Sulpiz in short

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Wilhelm Sulpiz Kurz (pseudonym: Johann Amann ; * May 5, 1834 in Augsburg ; † January 15, 1878 in Penang ) was a German autodidactic botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Kurz ".

Life

His father, Aloys Kurz († January 13, 1842), once a qualified teacher candidate and lithographer, was a drawing teacher at the district agricultural and trade school in Augsburg in 1836, and at the polytechnic school in 1839.

After his death, the family moved to Munich, where Sulpiz's interest in the world of plants awoke. After Latin and business school, he went to high school, where Otto Sendtner directed his desire to collect in "more specific paths". To satisfy his wanderlust, he tried briefly to train as a businessman, but then decided to become a botanical traveler. As an intern at the University of Munich , he attended colleges on botany, mineralogy, chemistry and physics. In 1854 accidents in the family and the resulting lack of resources forced him to provide for himself. Lost for the relatives, he went to Holland and worked in a pharmacy in Delft.

Now able to speak the language, he joined the Dutch colonial service Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger in January 1856 with false papers under the name Johann Amann . He served in Batavia , Bangka and in the war against the Bugginese on Celebes . In September 1859, the governor-general of Dutch India had his transfer to the botanical garden ( Kebun Raya Bogor ) in Buitenzorg south of Jakarta as a botanical assistant . 1856–1863 he assisted Johannes Elias Teijsmann .

After botanical research into little-known areas, he had acquired such respect that the director of the botanical garden in Calcutta, Thomas Anderson , who stayed in Java in 1863 to transfer cinchona trees to British India , appointed him curator of the herbarium at the botanical garden in Sipbur (old Seebpore ) at Calcutta. Jean Baptiste Louis Pierre , whose parents' coffee plantation on Reunion was destroyed by a typhoon, joined them.

Briefly undertook research trips, partly at his own expense, during the three-month vacation period, on which he reported from 1864 - now under his real name - (on the vegetation of Bangka, the Andaman Islands, the Nicobar Islands, British Burma, Bengal and Assam, etc. .). In 1866 he spent three months in the Andaman Islands and undertook two expeditions to Burma (1867–1868 and 1870–1871). In 1868 he was on Sikkim. Dietrich Brandis , with whom he worked closely in Burma and (under difficult circumstances) in Andaman, complained to Hooker about his idiosyncrasies. The plants collected by Austrian naturalists on the Nicobar Islands were sent to him by the Imperial Museum in Vienna for evaluation and publication.

Sulpiz Kurz published over 60 reports in various journals. The two volumes of the Forest-Flora of British Burma , commissioned by the British government, he succeeded in completing. When he fell ill again in late 1877, he traveled to the Straits Settlements . The University of Munich was considering giving him the Dr. phil. hc to lend. Georg von Martens named a Javanese plant in which he believed he saw a new genus of algae, in his honor Kurzia . A monument was erected for him in the botanical garden. Unprocessed collections are stored in the Herbar Krempelhuber . Forest-Flora was incorporated by William Theobald for Francis Mason in his third edition of Burma (1883).

In addition to Sulpiz Kurz, there were other pioneers in Indian forestry: Hugh Francis Cleghorn, Joseph Dalton Hooker , Balfour, Richard Henry Beddome, James Sykes Gamble , Talbot, Upendrahnat Kanjilal and Edward Percy Stebbing.

Honors

Are named after the plant genera short Kurzinda Kuntze of the family of Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae) and Kurziodendron N.P.Balakr. named from the family of milkweed plants (Euphorbiaceae).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There is information that he was born in 1833, Munich is also mentioned.
  2. ^ Royal Bavarian Intelligence Journal for the Upper Danube District: 1836; P. 230
  3. ^ Georg Friedrich Kramer: Statistical handbook for the government district of Swabia and Neuburg. Self-published by the author, 1839 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society - Volume 59 - page 348
  5. ↑ David G. Frodin: Guide to Standard Floras of the World. Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-1-139-42865-1 , p. 824 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  6. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
  7. ↑ https://ia800203.us.archive.org/13/items/floraoderallgem04regegoog/floraoderallgem04regegoog.pdf (PDF p. 118)
personal data
SURNAME In short, Sulpiz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kurz, Wilhelm Sulpiz; Amann, Johann (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German autodidactic botanist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1878
Place of death Penang