Otto Wilhelm Sonder

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Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1863)

Otto Wilhelm Sonder (born June 18, 1812 in Oldesloe ; † November 21, 1881 in Hamburg ) was a German botanist and pharmacist . Its botanical author's abbreviation is “ Sond. "

Sonder was medical advisor in Hamburg. In 1846 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg . Sonder was editor of Flora capensis from 1860 to 1865 together with William Henry Harvey .

Life

Sonder joined Biber's office in Hamburg as an apprentice pharmacist in 1828 , which he left in 1832 after completing his apprenticeship. He went through the necessary professional experience in pharmacies in southern Germany before taking the pharmaceutical state examination in Berlin in 1835 . His first floristic work on the genus Salix (willow) shows that his preference was for botany . Through her he became acquainted with the Berlin botanist Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link , who would have liked Sonder to stay in Berlin. However, he followed his father's instruction to pass the state examination as a pharmacist, which was the only valid there in Kiel , as a Holsteiner .

Funded by his father, Sonder went on a botanical research trip to the Alps and the countries around the Mediterranean. Here Sonder collected extensive herbarium material, the processing of which he immediately started in Hamburg. Work stalled when he was supposed to take over a pharmacy in Hamburg. A third state examination was required for this. Sonder bought the pharmacy that he ran until a few years before his death. Sonder devoted his leisure hours to botany and his publications. Through his work in the field of systematic botany, he quickly gained scientific importance in the German-speaking world. The philosophical faculty of the University of Königsberg awarded him an honorary doctorate in May 1846. In the Hamburg state as director of the pharmaceutic educational institute and with the title of Medicinalrath as a member of the Medicinalcollegium of great respect and influence, he gathered a large circle of friends around himself through his personal kindness. He died, without any lengthy illness, as a result of an acute heart condition.

Scientific work

With the floristic research of Hamburg and its surroundings, Sonder began already during his apprenticeship. After 20 years of thorough work, in 1851 he published the "Flora Hamburgensis". It treats both the wild plants growing near Hamburg and the more commonly cultivated plants. He recorded 1106 species from 444 genera. In addition to the preparations for the Hamburg flora, Sonder occupied himself with studies on individual plants and plant groups, the results of which he put down in specialist journals. In the Botanische Zeitung in 1844 a description of "Cuscuta hassiaca Pfeiffer" appeared, in 1845 a treatment of the new algae forms collected by Preiss in New Holland ( Australia ), and in the 19th volume of Linnaea a list of orchids from the rich plant material that was in the Thirties Christian Friedrich Ecklon and Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher had collected in South Africa and in 1846 a "Revision of the Heliophileen" (see Asteraceae ) as a print from the first volume of the treatises of the natural science association in Hamburg .

Sonder increasingly turned to the processing of exotic plant groups, because as an avid and well-known collector, many botanists from expeditions sent him material. This subheading includes the processing of a number of families from the “Plantae Regnellianae”, published in the Linnaea of ​​1849, as well as “Contributions to the flora of South Africa”, which appeared in the Linnaea in 1850. In 1852 Sonder published the algae and lichens of the "Plantae Wagnerianae Columbicae" and finally in 1857 an article in the "Flora" about the Santalaceae from the Ecklon-Zeyher collection. The thoroughness of this work prompted Dublin professor William Henry Harvey to persuade Sonder to work on the intended publication of a "Flora capensis", for which the English author had already compiled a list of the plant species occurring at the Cape of Good Hope in 1838. Of the extensive work, the difficulty of which consisted in coping with very numerous plant forms from one of the most plant-rich areas on earth, only three of the intended five volumes are ("Flora capensis, being a systematic of the Cape Colony, Cafraria and Port Natal") published since Harvey died during its publication in 1866. The first volume, 1859–1860, contains the Ranunculaceae to Connaraceae , the second 1861–1862, the Leguminosae ( legumes ) to Loranthaceae and the third, 1864–1865, the Rubiaceae to Campanulaceae .

Sonder helped his friend from the days of Kiel, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller , with the publication of the "Plantae Muellerianae", for which he worked on the epacrides and algae (Linnaea 1853 and 1856). Algae increasingly came to the fore in the special work. He wrote "The Algae of Tropical Australia", which appeared in print as a special reprint from the reports of the Hamburg Natural Science Association in 1871 in quarto format with the addition of six plates. The large number of the new species described here testifies to the author's precise acquaintance with this group of plants, and both this circumstance and the abundance of the special herbarium in lower plants meant that, wherever it was a question of determining non-European algae forms, the special searched center. As a result, he also edited the travel results of the unfortunate Karl Klaus von der Betten , which were published in 1879.

herbarium

As a pharmacist and enthusiastic botanist, Otto Wilhelm Sonder compiled a private herbarium that contained over 300,000 specimens until his death . When it was purchased in 1883, it formed the basis for the non-Australian records of the National Herbarium of Victoria, Australia, in Melbourne . During his lifetime, Sonder planned to sell the herbarium, which he could no longer manage himself, to his friend Ferdinand von Müller . After he received three boxes of herbarium as a gift in 1870, it took Müller 24 years to convince the government of Victoria of the need to purchase the entire herbarium. In the meantime a number of South African specimens had been sold to the herbarium of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Australian specimens to the French botanist Jean Michel Gandoger . Meanwhile, the collection going to Melbourne was still so extensive with around 300,000 specimens that a new extension had to be built for the Botanical Museum in Melbourne. The collection, which has not yet been fully assembled, includes all plant groups from all parts of the world. It is particularly rich in plant specimens from tropical South America , South Africa and India , including thousands of type specimens.

Seaweed

Among the algae specimens, apart from those collected by Sonder himself, are important specimens from Carl Adolph Agardh and William Henry Harvey .

Higher plants

Of particular interest are the plants that were described in Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius ' Flora brasiliensis , Myrtaceae , which Otto Karl Berg worked on and those of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, JWK Moritz, AF Regnell, Friedrich Sello , JF Widgren and Maximilian Alexander Philipp Prince zu Wied-Neuwied were collected. Parts of the herbarium from JGC Lehmann from Hamburg , including its Boraginaceae, are also in the inventory, as are collections by Christian Friedrich Ecklon , Wilhelm Gueinzius and Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher from South Africa. Among the documents of the Ericaceae are type specimens from Johann Christoph Wendland and Carl Peter Thunberg .

Gravestone plaque Althamburg Memorial Cemetery Ohlsdorf

Honors

In 1846 Otto Wilhelm Sonder was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Apart from the special honor Doctoral received the award that bolus the genus Ottosonderia from the family aizoaceae named (Aizoaceae) after him. Also the plant genera Sondera loam. from the family of Sundew Family (Droseraceae) Sonderina H.Wolff from the family of Umbelliferae (Apiaceae), Sonderothamnus R.Dahlgren from the family of penaeaceae, Sondottia P.S.Short from the family of Compositae (Asteraceae), and the algae genera Sonderopelta Womersley & Sinkora and Sonderophycus Denizot are named after him.

In Hamburg there is a collective grave (“Wissenschaftliche Anstalten”) in honor of Otto Wilhelm Sonder and others in the area of ​​the Ohlsdorf Althamburg Memorial Cemetery.

Fonts

  • Contributions to the flora of South Africa. In: Linnaea. Vol. 23, No. 1, 1850, ISSN  0178-5397 , pp. 1–138, ( digitized version )
  • Flora Hamburgensis. Description of the phanerogamic plants which grow wild in the vicinity of Hamburg and are often cultivated . Robert Kittler, Hamburg 1851.
  • The algae of tropical Australia. In: Treatises from the field of natural sciences. Vol. 5, Abth. 2, 1871, pp. 33-74, ( digitized version ).
  • William Henry Harvey , Otto Wilhelm Sonder, William T. Thiselton-Dyer : Flora capensis. Being a systematic description of the plants of the Cape Colony, Caffraria, & Port Natal (and neighboring territories) . tape 1 -7, L. Reeve, Kent ff 1894th etc.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b ADB Volume 34 (1892), pp. 619-621
  2. ↑ Manuscript samples
  3. ^ Otto Sonder herbarium , Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.
  4. ^ Member entry by Wilhelm Sonder at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 12, 2016.
  5. ^ Doreen Court: Succulent flora of southern Africa. ( books.google.com ).
  6. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Sonder, Otto Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldesloe
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1881
Place of death Hamburg