Genus Afzelia

For Adam Afzelius (1750–1837), Swedish botanist. He studied languages and botany (under Carl Linnaeus) at Uppsala University and became a senior lecturer in oriental languages at Uppsala University in 1777, and a botanical demonstrator in 1785. In 1792 and again in 1794–1796 he went to botanise in Sierra Leone. On his return voyage, a storm destroyed the live plants he hoped to bring to England, but his specimens and notes survived. From 1797–1798 he acted as secretary of the Swedish embassy in London. In 1799, he took up his position again as botanical demonstrator at Uppsala. Three years later, he was elected president of the Zoophytolithic Society (later called the Linnaean Institute) and in 1812 he became professor of materia medica at the university. In addition to his various botanical papers, in 1823 Afzelius published Linnaeus’s autobiography.