Life
He was born in Vienna, Austria, but emigrated to the United States in 1905 and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1907, where he eventually became an authority on the flora there. As the Territory of Hawaii's first official botanist, he joined the faculty of the University of Hawaii in 1911, established its first herbarium, and served as its first curator from 1911 until 1920, when he left the university to spend the next few decades exploring the botany of Asia.
He began by hunting the Chaulmoogra tree in Burma, Thailand and Assam. From 1922 to 1949 he spent most of his time studying the flora, peoples and languages of southwest China, mainly in Yunnan, Sichuan, southwest Gansu and eastern Tibet. Many Asian plants that he collected can be seen in the Arnold Arboretum.
He was based near Lijiang in the village of Nguluko (Yuhu), and wrote many articles for the National Geographic magazine (see "Works and memory" below) about his expeditions to places such as Muli, Minya Konka (Gongga Shan), the three sacred peaks of Shenrezig, Jambeyang and Chanadorje in what is now known as Yading Nature Reserve, and the Salween (Nujiang) river. These articles brought him modest fame, and were said to have inspired the novel Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, about a fictional remote Himalayan community known as Shangri-La.
Rock witnessed repeated battles by the Ma Clique's Chinese Muslim army against the Tibetans in Xiahe County and Labrang Monastery. The Ma Muslim army left Tibetan skeletons scattered over a wide area, and the Labrang monastery was decorated with decapitated Tibetan heads. After the 1929 battle of Xiahe near Labrang, decapitated Tibetan heads were used as ornaments by Chinese Muslim troops in their camp, 154 in total. Rock described "young girls and children"'s heads staked around the military encampment. Ten to fifteen heads were fastened to the saddle of every Muslim cavalryman. The heads were "strung about the walls of the Moslem garrison like a garland of flowers."
Rock was cherished for his eccentricities, as well as his knowledge of botany and of ethnic minorities. He always travelled with a complete set of silverware, which was laid out for him at mealtimes. He also travelled with an Abercrombie and Fitch canvas bathtub, which his servants filled with hot water so that he could enjoy that most European of luxuries: a good soak in the bath.
As a botanist, he had been preceded to Yunnan, one of the most interesting botanical hotspots in the world, by other, more accomplished botanists, in particular Jean Marie Delavay, George Forrest and Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti, another Austrian, all of whom discovered and scientifically described many more plants than Rock did. Nevertheless, Rock's contributions to botanical knowledge were significant.
In 1949, shortly after the communist takeover, Rock had to leave Lijiang, centre of the Nakhi country, on a chartered plane together with the traveller and author Peter Goullart. They then had to leave China. He then returned to Honolulu where he died in 1962.
In March 2009, the University of Hawaii at Manoa named its herbarium after him.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Rock
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