By Delfina de Araujo
curator of the Orquidário do Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro

It was a real shock to open the Face Book and find the news that Rudolf Jenny was no longer with us.
Still less than 70 years old, dynamic with a thousand projects, it was hard to believe that a sudden illness had taken him.
Immediately, I thought it might be one of those fake news (fakenews) that pop up on the internet.
I contacted mutual acquaintances, but unfortunately it was real news.
He was a very discreet and very modest person, he was known throughout the orchid world for the recognition of his great work for the knowledge of the Orchidacea family.
In addition to his publications, he has created the world's largest database on orchids, freely available for consultation to anyone who needs information: BibliOrchidea (www.biblioorchidea.com) is an important tool for all researchers.
His family decided to keep the consultation free.
Rudolf Jenny was a first-time admirer of Brazilian Orchids (www.delfinadearaujo.com) and Orchid News (www.orchidnews.com.b),so our knowledge goes back a long way, although we've only met twice in person, at the Dijon and Miami World Conferences.

Since we started, he contacted us because he was interested in the work and, in 2005, came the invitation to participate in the World Orchid Conference in Dijon to talk about the website and the magazine.
After that the ties tightened.Because we have the virtual bookstore Fina Orquídea (www.finaorquídea.com) specialized in orchid literature, he always asked us to purchase and send new books on the subject published in Brazil and obtain older literature that, by some chance, he did not have . So over the years, we kept this contact by e-mail and later by WhatsApp.
Eventually I did research for him at the National Library of Rio de Janeiro to provide subsidies to write one of his books ‘... Of Men and Orchids, Part 1 and 2 (www.orchilibra.com).
As the curator of the orchids collection at the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, I often come across plants that have not yet been identified and I turned to him.
In 2020, one of these plants bloomed and it was a species of Gongora that I didn't know. As he belonged to one of the groups he was specialized in, I sent photos asking for the identification. He asked for a break because he was just reviewing the genre monograph and was very busy.
Unfortunately, he didn't get to finish the book he co-wrote with Gûnter Gerlach.
He was also a contributor to the magazine edited by OrquidaRio, Orquidófilos Associados.

By Thiago E. C. Meneguzzo
College professor and researcher at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Research Institute and the University of Brasília

The first time I came into contact with Rudolf Jenny was when I was a graduate student, around 2005.
We exchanged information about Brazilian species of Stanhopeinae and he identified some specimens of Stanhopea that I kept in cultivation.
From the first moment Rudolf Jenny was helpful, approachable and very helpful.
Throughout my master's and doctorate I also received his help at various times, by providing me with bibliographic references that I had not been able to obtain in the usual ways, such as in libraries and with colleagues.
Today, as a researcher and university professor, I maintain my line of research in the taxonomy of orchids from the tropical Americas, with an emphasis on Brazil.
A significant part of my research time inevitably involves searching and reviewing the literature.
I have always been impressed by Rudolf Jenny's effort to collect and maintain his enormous system of bibliographic references on orchids from around the world, which is open to the public.
We regularly exchanged information that curiously was refined and narrowed to a level of rare publications and often difficult to access even in the places where they were published.
He often asked me for information for his monographs on Stanhopeinae and the bibliographies involving the relationships between orchids and people.
Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to meet in person, as we remain correspondents due to the geographic distance between our countries.
Rudolf Jenny is suddenly gone, but his legacy of work and memory as a kind selfless person will always remain.

By Günter Gerlach
Botanist, researcher and former senior curator at the Botanical Garden of Munich, Germany, Associate Researcher at the Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, and Jardin Botánico de Missouri, Oxapampa

I remember well when I got in first contact with Rudolf Jenny in 1980. In those times I was gardener in the Botanical Garden of Heidelberg. I got interested in Stanhopeinae so I had to contact him because of his excellent knowledge in this group of orchids. Together with H.G. Seeger the head gardener of the orchid department of BG Heidelberg, we visited him at his home in Switzerland. He showed us his orchid collection where he had among other species of Kegeliella in fine conditions. This genus in those times could not be found in cultivation before. We had some exchange of plants and after this time regular contact in concern of Stanhopeinae because of the difficulties in determination and species delimitation by surface mail.
Then during my doctoral thesis I focused on the pollination biology and the fragrance composition in Stanhopeinae, especially in Coryanthes. He on the other side was more specialized in history and taxonomy of Stanhopeinae and neighbouring genera. We often discussed problems in taxonomy why my focus was more on chemotaxonomy and his on classical taxonomy. We frequently did not have the same opinion, he liked much more to split off the different species while I was much more on the lumper side to unite close species to one, every time based on the fragrance composition of the respective species.
I met Rudolf frequently in several international congresses where we both presented our work to the public. Every time we had very fruitful discussion on our problems.
Finally 2019, during the VI Scientific Conference on Andean Orchids in Medellín he convinced me to start on writing together a new monograph of the very difficult genus of Gongora. He said: “Günter we have to write this book because we are the only experts in this concern. We often do not have the same opinion, but we have to publish the state of the art in Gongora. There are so many problems within this genus that someone has to publish what is known in this genus. Even there are so many unresolved problems we have to document them, paving the way for further researchers and amateurs”. So we started after short discussions how to make the book. He ambitiously pushed me ahead, because I had several other projects to finish. It was a bit tricky because I lived in the Selva Central in Peru and internet connection was not so good. He prepared different chapters and together we made the acquisition of the photos, because we wanted to show as many different clones of each species. We decided to split the monograph in two volumes, the first one with the general information (history, systematics, morphology, distribution, ecology, pollination biology) and the taxonomy of two subgenera, the second one with the rest of the species an index and a checklist. Shortly before we finished the first volume he suddenly died. We had planned a phone conference when I got the notice of his sun that Rudolf has fallen in coma because of a cerebral hemorrhage. I was shocked and hoped that he will recover. The whole book project was in his hands, he was the driving force on it. Few days later I was informed on his pass away.
After some weeks after Rudolf’s death I contacted his son Lorenz whom I met during a field trip in Colombia. When he and the whole Jenny family decided to publish the Gongora book, I was quite happy. So I am looking confidently forward that our collaboration will be published surely that this was one of his ultimate wishes.