Species Sporobolus welwitschii

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).