different things than were expected of him. In the first place, he
became devastatingly critical of the quality of the work done — if it
had been actually done at all — in the strip surveys he examined.
Second, he made large collections of fertile material, also from beside
the strips, where he was not supposed to look. Only much later, in



14 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL, 10

Holland, he told me, did his superior, J.F. Kools, then professor at
Wageningen, acknowledged that he had been right.

His tours have been listed in Flora Malesiana, as said. Worth
mentioning is a trip to the Malili area in Central Celebes, in 1950. The
entire collection was lost in a fire owing to riots in Makassar (now
Ujung Pandang) ; what he saved was a Toraja child that had been
brought to him almost dead. He restored it to life with quinine shots,
took it with him for the rest of the tour, but when time for departure
came it did not want to be left behind. What to do? One of the field
assistants from Bogor offered to take the boy in his own house if
Kostermans would pay Dfl. 25 a month for expenses, and so it happened.
Before long, in Borneo, he likewise took up a small boy who was sick
with polio and had been abandoned by its own people. Through swim-
ming exercises, in the Bogor pool, he invalidated it. When he bought
the spacious house at Jl. Pangrango 20 in Bogor, with its magnificent
view on the Botanical Garden and Mount Salak, he took the children in.
Other boys soon followed, often bright ones recommended by their
school teachers who sensed that in this manner their ambition would
be activated. Mostly there were between six and twelve at a time; he
gave them a good education, often secured fellowships for them, and
many of them did very well at school and in later life.

However, one of them was unruly, stole money, and another went
after him; this ended in the latter killing the former with a knife. It
turned out that also a handgun, forgotten by a policeman, also a former
foster child, was kept in the Kostermans house, and for this he was
arrested; he was also needed as a witness in the murder case. This
happened in mid-1969. For three months he was kept in custody in
Jakarta, under atrocious conditions. After much publicity, nationally
and internationally, things improved for him and he was interned at
Bogor under much better conditions, which also permitted him to work,
and thus complete the sentence he had to serve of 6 1/2 months. The
preparations for a guest professorship in Aarhus, Denmark, also kept
him busy; he went there as soon as he was free, on 1 March 1970.

These visiting professorships (also at Lexington, Kentucky, USA
in 1967, and in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1973), and his time at Leiden
as a B.A. Krukoff Botanist (1974 -1978) provided him with much-needed
income for the upkeep of his foster family, for which his Indonesian
salary was insufficient, although he supplemented it with temporary
professorships at Bandung Institute of Technology from about 1961



1982] JACOBS: Kostermans seventy-five 15

onwards. He never had anything for himself but a bicycle, and already
in the Japanese camps it was his habit to share things with those who
had less. After his detention in Jakarta, two fellow-prisoners when
they too were free again, came to Bogor to thank him for what he had
given them.

In January 1960 he became Head of the Division of Botany in the
Forestry Service, at Bogor, and of its modest Herbarium. His asso-
ciation with the (much larger) Herbarium Bogoriense, where nearly all
the scientific work had to be done anyway, was never official, and he
preferred it that way. Without infringing on anybody's position, he
could work and advise freely, and this is what he did through the years,
especially after M.A. Donk left as Director of the Herbarium in 1954.
His close cooperation with the new Director A. Dilmy, who led the
Herbarium from 1955 till 1969, is a success story of early 'counterpart-
ship', although in Dilmy's obituary in Fl. Males. Bull. (33) 3363 - 3365
(1980) this is unmentioned. Witness to it is Beilschmiedia dilmyana
(Lauraceae), Reinwardtia 4: 23, fig. 15 (1956), which Kostermans
named in Dilmy's honour when the latter had succeeded in obtaining
new roofing for the Herbarium. Another benefit of his vantage point
in the Forestry Service was, that this had more funds, to make field
work possible and to finance publications for the good of both institutions
alike.

From his officially modest position, Kostermans played a crucial
role in four crucial achievements; these will now briefly be discussed.

1. Collecting in the lowland rain forests of Indonesia. With a
roughly estimated 25,000 numbers in his name (plus an amount collected
in joint series with others, like KKSS, for Kostermans, Kuswata, Soegeng,
& Soepadmo), of which the majority were taken in Kalimantan, the
Indonesian part of Borneo, Kostermans is the largest single collector
in the lowland rain forests of Indonesia. It is the most difficult vege-
tation type to work in, the most valuable, and the least known. Unlike
many botanists in the Forestry Service before him, he never took sterile
material. His collections are of high quality (after the ominous begin-
nings), in many duplicates, well-labelled, and always were speedily
distributed.

We might wish that he took photographs, and made extensive tour
reports of the enormously diverse forests where he went, in the way
L.J. Brass did in New Guinea. However, in that case he would have
collected perhaps half of what he took now, and in view of the low



16 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL. 10

density of collecting in the lowland rain forests, there is no doubt
that by confining himself to gathering specimens, he did the right thing
under the circumstances. Some of his observations and remarks on
forest types can be found in the UNESCO Symposia on Humid Tropics
Vegetation: Kandy in 1956, Tjiawi in 1958, Goroka in 1960, Kuching
in 1962, of which the Proceedings were published in subsequent years.

He would not have come the long way he did without his amazing
toughness. In Thailand as a POW he contracted gangrene; he recovered.
In New Guinea he fell into a thin freshly cut branch which pierced his
arm, but in a couple of days he was again at work. In Borneo, while
roaming alone through the forest with his field glasses to select trees
for the next day, he fell between rocks in a gully and broke his arm
with the bone sticking out. He was found the following morning and
transported in such pain that he nearly fainted, until a hospital was
reached on the fourth day. Shortly after being operated on, his arm
still in a cast, he felt better and escaped from the hospital, furtively,
and returned to the site, where he had ordered his men to keep working.

2. New generation of Indonesian biologists. In 1954, when things
in Indonesia were going downhill, there was no view on attracting Indo-
nesian staff to the institutes of the Bogor Botanic Gardens (then Kebun
Raya Indonesia, now Lembaga Biologi Nasional; the Herbarium is one
of those institutes), to replace the old hands (mostly Dutch) who were
gradually leaving. Kostermans helped design a plan for an 'Akademi
Biologi', which was to be manned by the available Kebun Raya staff.
Pupils were given free board and teaching; in those bad times, this
provided a great attraction and about 900 applications came in, from
which the very best were selected. Kostermans was among the Kebun
Raya people who gave themselves great pains to educate these students;
this too is a fine example of early multiple collaboration. He pushed
hard for botany, of course, exposing his students to the hardships of
field work (even if their tears had to be shed), all the way to processing
and distributing the material; they surely learnt to make their hands
dirty on the Friday afternoons reserved for that. Four times a class
was enrolled at the Akademi Biologi; most of the Indonesians who now
hold positions in LBN were educated there. Many students were given
further training in taxonomy by Kostermans personally; thereafter he
would make efforts to get them a fellowship for a Ph.D. abroad.

3. New Herbarium building. In President Sukarno's early days,
the two occasionally met and chatted during walks in the Botanic



1982] JACOBS: Kostermans seveilty-five 17

Garden, next to the Palace grounds. Kostermans, always a ready talker,
did not forget to mention the dilapidated state of the buildings where
the archives of the country's plant resource were kept. He also spoke
extensively about it to Professor Sarwono, then Chairman of the
Indonesian Council of Sciences (LIPI), and indeed enough support
materialized to decide upon a new Herbarium building. Kostermans was
unexpectedly requested to supply construction drawings the next day;
after a long night of work, he and a few pupils succeeded in producing
them in time. After ramshackle accommodation was found to store the
collections during the construction, the old buildings were demolished
(of the main one, see photograph in Fl. Males, i 4: cxiv. 1949). President
Sukarno opened the new construction site.

All went well at first, until after Sukarno's fall from power, the
work slowed down and came to a standstill. Funds were also exhausted,
the economy was at low ebb, and even Professor Sarwono seemed unable
to get construction resumed. In despair Kostermans accompanied by
Soegeng Reksodihardjo and Mien Rifai went to Jakarta to see General
Piet Harjono. Unannounced, they came to his house at 7 a.m., to plead
the cause of the Herbarium. The General was impressed, sent aides to
view the situation in Bogor, and one month later, Kostermans was called
to Jakarta because Rp. 30 million would be made available.

Kostermans went there, and during an animated conversation, told
the general about his work and his foster boys. Suddenly General Piet
said: "I wonder, wouldn't Rp. 40 million be better ?" Kostermans there-
upon flung himself onto the general in a spontaneous embrace, and pro-
mised that he would see to it that not one bag of cement would be stolen.
This was late in 1968.

Sure enough, one night he was waked up by one of the boys who
was on patrol: cement was being loaded on a truck with policemen
passively standing by. He went immediately, and resolutely demanded
unloading, white of hair and fury in the dark, a plain show of strength,
and Kostermans won. On 1 April 1970, the new building was officially
used. Flora Malesiana Bulletin 25 carries its picture on the cover. On
the ground floor, on the Bibliotheca side, a relief is worth seeing, presented
by the Archipel Printer Djulie, where Reinwardtia and other scientific
journals are printed. A truly Indonesian landscape is populated with
remarkable plants, but also with people and animals who have the fea-
tures of staff members. A monkey up in the tree on the left bears a
human face with Kostermans's profile.



18 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL. 10

He obviously could never have done this without being an Indonesian
citizen. When in 1958 the Dutch were expelled from the country, he
was actually given the choice by his director, E. Soesilo: leave as a Dutch-
man or stay as an Indonesian. The choice was an easy one for him, and
he never had any regrets. He had to take an exam in language and
history, thereafter was called back by cable from field work in Sumbawa,
for the ceremony. He hurried back, only to learn that his presence was not
necessary, and that as a consequence of bis decision he had to give
up over Dfl. 10,000. He took it cheerfully, and threw a big party for
his friends. From four of them, he took a new first name: Ahmad
Jahja Goh Hartono, only his surname was unchanged with the final s
(never pronounced in Indonesian) was retained. This was in 1962.

4. Keeping taxonomy going at Bogor. The Herbarium's journal
Reinwardtia was established in 1950; by 1974 it had gone through 8
volumes with a total of 4200 pages (the indexes not reckoned). Koster-
mans is the largest single contributor to these volumes, with 45 papers
totalling about 1100 pages; for many of them he raised the funds him-
self. The 105 papers listed in the Flora Malesiana Bulletin constitute
by no means his entire production; there are others, mostly dealing with
Lauraceae, on Africa-Madagascar, and on Tropical America. Papers by
his pupils K. Kartawinata, B. Prijanto, S. Reksodihardjo, Roekrnowaii-
Hartono, S. Soenarko, E. Soepadmo, and N. Wirawan, were published in
Reinwardtia volumes 5 (1959) through 9 (1980).

His best-known family is, of course, Lauraceae, on which he pro-
duced three comprehensive, fundamental publications: A historical survey
of Lauraceae, J. Sc. Res. Indon. 1: 88-159 (1952) ; Lauraceae, Reinward-
tia 4: 193-256 (1957), a discussion of all genera: Bihliographia. Laura-
caerum, xvi -f- 1450 p. (1964) *. He produced monographs of several
genera as well as many revisions in local Floras, and many papers with
taxonomic suggestions., alterations, descriptions of new species and
discoveries of old types, and in many Herbaria named innumerable spe-
cimens.

He confined himself to tree families, and did considerable work in
Bombacaceae (monograph of Durio, Reinwardtia 4: 357-460. 1958, see
also 7: 215), in Guttiferae and Meliaceae (monograph of Aglaia sect.
Lansium, Reinwardtia 7: 221-282. 1966), Mimosaceae (revision of Aba-

Critically reviewed by C.G.G.J van Steenis in FMBull. (IS) 1157 (1864). The
a u t h o r ' s interleaved, annotated personal copy got lost in the mail between Leiden
and Sri Lanka in 1978, but a xerox of it survives at Leiden.



1982] JACOBS: Kostermans seventy-five 19

rema e.a., Org. Sc. Res. Indon. Bull. 20, 122 p. 1954), Rosaceae (revision of
Parinari Reinwardtia 7: 147-213. 1965), Sterculiaceae (monographs of
Firmiana, Reinwardtia 4: 281-310. 1957, and Heritiera, ditto 465-583.
1959), and Tiliaceae.

Much of this work was done at the Herbarium Bogoriense, and there
prepared for the press. Loans were sometimes received there and if
not granted, the data had to be amplified with visits to Herbaria, during
several journeys. Also, he often takes in hand two or three families
at a time. As a consequence, the work is uneven in scope and perfection,
and in the Flora Malesiana Bulletin received many a rap from C.G.G.J.
van Steenis (see pages 946, 1326, 1663, 1962, 2112). He on his part
did not always spare others, either (e.g. P.S. Ashton, in Meded. Land-
bouwhogeseh. Wagen. 19: 207-219. 1980).

When questioned about his lack of reverence for taxonomic rectitude,
so prevalent at Leiden, he answers disarmingly: "I find people more
important than business." I think indeed that the sustained consistency
in methodology required to deal with a big family does not precisely
tally with his mental make-up. "Switching from one family to another
enables me to come back fresh", he declares, "and to maintain pleasure".
He does not shun the long taxonomic drudgery, but it is so incompatible
with his spontaneity, and with his inexhaustible ingenuity to improvise
under adverse conditions. His contribution remains very great all the
same, but whether his taxonomy will last — even in the Lauraceae, where
limits between several genera are still doubtful — remains to be seen.

As a B.A. Krukoff Botanist at Leiden, he found it hard to digest
the very large, exceedingly difficult genus Cinnamomum as he was suppos-
ed to do all the time. As the task was so much bigger, too, than anyone
(including myself, who had intended to assist him) had anticipated, hope
for a Flora Malesiana revision did not materialize. He must be credited,
however, with taking up the most difficult parts of the job first, which
besides Cinnamomum was the sorting out of Cryptocarya and Litsea, and
this in turn required huge amounts of rearrangement among the speci-
mens. Homesick for the forest, he was glad to spend his holidays on
a stint of field work in South India, together with C.E. Ridsdale (report
in Fl. Males. Bull. 30: 2759-2766. 1977), and felt it as a relief when he
moved to Sri Lanka to work at Peradeniya University with time for
large-scale collecting. Altogether, he took over 6000 numbers in Ceylon,
and now claims to he the largest single collector in that island as well.
He there also succeeded, after long efforts on the part of medical men,
to cure himself of a nasty amoebic dysentery; the recipe is at Leiden



20 R E I N W A R D T I A [VOL. 10

Three genera were named after him: Kosiermansia, Soegeng (Bom-
bacaceae), Kostermansinda Rifai (Hyphomycetes), Kostermanthus Prance
(Rosaceae-Chrysobalanoideae), and dozens of species.

Refreshingly indifferent to (reputations, for himself and for others,
everything to him seems natural. He takes people as they are ("In Rome,
do as the Romans do"), and is careful never to expect too much of anyone.
He is always keen on new people, new species, new adventures, yet
unshakably dedicated, in his love for botany and for Indonesia which he
never mentions. Across differences in life style and character, by
example only, he opened my eyes to what it might mean to be a botanist
in Indonesia, and for these lessons I feel to him immensely grateful.




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