was a Japanese botanist and

orchidologist This is a list of orchidologists, botanists specializing in the study of orchids. The list is sorted in the surname alphabetical order. A * Oakes Ames (botanist) (1874–1950), an American biologist specializing in orchids Joseph Arditti (193 ...

. He died in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

During his short life, Dr. Fukuyama described over a hundred new species of

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowerin ...

s from

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and ...

, the

Ryukyus The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonaguni ...

and Taiwan. Most of the type specimens he collected were housed in his personal herbarium (Herb. Orch. Fuk.), located in Taiwan, and were previously believed to have been lost amid the upheaval in Japan following the close of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. However, most of Fukuyama's type materials of Taiwan orchids were rediscovered, in the course of sifting through the botanical collection of one Dr. Genkei Masamune, which Masamune had bequeathed to the herbarium of the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History upon his death in 1993. Although it is not entirely clear as to why he had them, it is known that Fukuyama had been Masamune's pupil. Among the materials found were Fukuyama's original manuscripts of ''Studia Orchidacearum Japonicarum'', Vols. XI thru XIII. Suffering from cancer, and plagued by local unrest in Taiwan against the Japanese, he was killed by locals in a nearby village during a local uprising against Japanese citizens living in Taiwan.

Sources

20th-century Japanese botanists 1912 births 1946 deaths {{Japan-botanist-stub