My dear friend and noted aroid authority Julius Boos died on Sunday afternoon after a year long battle with pancreatic cancer. If you have ever read more than just a few articles on my website you have seen his name and read his quotes. Julius was brilliant but never finished junior high in his native Trinidad because he was considered unable to learn. I have no idea what his IQ may have been but it would just about break the top score. If you were a novice and asked Julius a question he would give you a simple explanation. If you were a PhD in aroid botany he could challenge you on any idea you might propose he felt had no merit. He had a tenacity for the truth in science I have never observed in any other individual.
Rather than try to write something to say about him I am quoting notes from my friends Ted Held who serves on the board of governors of the International Aroid Society and Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Both tell the story of Julius from different perspectives and include a few laughs which Julius would have loved.
To Julius, I would just like to say "Thanks my old friend for taking me under you wings."
Steve
PS: We’ve had several new International Aroid Society members join just today in tribute to Julius. We plan a celebration to both he and Tricia Frank at the IAS show in Miami September 18 and 19. We all hope to meet you there.
My apologies for the edits but I had difficulty making Ted and Tom's letters to fit the format of Dave's Garden.
Dear Friends,
It is with great sadness that I report the passing this weekend of the incomparable Julius Boos. Even passive readers of this space will recognize the importance of this man for the world of aroids and in the vitality of the discussions that are recorded here. While we are blessed with a number of remarkable people in the International Aroid Society, few will argue that Julius was one of the most remarkable. Anyone fortunate enough to have met him personally will remember the radiance of his personality. He was just as ready to speak on equal terms with the greenest greenhorn as with seasoned aroid specialists steeped in decades of experience. I am grateful to have known him as a friend. Julius had many, many friends.
Of course, we all knew him as an authority on aroids, especially regarding their practical cultivation and the fascinating interface of
the plants with humans. He was a special expert in the world of edible aroid “chubas” (“chubas” is an endearing term invented by this aroid list and refers to how Julius pronounced the ordinary English “tubers” in his charming Trinidadian accent), taking advantage of his lifetime in South America, Florida, and the Caribbean islands, and his unapologetic love of food. We were fond of joking that if a dispute arose about the identity of an aroid “chuba”, we could always send a specimen to Julius and he would figure out what is was by taking a bite.
Trinidadian by birth and inclination, his understanding of the natural history of tropical areas was profound. His interests were unlimited as far as I could tell. For last year’s International Aroid Society Annual Show, I was fortunate to have the opportunity of driving him from his home in West Palm Beach to Miami. Although already experiencing the effects of his cancer at that time, he spoke to me almost nonstop the entire way. Topics ranged widely. Invariably one thing reminded him of another and so the threads of conversation would wander here and there, but always coherent and never tedious. I should emphasize that Julius’s knowledge of his favorite topics was extensive, well-considered, and typically included a host of acute observations and facts that you would not find written down anywhere (except perhaps in one of his own writings). He involved himself in disputes on occasion with this or that “expert”. I would love to know his lifetime batting average in these differences of opinion. My bet is that Julius was right more often than he was wrong.
All his conversation was interspersed with an amazing set of anecdotes drawn from his wide experience. Much of what he knew will die with him, of course. Many of his stories related to interesting individuals, now long dead, with particular knowledge lost to history.
Several of these stories were recorded by him in past months and are available for all to hear on the web site of his friend and neighbor, Ted Knight (www.tedknight.com/julius/julius.htm). I recommend listening to them as they not only relate the particular history, but capture the cadence and beautiful accent that made Julius such an engaging raconteur. This site also hosts quite a few pictures of
Julius and friends.
Now we have lost two pillars of the International Aroid Society in a short month’s time: Julius Boos and Tricia Frank. We can only hope that new blood will take up the leadership roles to ensure the continued success of our organization into the future. This would be the finest memorial for the both of them.
Readers here should also know how important Aroid-L was to Julius. In his prime (not so many months ago) he would be in the thick of extended back-and-forth discussions of identification clarifications and of mysteries being hashed out. Frequently the topic would shift slightly and involve any number of interesting tangents. Dry botanical terms would be explicated. Recipes for tasty island dishes
incorporating “chubas” would be exchanged. Cultivation advice would be given. This life of the “net” was a huge part of what inspired Julius; and everyone who contributed helped pump up, even more, Julius’s already high energy level. In his waning days he would still read the posts, occasionally typing in some abbreviated response despite being so weak. Your postings inspired him to the last and made enduring his miserable disease easier.
It is a sad time for all of us. As always, life will go on and all of us in the International Aroid Society hope that the upcoming show this
fall will serve to continue Julius’s and Tricia’s work to inform the world of the deeper joys of keeping our favorite plants. May they both
rest in peace and know that the work goes on.
Julius is survived by his dear wife, Suzie. My thoughts are with her.
Ted Held
Detroit
Dear Aroiders far and wide:
I was out of touch from email over the weekend because my wife is out of town and has my little cell phone tower receiver that allows me to read my email at home so I did not learn about the death of Julius until I came to work this morning. Like the rest of you who know him well, we realize that his departure will leave a big void in our lives and especially the International Aroid Society. He played such a large role in our little group that the void this September will be immediately obvious, the booming Trinidadian voice, the stories and joviality will be missed as well as his astute and forceful presence at the IAS Board meetings. Though he was opinionated he always had good suggestions. He will really be missed in his important role as auctioneer and co-promoter with me of the plants at the auction table to boost the prices and spur on the auction bids.
I recall the first time I met Julius. I was standing near the front door of the Display Hall at Fairchild talking with someone and heard the booming voice of what appeared to be a black man, probably a native of St. Thomas where I had lived and taught school during the 1962–1963 school year. I was shocked when I turned around to find Julius. I though surely the man I had been listening to had slipped away! Thus began a long and fruitful association with a wonderful and intelligent man. I recall that when I was short of time and being unable to keep up with the messages on some subject on Aroid-L I would begin deleting them without so much as reading them. But I never could just delete a message written by Julius because they were invariably filled with useful information.
Julius was very helpful to students and beginners in the aroid field. He was very helpful to many of my Latin American students who stayed with me at my house during the 1999 International Aroid Conference at the Missouri Botanical Garden. With some students, he continued to communicate for years. There were 26 people staying in my house and Julius offered to sleep on a rather uncomfortable roll out couch but he slept well. He was especially close to my late student, Guanghua Zhu, and regularly corresponded while Guanghua was working on the revision of Dracontium. Julius knew a lot about Dracontium and provided us with living plants and a lot of detail about the species he knew, especially information about the fruits and seeds, plant parts that came to be known as the most important parts of the Dracontium from a taxonomic standpoint.
Interventions by Jules to get plants were often very productive. He had close friends all over the world, especially in the New World. Conrad Fleming in St. Croix and Joep Moonen in French Guiana were close associates, but perhaps most interesting was his contact with herpetologists, ornithologists and entomologists. Perhaps a lot of this was owing to his brother Hans, Director of the Port of Spain Botanical Garden. Probably no one with less formal education published paper on so many disciplines. I am proud to have counted Julius as a co-author on a plant paper.
Julius was particularly familiar with Urospatha and even had a couple of species in cultivation. His strong powers of observation, learned as a child in his native Trinidad where he spent a lot of time in the field, followed by his experiences in the jungles of Ecuador, allowed him to have hypotheses on nearly every biological phenomenon. In Ecuador when he had time free from the toil on the oil rigs, he poked around in the surroundings. I have been to many such sites and in Ecuador these rigs are plopped down right in virgin jungle so only a few steps from the bunk house allowed him to be neck deep in wildlife. It allowed him to become intimate with the local flora and fauna and he dearly loved this experience as most of you know from his many stories. Julius could, of course, tell a story like no one else as all of you know. Perhaps this is what I will miss most, to realize that the stories are over. As I told him only shortly before he died in a letter, Heaven will be a must livelier and interesting place this Monday.
Tom Croat
PS. Carla Kostelac and I would like to devote the next IAS Newsletter to the lives of Julius Boos and Tricia Frank, two IAS Members of Legend that have passed from this earth so near together in time. It would be nice of anyone who wants to write articles about either or both of them would submit these to Carla soon for the August issue. There are many good comments that were on Aroid-L and we will use these with your permission but if any of you wish to update or modify your comments, please do so. The piece by Ted Knight was especially moving. Ted, of course, was blessed to be able to help Jules and spent precious moments with him during his ordeal so he was in a position to share this with the rest of us. God bless you, Ted, for this wonderful gift.
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