Genus Dahlia

For Andreas (Anders) Dahl (1751–1789), Swedish botanist, physician and student of Linnaeus. He studied for a bachelor’s degree at Uppsala University from 1770, after which he worked in Gothenburg as curator of the private natural history museum and botanical garden belonging to Claes Alströmer, a Swedish buyer and naturalist (see Alstroemeria). In 1786 he received an honorary medical doctor’s degree at the University of Kiel, Germany. In 1787 he became associate professor and botanical director at the Academy of Turku (called ‘Åbo’ by Swedes), today Helsinki University. Parts of his collection, much of which was lost in a fire in 1827, are kept in the Helsinki Botanical Museum and in the Giseke’s herbarium, Edinburgh. Dahl published Observationes botanicæ circa Systema vegetabilium divi a Linné (1787).