Philipp Maximilian Opiz

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Philipp Maximilian Opiz

Philipp Maximilian Opiz , also Filip , (born June 5, 1787 in Czaslau ; † May 20, 1858 in Prague ) was a kk Austrian forestry office conceiver and taxonomist who did some research on botany in Bohemia . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Opiz ".

Relatives

Philipp Maximilian Opiz (Opitz) was a brother of the graphic artist Georg Emanuel Opiz (Opitz) (* 1775 in Prague, died 1841 in Leipzig), sons of the writer and scholar Johann Ferdinand Opitz (* 1741 in Prague, died 1812 in Czaslau).

Civil servant career

From 1805 Philipp Maximilian Opiz was a tax official in Czaslau, in 1808 he was transferred to Pardubice and in 1814 to Prague. There from 1831 he worked as a forestry concipist. In Prague he studied philosophy, mineralogy and agriculture at the Polytechnic, and he also learned French and Latin.

Work as a botanist

Throughout his life, Opiz deliberately occupied himself with botany, created valuable plant collections and wrote scientific studies and treatises. From 1818 he worked on a summary of the topography of Bohemia, and in 1819 founded a plant, seed and insect exchange institute. His life's work is one of the most important foundations for the development of botany in Bohemia. He was a member of numerous clubs.

At the age of 13 he wrote a "Calendarium Florae Caslaviensis", which contains the location, flowering time and description of the wild plants around Czaslau and its immediate vicinity. 1802-1804 followed a series of botanical essays in the "Treatises of the Bohemian Economic Society" in Prague. By traveling within his closer home area and the Giant Mountains he got to know the flora of Bohemia thoroughly and made a significant contribution from 1809 to 1812 for the work published by Johann Baptist Emanuel Pohl : "Tentamen florae Bohemiae".

In the journals "Hesperus", the "Oekonomischen Nachrichten", later also in "Isis", "Liebich's Forstmann" etc., over 25 shorter or longer essays appeared in the period from 1811 to 1813, the number of his articles in the journals mentioned exceeds 400 contributions until his death.

From 1810 he published an agricultural herbarium for decades . In 1819 he founded an international exchange association for dried plants, plant seeds and insects and ran the association for more than 40 years until the end of his life.

His name has not only been preserved in the designation of numerous plant species, but also a genus from the sweet grass family (Poaceae), from Haenke 's collection, named Opizia by monograph Karl Bořiwog Presl .

Works (selection)

  • Germany's cryptogamic plants classified according to their natural habitats, 1816
  • Böheim's phanerogamic and cryptogamic plants, 1823
  • In what way would the truth be to achieve the highest goal of botany? 1829
  • Saznam rostlin kveteny ceske (Directory of Bohemian Flora), 1852,
  • Nomenclator botanicus (Ms. National Museum Prague)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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 Opiz, Philipp Maximilian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Opitz, Philipp Maximilian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian forest office concipist and taxonomist
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH Czaslau
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1858
Place of death Prague