Genus Swartzia

For Olof Peter Swartz (1760–1818), Swedish botanist. He commenced his studies under Linnaeus and Carl Peter Thunberg, and received his doctorate in 1781. He then went on a number of plant-collecting voyages and visited Lapland (1780), North America and the West Indies, mainly Jamaica and the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (1783), collecting 6 000 botanical specimens now held by the Swedish Museum of Natural History. He visited England in 1788, returning in 1789, and became Bergian botanical professor at the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm (1791). He was the author of many systematic works, and is best known for taxonomic work on pteridophytes, and also for his critical review of orchid literature.