Genus Nelsia
Pictures from Observations
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Probably for Louis Nels (1855–1910), German government official and sometime plant collector. Nels was born in France as his father fled the 1848 Prussian revolts. He studied in France, trained as a lawyer, then joined the German civil service in 1885 as secretary to Acting Reichskommisar Heinrich Ernst Göring (1839–1913) in Otjimbingwe, colonial headquarters, German South-West Africa (now Namibia). When Göring left the country in 1890, Nels became acting reichskommissar. About this time he collected plants near Windhoek, according to the Harvard University Herbaria index of botanists. In 1897 he became German consul in Johannesburg, South Africa. After the South African War (1902), he returned to Berlin for health reasons. From 1904–1910, when he retired, he did consular work in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.