Species Rauvolfia welwitschii

Pictures from Observations

There aren’t any identifications of Rauvolfia welwitschii.

Range:

Location unknown

Locations of Identifications

Etymology of Rauvolfia:

For Leonhard Rauwolf (Rauwolff) (1535–1596), German physician and botanist, born in Augsburg. He studied at Montpellier and at Valence where he received his MD degree. He became city physician at Augsburg in 1570. In 1573, he went on a 33-month field trip to Marseilles and the Near East, visiting Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria and Chaldea. His aim was to find new medicinal plants and drugs that could be traded profitably by his firm. He was the first European to describe the preparation and drinking of coffee in Aleppo. The alkaloids in Rauvolfia serpentina (Plum.) are still in medical use today. In 1596, he joined the imperial troops fighting the Turks in Hungary, where he died.

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:

Rauvolfia welwitschii Stapf

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:

Stapf

Synonym status:

Rejected