Karl Beyrich

Heinrich Karl Beyrich (born March 22, 1796 in Wernigerode , † September 15, 1834 in Fort Gibson in what is now the US state of Oklahoma ) was a Prussian , German botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Beyr. ".

Life

The son of the Count's pleasure gardener Heinrich Ernst Beyrich († 1828) attended the Lyceum in Wernigerode and then went to the University of Göttingen to study botany . At the same time he learned art gardening in the local botanical garden.

After completing his studies, he was appointed gardener at the royal Württemberg garden in Tübingen , which he turned down in favor of a position as a freelance gardener in the imperial palace garden in Vienna . This was followed by a job in Bruck an der Leitha .

In 1819 he undertook extensive botanical hikes through the Eastern Alps and Northern Italy and on over the Simplon Pass to his travel destination Paris, where Alexander von Humboldt became aware of the talented young man and encouraged him.

In 1820 Beyrich traveled to England, where he worked as a gardener on several country estates. At Humboldt's suggestion, the Prussian government commissioned him to undertake a botanical trip to Brazil in order to acquire rare plants for the Pfaueninsel and the Neu-Schönberg Botanical Garden. The trip lasted from 1822 to 1823. Ten years later he went on another great trip on behalf of Prussia, this time to America. There he died of typhus in 1834 .

Honors

Several types of plants were named after Beyrich.

literature

• Ingo Schwarz: A Wernigeröder on the Arkansas River . In: Magazine for American Studies , 18 (1994), Issue 1: pp. 21-23, Issue 2: pp. 18-20.
• Eduard Jacobs :  Beyrich, Heinrich Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 605.

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Karl Beyrich at the IPNI