Species Gerbera welwitschii

Pictures from Observations

There aren’t any identifications of Gerbera welwitschii.

Range:

Location unknown

Locations of Identifications

Etymology of Gerbera:

For Traugott Gerber (1710–1743), German medical doctor, naturalist and explorer. He registered as a medical student at the University of Leipzig in 1730 and obtained a doctorate for his thesis, De Thoracibus, in 1735. Between 1739 and 1741 he led several expeditions on the Don and Volga rivers to search for medicinal plants and herbs and served as curator of the oldest (medical-pharmaceutical) botanical garden in Moscow from 1735–1742. He served in the Russian army in Finland in 1742. He was the author of Dissertationem Physicam de Plantarum Transpiratione and was a close friend of Swedish botanist Linnaeus, who published the genus Gerbera in 1758. Some sources also include his brother Fr. Gerber, who collected plants in the West Indies, in the commemoration.

Etymology of welwitschii:

For Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch (1806–1872), Austrian naturalist, explorer and medical doctor and director of the botanical gardens in Portugal. He collected plants in the Canary Islands, Madeira and Angola (from 1853) and ‘discovered’ Welwitschia mirabilis in 1859 in the Namib Desert of southern Angola.

Scientific name:

Gerbera welwitschii S. Moore

Synonym of:

Unknown

Long etymology:

For Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch (1806–1872), Austrian naturalist, explorer and medical doctor. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and practised for a short while, but in 1839 gave up medicine and became director of the botanical gardens in Portugal. He collected plants in the Canary Islands, Madeira and Angola (from 1853), then a Portuguese colony. He ‘discovered’ Welwitschia mirabilis in 1859 in the Namib Desert of southern Angola. In 1861, he returned to Portugal and shortly after to London, where, from 1863, he categorised and catalogued his huge Angolan collection at the Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens. His publication, Sertum Angolense, describes 12 new categories and 48 new species. On his death, his collection was split between the Portuguese government (first set of duplicates) and Natural History Museum (second set).

Authors:

S. Moore

Protologue:

J. Bot. 54: 284 (1916)

Synonym status:

Rejected

Year published:

1916