We recently heard from Theo Sander’s daughter Anja Sanders, that Theo died on December 26, 2021. Anja wanted to let us know because Theo was part of our botanical team taking part in the species team on Daffseek.
Theo was an important contributor of his time and knowledge to the horticultural world especially for daffodils.
Theo lived in Essen, Germany and was a retired professor for Material Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Theo’s hobby was hybridization of narcissus. In 1973, he made his first crosses with daffodils on a very small scale. In 1996, he started to cross standard daffodils with a large number of different species daffodils. At the 2008 World Daffodil Convention in the Netherlands, Theo displayed a large collection of his most recent colorful seedlings. He incorporated species into his extensive daffodil breeding program. Theo enjoyed searching for Narcissus in their native regions and traveled widely in Spain and Portugal in his pursuit.
Theo frequently contributed to Daffnet where he described some of his studies on species and cultivar fertility. I found it fascinating that he actually counted the pollen grains on blooms with a microscope and could give a good estimate of the probability of breeding success. We have enjoyed reading on Daffnet about his trips to Spain and Portugal and also how he crossed species with cultivars in his greenhouse.
My main email correspondence and experience with Theo was related to Daffseek. As Anja said, Theo was part of our botanical and species team. I was not part of that team, but as the daffseek developer, I learned a lot from the species team. They vetted the species data and they posted all the photos of species on Daffseek.
Since Theo was part of our early Daffseek development, he did the first language translation for us which was German. Theo and I exchanged many email’s related to word and phrase translations over several months.
Theo contributed 85 photos of species to Daffseek. One of the efforts we make for Daffseek is to validate that the photos represent the true appearance of each flower and to make sure they are correctly identified. We were always confident that Theo’s photos were absolutely correct.
Our species team members are listed on this web page: https://daffseek2bb.org/who/species-team-2/ . While looking at that web page, I just realized that everyone on the team has been on their own personal “Species Safari” to various countries. Many like Theo visited frequently or at least annually.
During our 2021 Virtual National Convention Theo was one of the presenters with a ZOOM video about “SOME OF MY NARCISSUS CROSSES AND HYBRIDIZING GOALS”. In his presentation Theo Sanders focused on practical hints for hybridizing, preconditions of fertility, examination of pollen fertility, chromosome doubling, different crosses especially standard daffodils with species, and hybridizing goals.
My spouse Nancy Tackett and I remember the times we were with Theo in the Netherlands. We also remember our special visit with Theo and his wife Petra in New Zealand when we sat with them for the 2012 New Zealand Daffodil Society (NDS) dinner at Larnach Castle outside of Dunedin.
Nancy and I were very sadden to hear of Theo’s death. We will remember him and his part of our daffodil world.
Apparently Daffnet has only been sending comments to the mailing list.
To see the post about Theo Sanders please see the original post at https://daffnet.org/2022/01/farewell-theo-sanders/
Thank you
So very sorry to hear of Theo’s passing. I always enjoyed and learned so much from the many articles he wrote about his hybridizing. I also remember the miniature seedlings he displayed at the 2008 World Daffodil Convention and was amazed and excited at the color he had added to miniatures with his hybridizing. We shared a few seeds and bulbs over the years. I will truly miss reading about his accomplishments with daffodil hybridizing in the future as will other daffodil friends and hybridizers.
This is very sad news. My condolences to his family.
To my knowledge Theo was the first daffodil breeder to look at daffodil pollen and see what was there rather than what we all thought was there.
I named Theoquil after him because Theoquil demonstrated his observations on sterile hybrids very soon after he made those observations. Theoquil is fairly sterile but, just as Theo predicted it might, it produced a seedling that showed it could produce pollen like a fertile tetraploid. Theogold is Theoquil’s sibling.
Theo changed the way I approached breeding with sterile hybrids. For me, Theo sits high on the honor list of daffodil breeders.
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Theoquil[/caption]
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Theogold[/caption]