Talbotia: for William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), British linguist, member of parliament, author, botanist and plant collector, inventor, translator of Assyrian texts, and Fellow of both the Linnean and Royal Societies. Hugh Clarke adds: "He studied classics at Cambridge University and sent many papers to the Royal society. In 1834, he began photographic experiments and invented the calotype process, precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries for which he received the Rumsford Medal from the Royal Society. He served as Member of Parliament for Chippenham (1832-1835) and was High Sheriff of Wiltshire (1840). He published many papers for the Royal Society and, inter alia, wrote books on Hermes or Classical and Antiquarian Researches (1838) and English Etymology (1846)." The genus Talbotia in the Velloziaceae was published in 1868 by Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour. The later genus Talbotia in the Acanthaceae published in 1913 by British botanist Spencer Le Marchant Moore, now considered an invalid or illegitimate publication, was named for Percy Amaury Talbot (1877-1945), a British plant collector in Nigeria, author of In the Shadow of the Bush (1912), and his wife, Dorothy A. Talbot (1871-1916), author of The Ibibios of Southern Nigeria (1915). (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Hugh Clarke)

tapscottii: for Sydney Tapscott (1885-1943), farmer, mining engineer and well-known collector and photographer of plants in South Africa, Zambia and Botswana, commemorated with Orbea tapscottii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

tarantulae: Erica tarantulae, named for the type locality near Tarantula Peak, Ceres Division.

Targionia: for Dr. Cyprian Targioni (1672-1748), a Florentine physician, an epithet originally given by his fellow labourer and friend, Pier Micheli (1679-1737). professor of botany at the University of Padua, in his Nova Plantarum Genera juxta Tournefortii methodum disposita, for Targioni's contribution to Italian natural history, knowledge of herbal medicines, and especially for his museum. Hugh Clarke adds: "This genus was not, as is often claimed, named after Italian physician and botanist Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti (1712–1783), a pupil of Pier Micheli and later curator of the botanical garden and professor of botany at the University of Florence, nor two other Florentine botanists, John Anthony Targioni (dates unknown), and John Targioni Tozzetti, who published in 1734 a work for the purpose of showing the benefit of botanical lectures with reference to a course of studies in medicine." The genus Targionia in the Targioniaceae was subsequently published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus.

taubertiana/taubertii: probably for Paul Hermann Wilhelm Taubert (1862-1897), German botanist, traveller, illustrator, plant name author, and plant collector in Tanzania and elsewhere. According to JSTOR records, a specimen of Brachystegia spiciformis (previously B. taubertiana) was collected in Tanzania in 1884 and verified by a Taubert (listed with no initials) in 1893. There is also a Dolichos taubertii in southern Africa.

Tavaresia/tavaresii: for Joaquim da Silva Tavares (1866-1931), Portuguese naturalist, clergyman, entomologist, and traveller. The genus Tavaresia in the Apocynaceae was published in 1854 by Austrian explorer and botanist Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch. Tavares apparently was considered something of an authority on cecidology, which is the study of galls produced on trees and plants by fungi, insects, or mites. The taxon in southern Africa with the epithet tavaresii is the lichen species Pannaria tavaresii, which may or may not be named after this individual. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

taylorianum/taylorianus/taylorii: for (1) Hugh Colin Taylor (1925-1999), South African plant collector and ecologist with deep knowledge of Cape flora, first a fire ecologist with the Department of Agriculture and then transferred to Division of Botany (now SANBI), particularly interested in fynbos vegetation and ecology, former colleague of Erica authority Ted Oliver, commemorated with Aspalathus taylorii, Trieenea taylorii, Erica taylorii, and the former Cannomois taylorii, now synonymized to C. schlechteri. (Sabonet News; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.; Peter Linder, pers. comm.); (2) Edward Taylor (1848-1928/1935) of Southborough, Kent, British retired grocer and grower of succulent plants, commemorated with Conophytum taylorianum and Corpuscularia taylorii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; David Hollombe, pers. comm.); (3) A. Taylor, collector of Isopterygium taylorii in the Cape Province in 1924. (JSTOR); (4) William Ernest Taylor (1856-1927), British missionary and Swahili scholar, commemorated with Catunaregam taylorii and the former Gladiolus taylorii, now G. dalenii. (JSTOR); (5) the Taylor Herbarium at Harvard, named for botanist Thomas Taylor, where William Stanger collected the type specimen of Cladia taylorii, which is now Cladia aggregata. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.); (6) there are other taxa with one or the other of these epithets such as Cannomois taylorii, Albuca taylorianus (now A. abyssinica) and Stirtonanthus taylorianus, and I'm not sure who they are named for.

Tayloria: for Thomas Taylor (1775-1848), East Indian-born Irish physician, professor of botany and natural history at the Royal Cork Scientific Institution, Fellow of the Linnean Society, and bryologist who prepared Muscologia Britannica (1818) with William Jackson Hooker, much cryptogamic material for the Flora Antarctica of Joseph Dalton Hooker, and also the section on lichens for James Townsend Mackay’s Flora Hibernica (1836). His researches mainly concerned mosses, liverworts, and lichens. The genus Tayloria in the Splachnaceae was published in 1816 by British botanist William Jackson Hooker. (Wikipedia; Tropicos)

tayloriae: for Anne Taylor of Oudtshoorn, commemorated with the former taxon Crassula tayloriae, now synonymized to C. cotyledonis. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

teaguei: for Arthur John Teague (1885-1963), who collected the former taxon Blepharis teaguei (now synonymized to B. maderaspatensis) in Zimbabwe in 1915. The genus Teagueia in the Orchidaceae (which does not appear in southern Africa) was however named for the Ecuadorian-born American botanist and orchid collector Walter Teague (1926- ) and many of the other taxa which have this epithet were probably named for him. (JSTOR)

Teclea: according to the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names, the genus Teclea was named for St. Takla Hemanout (c. 1215-c. 1313), sometimes spelled Tekle Haymanot, son of an Ethiopian priest, a legendary monk and protagonist of the Coptic Church, founder of a major monastery in his native province of Shewa, recognized as a saint by the Copts, but this is almost certainly incorrect. The genus Teclea in the Rutaceae was published in 1843 by French botanist Alire Raffeneau Delile. One source, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Ethiopian Studies (1986, p. 130), says "En 1'honneur de 1'empereur Tekle Ha'imanot, il cree le genre Teclea chez les Rutacees, alors appelees Zanthoxylees," which implies that it commemorates an Emperor. W.P.U. Jackson also says: "After Tecla Haimanout, ancient Abyssinian emperor." There was an Emperor in Ethiopia around this time by the name of Tekle Haymanot who was the founder of the Zagwe dynasty. Alire Raffeneau Delile himself in the 1843 edition Annales des Sciences naturelles (Paris) says: "Nomen a Tecla Haimanout antiquo imperatore Abyssinorum venerato." (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Tedingea: a former genus name in the Amaryllidaceae published in 1985 by German botanists Dietrich and Ute Müller-Doblies, commemorating South African Erica botanical authorities Edward 'Ted' George Hudson Oliver (1938- ), South African botanist and world authority on the subfamily Ericoideae, author of some 110 papers and books, and Inge Oliver (born Nitzsche) (1947-2003), South African botanist and botanical artist. Hugh Clarke adds: "Dr. Oliver obtained an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town and during his career was Curator of the Government Herbarium in Stellenbosch (1964-1966, 1984-1996), South African Liaison Botanist at Kew Gardens (1967-1969), research taxonomist in Stellenbosch (1970-1975, 1982-1983) and at the Compton Herbarium, Kirstenbosch. Together, Ted & Inge wrote a Field Guide to the Ericas of the Cape Peninsula (2010)." Tedingea is now a sub-genus of Strumaria. See oliveri. (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.; Hugh Clarke)

Teedia: for Johann Georg Teede, a German naturalist who collected in Portugal and Surinam before 1799 and is mentioned in the Journal für die Botanik dated 1799. There was another Teede who collected in Africa in 1896 but that was someone else. The genus Teedia in the Scrophulariaceae was published in 1799 by German naturalist Karl Asmund Rudolphi. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Cyclopedia of American Horticulture by L.H. Bailey)

teixeirae: for Joaquim Martinho Lopes de Brito Teixeira (1917-1969), Angolan agronomist and botanist who collected in Angola in the 1950's and 1960's, and whose specimens are in the British Museum, commemorated with Crotalaria teixeirae, Indigofera teixeirae and Nesaea teixeirae. The 'ae' ending which normally indicates a woman is also used for any names that end in 'a'. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; HUH; JSTOR)

templemannii: for Robert Templeman, seedsman in the Cape Town Botanical Garden, commemorated with Pillansia templemannii (formerly Tritonia templemannii) and the former taxon Gladiolus templemannii, now synonymized to G. virescens. (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR)

Tenrhynea: for William ten Rhyne (sometimes spelled Rhijne) (1647-1700), a Dutch physician and botanist with the East India Company who collected at the Cape in 1673 while on his way to Java. He was the author of An Account of the Cape of Good Hope and the Hottentotes, a pioneering book on leprosy in Asia based on his experience as governor of the leper color at Batavia, and the first detailed Western study on acupuncture, inspired by his time in Japan. He is also honored by the genus Rhynea. The genus Tenrhynea in the Asteraceae was published in 1881 by South African botanist Olive Mary Hilliard and British botanist Brian Laurence Burtt. (Elsa Pooley; Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis by De Candolle; Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia; JSTOR)

Teucrium: said to be for Teucer, son of King Telamon of Salamis Island, half-brother of Ajax alongside whom he fought during the Trojan War, nephew of King Priam of Troy, and legendary founder of the town of Salamis on Cyprus. He is not to be confused with the other Teucer in Greek mythology, King Teucer of Troy, who died long before the Trojan War. The genus Teucrium in the Lamiaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

thaliana: for Johannes Thal (1542-1583), German physician and botanist, author of Sylva Hercynia (1577), who discovered Arabidopsis thaliana in the Harz Mountains and originally called it Pilosella siliquosa. Its current name was finally settled on in his honor in 1842. He prepared his first herbarium at the monastery of Ilfeld in Germany, graduated in medicine at the University of Jena, and practiced both law and medicine. There are a number of other genera with this specific epithet named for him, most in the family Brassicaceae. There is also a genus Thalia. (Arabidopsis Information Resource; Wikipedia)

theartii: for Major Ian (Jan?) Theart (fl. 1990-1997) of the 9th South African Infantry Battalion, a keen gardener and succulent enthusiast, commemorated with Argyroderma theartii, which he collected with Ernst van Jaarsveld in 1993 near Vanrhynsdorp. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Theilera/theileri: for Sir Arnold C. Theiler (1867-1936), Swiss-born English veterinarian and botanist who worked in South Africa, considered the 'father of veterinary science in South Africa,' developed vaccines against smallpox and rinderpest. "Theiler was the first Director of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute outside Pretoria. This institute under his leadership carried out research on African horse sickness, sleeping sickness, malaria, East Coast fever (Theileria parva) and tick-borne diseases such as redwater, heartwater and biliary. A Faculty of Veterinary Science was established here in 1920 which enabled vets to train locally for the first time. Theiler became the first dean of this faculty." The genus Theilera in the Campanulaceae was published in 1926 by South African botanist Edwin Percy Phillips. A.C. Theiler is also commemorated with the taxon Corymbium theileri which he collected in Piquetberg ini 1926. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

thellungiana/thellungii: for Albert Thellung (1881-1928), Swiss botanist and plant collector of the Botany museum at the University of Zurich, known for his studies of the flora of northern Europe, author of Flora der Schweiz (1923), Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa (1906), and Die Entstehung der Kulturpflanzen (1930). He died at the young age of 47. Taxa in southern Africa with these epithets are Sisymbrium thellungii and Ifloga thellungiana. There is also a genus Thellungiella named for him which does not appear in southern Africa. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

Theodora: possibly for Charles Theodore (Karl Theodor) (1724-1799), Elector and Duke of Bavaria from 1777 until his death. The genus Theodora in the Fabaceae was published in 1786 by German physician and botanist Friedrich Kasimir Medikus who was garrison doctor at Mannheim in the Palatinate then ruled by the Elector Karl Theodor. Theodore founded in 1763 the Academia Theodoro-Palatina of Mannheim and in 1766 an associated botanic garden at Medikus’ instigation. He was also responsible for the creation of the Englischer Garten (English Garden, originally called Theodore Park) in the center of Munich, one of the world's largest urban public parks. There has also been the suggestion that Theodora is a name of Greek origin (from theos and doron) meaning "God's gift." (Wikipedia; ZipcodeZoo.com)

theodori-friesii: for Thore Christian Elias Fries (1886-1931), Swedish  professor of systematic botany at Lund University; botanist-collector specializing in Cliffortia; collected with his brother Robert Elias Fries in East Africa, 1921-22; died in Umtali during an expedition to South Africa and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) in 1931. He specialized in lichenology and plant geography, was a member of the British Mycological Society, and collected the holotype of Cliffortia theodori-friesii in the Cape Province in 1930. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

theophrasti: the taxon Abutilon theophrasti, which is often considered a weed and has the common name velvetleaf or indian mallow, has a long history going back to about 900 B.C. 'Abutilon' was first used by the Persian philosopher and polymath Avicenna or Abū Alī al-usayn ibn Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā (Ibn-Sina) for plants that resembled mallows or mulberries. For some unknown reason, Theophrastus of Eresus (c.371-288 BC), an early Greek botanist and student of Aristotle's who wrote nine books on the history of plants, used the Greek word 'side' which was a name that applied to water plants for plants that today are called sidas or velvetleafs. This is the root of the generic names Sida, Sidalcea and several others. It seems that there was a plant that Theophrastus called althaia or marsh mallow, and the specific epithet theophrasti as applied to a taxon of genera Abutilon was carried over from previously used names such as Althaea theophrasti, and was meant to indicate that this was the species referred to by Theophrastus. Linnaeus had classified the velvetleaf as Sida abutilon in 1753 and then Phillip Miller, who was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden for fifty years, published the name Abutilon in the fourth edition of his Gardener's Dictionary in 1754. In 1787 the German botanist Friedrich Kasimir Medikus rearranged the Malvaceae and placed Sida abutilon in the genus Abutilon, giving it the name of Abutilon theophrasti. Subsequent to that, the German botanist Joseph Gaertner (1732-1791) reclassified the plant as Abutilon avicennae, to honor the Persian Avicenna, but the rules of nomenclature dictated that the epithet of Medikus took precedence, and that's the way it has remained. The name Abutilon is often stated to be of Arabic or Arabian origin, but since Avicenna was Persian, this is not correct. There are at least ten other species with this specific epithet but none of them appear in southern Africa. (Weed Science Society of America; Encyclopedia of Evolution)

theresae: the taxon in southern Africa with this epithet is Aspalathus theresae with no information as to its derivation.

theronii: I have a note that this epithet commemorates a Mr. A.S. Theron who documented the flora of his farm, however according to JSTOR records Anisodontea theronii was collected in 1956 near Calitzdorp by Gabriel Christiaan Theron (1897-1967), South African botanist and plant collector, Potchefstroom Agricultural College and later at Grootfontein Agricultural College, so this casts doubt on the previously mentioned derivation. There is also a Johannes Jacobus Theron (1905-1980) and a Guillaume Karl Theron (1936- ) who are both mentioned by Gunn & Codd, and any of the three of them could be commemorated by the other two taxa with this epithet in southern Africa, Brachystelma theronii and Acacia theronii. (Gunn & Codd)

Thesium: the common explanation for this epithet is that it was named after the legendary Greek hero Thesius, son of King Aegeus, and this may well be true. The genus Thesium in the Santalaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (W.P.U. Jackson; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera and Neighboring Mountains by Clarence Bicknell)

theurkauffii: for a certain Dr. Theurkauff who collected Aizoon theurkauffi, now synonymized to Mesembryanthemum cryptanthum, in 1935 in the Moroccan Sahara. (JSTOR)

Thodaya: for David Thoday (1883-1964), British botanist and professor of botany at the University of Capetown and later University College of North Wales, Fellow of the Royal Society, author of Botany, Etc. published in 1929. The genus Thodaya in the Asteraceae was published in 1931 by South African Robert Harold Compton.

thodeana/thodei: for Hans Justus Thode (1859-1932), Drakensberg plant collector probably born in Germany, came to Cape Town in 1885 or 1886, worked as a tutor, an associate of Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler to whom he sent specimens. He became particularly associated with the Natal Drakensberg area where he did much collecting. He is commemorated with Lessertia thodei, Alepidea thodei, Kniphofia thodei, Disa thodei, Holothrix thodei, Osteospermum thodei, Inulanthera thodei, Phylica thodei, Manulea thodeana and probably for several other current and synonymized names with these epithets. (Elsa Pooley; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

thollonii: for François-Romain Thollon (1855-1896), French collector who worked in Gabon, Ivory Coast, Congo and Nigeria. He was a member of the de Brazza mission in Gabon in 1884 which was noted for its fish collections. He is commemorated with the former taxon Tacazzea thollonii which he collected in Gabon in 1885 and which has now been synonymized to T. apiculata. There are several dozen other taxa with this epithet that do not appear in southern Africa. At least some of them were collected by this same individual and most if not all may be presumed to be named for him. His name is also on Thollon's red colobus, Piliocolobus thollonii, at least two fish, Tilapia thollonii and Alestes thollonii, the elephant tick, Amblyomma thollonii, and a bird, Myrmecocichla thollonii. (JSTOR; Eponym Dictionary of Mammals)

thomae: for Thomas Pearson Stokoe (1868-1959), artist and plant collector, a Yorkshireman who emigrated to South Africa in 1911. Nivenia stokoei was only properly documented in 1924, after it was found by T.P. Stokoe who collected numerous specimens in the Kogelberg, many of which were named after him, including the now extinct Mimetes stokoei. His long career included both plant collecting and mountaineering, and he discovered many high-altitude plants. He was a co-collector and associate of Stuart Neville Pillans, and was also known for his watercolors and lithographs. Vol. 5 of The Flowering Plants of South Africa (1925) is dedicated to him. He is commemorated with Erica thomae and the former taxon Ruschia thomae, now Esterhuysenia stokoei, as well as the genus Stokoeanthus and a number of taxa with the epithets stokoei and stokoeanthus. He became ill while climbing in the Hottentots on his 91st birthday and died a couple of months later. His ashes are scattered near Stokoe's Bridge in the Kogelberg Reserve. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd; website Cape Nature)

thomassetii: the former taxon Hymenophyllum thomassetii, now synonymized to H. tunbridgense, was collected by a J.F.H. Thomasset in Malawi and can be presumed to be named for him, with no further information. There are several other taxa with this epithet that do not appear in southern Africa, but they are all named for an H.P. Thomasset who collected in the Seychelles around 1905, and may or may not be a relation. (JSTOR)

thomasiae: for (1) for Vicky Thomas (fl. 2003), South African botanical artist, commemorated with Bulbine thomasiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names); (2) Margaret L. Thomas who began work at Kirstenbosch in 1935, commemorated with Ixia thomasiae, Lachenalia thomasiae and Moraea thomasiae. (Indigenous Bulb Growers Association of South Africa)

thomasii: for Harry Evan Patershall Thomas (1879-1948), British Army officer who settled in South Africa after the Boer War and collected some plants in the Orange Free State, changed his name from Thomas to Patershall in 1912, commemorated with Sebaea thomasii. (Elsa Pooley; Gunn & Codd; Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists)

thomii: for Dr. George Thom (1789-1842), a Scottish minister and missionary of the N.G. Kerk (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk or Dutch Reformed Church) who sent botanical and geological speciments overseas to Profs. W.J. Hooker and Couper in Glasgow. He is commemorated with Mystropetalon thomii, Otholobium thomii, the former taxon Tripteris thomii (now T. oppositifolia) and possibly also for Selago thomii. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Gunn & Codd)

thompsoniae: for Audrey Thompson, the daughter of Sheila Thompson (fl. 1970), a grower of indigenous plants at Magoebaskloof who first collected Aloe thompsoniae. (PlantzAfrica)

thomsiana: named for Hermann Friedrich Maria Thoms (1859-1931), pharmacist and university professor in Berlin. He is considered to be the founder of scientific pharmacy in Germany. After an apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Berlin, Thoms studied pharmacy there and in Jena and Würzburg. After completing his doctorate in 1886, he was administrator of the court pharmacy in Weimar until 1889, and from 1889 to 1893 scientific director of a chemical factory. He founded the German Pharmaceutical Society in 1890. In 1895 he received his habilitation at the Friedrich Wilhelms University and became a private lecturer. He was appointed professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in 1900 and established the Pharmaceutical University Institute in Berlin from 1900–1902. From 1920 to 1927 he was a full professor, and in 1923-24 he went on a trip around the world with his wife, during which he gained new cultural and scientific experiences. In 1931, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Golden Hanbury Medal by the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain for his services to research into drugs. He was a member of the Leopoldina from 1927. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Strychnos thomsiana.

thomsonii: for Joseph Thomson (1858-1895), Scottish explorer in Africa, appointed geologist and naturalist to the Royal Geographical Society's expedition to East Central Africa. He had an amazing career as an explorer, traversing many areas through which no one had ever gone before, and he was considered as the last and one of the most successful of the great geographical pioneers in Africa. He is commemorated with Moraea thomsonii and probably also for the former taxa Gladiolus thomsonii (now G. crassifolius) and Convolvulus thomsonii (now C. sagittatus). (Flora of Zimbabwe; JSTOR)

thonningii: for Peter Thonning (1775-1848), Danish physician and botanist who was sent to Ghana to supervise plantations, lived there for four years, later his herbarium was destroyed during the Second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807 when the British shelled the city and attempted to sieze the Danish-Norwegian fleet. He is commemorated with Piliostigma thonningii, and the former taxa Convolvulus thonningii (now Ipomoea optica), Ficus thonningii (now F. burkei) and Capparis thonningii (now C. brassii). (Wikipedia; AgroForestryTree Database of the World AgroForestry Centre; Flora of Zimbabwe; JSTOR)

Thorncroftia/thorncroftii: for George Thorncroft (1857-1934), British botanist, plant collector and merchant who emigrated to South Africa in 1882 and died in the Transvaal. He collected plants for the Durban Herbarium and the Government Herbarium at Pretoria for many years, helped to found the botanical gardens in Durban, and sent seeds and plants to Natal botanist John Medley Wood and also to interested people in England. His son, Joseph Norton Thorncroft, also developed a familiarity for the flora of the Barberton area, and collected some of the taxa that bear the epithet thorncroftii such as Cyrtanthus thorncroftii, Acrotome thorncroftii and Hemizygia thorncroftii, but probably most if not all of the eponymous taxa here commemorate his father, including Aloe thorncroftii, Rhynchosia thorncroftii, Thorncroftia thorncroftii, and the former taxa Scolopia thorncroftii (now S. zeyheri), Crassula thorncroftii (now C. expansa) and Triaspis thorncroftii (now T. hypericoides), and others. There is always the possibility that one or more of these taxa honor the junior Thorncroft. The genus Thorncroftia in the Lamiaceae was published in 1912 by Nicholas Edward Brown. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gerbera.org; Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists; Gunn & Codd)

thoursiana/thouarsii/thuarii: for Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars (1758-1831), a well-known French botanist who during the French Revolution was imprisoned for two years and then exiled to Madagascar and the nearby islands of L'île de France (Mauritius) and L'île de Bourbon (La Réunion) where he became involved in botany and started collecting plants. He was particularly interested in orchids and published the names of eleven orchid genera and many species. His years there were documented in the books Histoire des végétaux recueillis dans les îles de France, de Bourbon et de Madagascar, Mélanges de botanique et de voyages, and Histoire particulière des plantes orchidées recueillies dans les trois îles australes de France, de Bourbon et de Madagascar. After ten years he returned to France with a collection of some 2000 plants most of which went to the Muséum de Paris. He was later elected to the Academy of Sciences. He is commemorated with Pentamaris thuarii, Digitaria thouarsiana, Voacanga thouarsii, Torenia thouarsii, and the former taxa Tetraria thuarii (now T. compar), Pseudocyphellaria thouarsii (now P. intricata) and Corymborkis thouarsii (now C. corymbis). He is also commemorated with the genera Thouarsiora and Thouarsia, which do not appear in southern Africa. His younger brother, Aristide Aubert Du Petit Thouars, was a naval officer and a hero of the Battle of the Nile. (JSTOR; Wikipedia; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

thraskii: for someone with the surname of Thrask (fl. 1880) about whom I have no information, commemorated with Aloe thraskii. Gideon Smith et. al. describe him as a long-forgotten person. (Succulents.co.za, Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; "What's in a Name: Epithets in Aloe" by Gideon F. Smith and Estrela Figuereido in Bradleya 28, 2010)

thudichumii: for Jacques Thudichum (1893-1985), Swiss horticulturist and second curator of the Karoo Botanic Garden (1945-1958), commemorated with Huernia thudichumii, Deilanthe thudichumii, Drosanthemum thudichumii and Tromotriche thudichumii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; PlantzAfrica)

thulinii: for Mats Thulin (1948- ), Swedish botanist, professor at Uppsala University who has devoted more than twenty years in his study of the family Campanulaceae in Africa, and author of The Genus Wahlenbergia, Leguminosae of Ethiopia, co-author of Introduction to Phylogeny and Systematics of Flowering Plants, and editor of the 4-volume Flora of Somalia, commemorated with Wahlenbergia thulinii. (Botanicus.org)

Thunbergia/thunbergiana/thunbergianus/Thunbergiella/thunbergii: for Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), Swedish botanist and physician who travelled as surgeon with ships of the Dutch East India Company and did extensive botanical exploration in southern Africa and Japan. He was a student of Linnaeus, one of his so-called apostles and perhaps his foremost disciple, a plant collector and explorer, and after his travelling years was a professor of botany and medicine at Uppsala. He was commissioned by Johannes Burmann to visit Dutch colonies and Japan in order to obtain plants for Dutch botanical gardens, spent three years in the Cape Colony learning Dutch and collecting plants in the company of such men as Scottish botanist Francis Masson and Scottish soldier and naturalist Robert Jacob Gordon, during which time he collected over 3000 species, 1000 of which were not previously known. He collected mostly pressed specimens, but also seeds, bulbs and live plants, and samples of fauna. He spent two months at Batavia before arriving in Japan, where he spent somewhat more than a year. On his journey home he spent several months in Sri Lanka and then stopped at London to meet Joseph Banks. Upon arriving back in Sweden he learned of the death of Linnaeus. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and was the author of Flora Japonica (1784), Prodromus plantarum capensium (1800), Icones plantarum japonicarum (1805), and Flora capensis (1813). His post-travel years were mainly occupied by teaching and scientific work, and he published 293 medical and natural history dissertations during that time. He was also responsible for a new botanical garden at Uppsala Castle and a new institution building housing a botanical museum and a conservatory. The South African botanist Verduyn den Boer memorialized him this way: "...as long as in our paradise of flowers there wanders a single botanist, so long will the name of Thunberg be held in honored remembrance." He was less known as a prominent entomologist but published papers and described numerous scarab taxa. The genus Thunbergia in the Acanthaceae was published in 1780 by Swedish chemist, botanist and entomologist Anders Jahan Retzius, and the genus Thunbergiella in the Apiaceae was published in 1922 by German mycologist and botanist Karl Friedrich August Hermann Wolff. There are too many taxa with his name on them to list fully but they include Crassula, Silene, Phylica, Wahlenbergia, Scirpus, Jamesbrittenia, Pennisetum, Babiana, Stachys, Gasteria, Cyperus, Euryops, Senecio, Cotula, Muraltia, and many others both current and former. He is also commemorated with the genus Thunbergianthus which does not appear in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; "Carl Peter Thunberg 1743-1828" by Nils Svedelius in Isis 35, 1944; University of Nebraska-Lincoln State Museum Department of Entomology)

thuretii: for Gustav (Gustave) Adolph Thuret (1817-1875), French botanist who specialized in marine algae, studied the sexual reproduction of seaweeds, and imported plants from tropical climates to study how well they acclimated in southern France. As a youth he was stationed at Constantinople. He established a botanical garden called the Jardin Botanique de la Villa Thuret in Antibes on the Mediterranean coast that was known throughout the scientific world and today contains over 3000 species of plants and trees. He is commemorated with the taxon Huernia thuretii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

thwaitesii: for George Henry Kendrick Thwaites (1812-1882), British botanist, mycologist and entomologist who corresponded extensively with his contemporaries in the botanical field, lecturer on botany at the Bristol school of pharmacy and later at the school of medicine, Fellow of the Royal Society, author of Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniæ, Superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka from 1849 to 1880, died in Sri Lanka, mostly interested in algae and cryptogams. He is commemorated with the genus Kendrickia and the fungi genus Thwaitesiella. In southern Africa there are several bryophyte and fungal taxa which bear the specific epithet thwaitesii and are presumably named for him, including Campylopus thwaitesii (Dicranaceae), Bottaria thwaitesii (Mycoporaceae) and Anthracothecium thwaitesii (Pyrenulaceae). ( "New species of Musci collected in Ceylon by Dr. Thwaites" by W. Mitten in. J. Linn. Soc., Bot. 13: 293–326 1873; Wikipedia; A Century of Mycology by Brian Sutton)

tidmarshii: for Edwin Tidmarsh (1831-1915), British-born horticulturist, curator of the Grahamstown Botanical Garden, collected and sent many plants to Kew, commemorated with the former taxon Aloe tidmarshii, which is now a variety of Aloe ciliaris, and which he gave to Dr. Selmar Schönland in 1900. His grandson, Charles Edwin Mortleman Tidmarsh (1913-1979) was also a botanist in South Africa specializing in agricultural methods and crop rotational grazing techniques, becoming assistant chief of the Division of Crops and Pastures, then Director of Pasture Research. ("What's in a Name: Epithets in Aloe" by Estrela Figueireido and Gideon Smith in Bradley 28, 2010; Gunn & Codd)

Tieghemia: for Philippe Édouard Léon van Tieghem (1839-1914), French botanist, plant anatomist and comparative morphologist, professor of botany, and considered by some the best known French botanist of the late 19th century. He obtained a baccalaureate degree at the age of 17 and then worked in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur where he cultivated mushrooms. He earned doctorate degrees in both the physical sciences and natural history. He was a professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and an instructor at the Institut agronomique in Paris. He was the author of Traité de Botanique (1884), Eléments de botanique (1898), and other works totalling over 300 publications, and was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. He was the editor for thirty-two years of the journal Annales des Sciences Naturelles Botanique. The genus Tieghemia in the Loranthaceae was published in 1956 by Belgian botanist Simone Balle. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; Pasteur: The History of a Mind by Emile Duclaux; One Hundred and One Botanists by Duane Isely)

Tillaea: for Michelangelo Tilli (Michele Angelo Tilli) (1655-1740), Italian physician and botanist. Hugh Clarke provides the following: "He graduated in medicine and surgery at the University of Pisa (1677) and in 1681 worked as a naval surgeon in 1681 visiting the Balearic Islands, south of Spain. In 1683 he went to Turkey and Albania with the Florentine surgeon Pier Francesco Pasquali, as well as visiting Tunisia, and collected specimens there. He became professor of botany at Pisa in 1685 and also Director of the Botanical Gardens of Pisa, introducing plants from Asia and Africa. He was among the first in Italy to use greenhouses [or heated rooms] for plants, making it possible to cultivate pineapples and coffee in Italy. He authored Catalogus Plantarum Horti Pisani (1723). He became a member of the Royal Society [of London] in 1708." The genus Tillaea in the Crassulaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (Hugh Clarke; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; ReachInformation.com)

Tillandsia: for Elias Erici Tillandz (originally Tillander and sometimes written as Til-Landz) (1640–1693), Swedish-born physician and botanist who lived in Finland. Hugh Clarke adds: "He studied medicine at the Academy of Turku, later renamed the University of Helsinki (1659-1663), and then moved to the Universities of Uppsala and Leiden, obtaining his doctorate in 1670. He became professor of medicine at the Academy of Turku the same year and its Rector in 1690. He wrote the first botanical work on Finnish flora, the Catalogus Planatarum (1673) featuring some 500 plants with Finnish and Latin names, with an expanded second edition in 1683. He performed the first official autopsy in the University's main hall, was a pioneer in searching for new ways to treat illness and healing methods, such as leprosy, and used his extensive knowledge of plants to prepare medicines for his patients." The genus Tillandsia in the Bromeliaceae was published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus. (Wikipedia; Biografiakeskus)

Timmiella: diminutive of Timmia, named for Joachim Christian Timm (1734-1805), German botanist and bryologist. He worked as a chemist's assistant and then as a pharmacist. He was the author of Florae Megapolitanae prodromus. He became Burgermeister of Malchin, Mecklenberg, Germany. The moss genus Timmiella in the Pottiaceae was published by Italian botanist Giuseppe de Notaris. The genus Timmia which does not appear in southern Africa was also named for him.

Tinnea: for the Tinne family in Holland, specifically Harriet (Henrietta) Tinne, her sister Adrienne van Capellen and Harriet's daughter Alexandrine, who were patrons of botany in the 1800's, to commemorate a scientific expedition on the Nile in 1861 during which Harriet Tinne and her two daughters collected seed of T. aethiopica. Alexandrine was a Dutch explorer in Africa and the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara. The genus Tinnea in the Lamiaceae was published in 1867 by Austrian botanist Carl Georg Theodor Kotschy. (PlantzAfrica; Wikipedia)

tischeri: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Conophytum tischeri which is now synonymized to C. velutinum. There are many taxa of Conophytum authored by the German Conophytum specialist Arthur Tischer (1895-2000) and so it seems reasonable to assume that he is the one commemorated by this taxon. He worked with Steven A. Hammer and Alfred Loesch (Lösch).

tischleri: possibly for Georg Friedrich Leopold Tischler (1878-1955), German botanist and cytologist, traveller and plant collector, author of Allgemeine Pflanzenkaryologie. The taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet are the former Conophytum tischleri (now synonymized to C. ectypum) and Gibbaeum tischleri (now G. petrense).

tisserantii: for Rev. Charles Tisserant (1886-1962), French cleric, ethnologist, traveller, plant collector in Angola, Mozambique and the Central African Republic, botanist, and author of several works on flora and languages of the areas he visited, commemorated with Leersia tisserantii, Letestuella tisserantii and the former taxon Phasconica tisserantii, now synonymized to Trichostomum unguiculatum. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; JSTOR)

Tithonia: after Tithonus (variously spelled Tithonius or Tithonos), a young man who was a favorite and companion of Aurora, in Roman mythology the goddess of dawn and equivalent to Eos in Greek mythology. The genus Tithonia in the Asteraceae was briefly published in 1789 and then more extensively in 1802 by French botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu based on an earlier description by his countryman botanist René Louiche Desfontaines. In the publication it gives the following derivation for the epithet: "Poetical name for Aurora taken from the name of her beloved, Tithonus, who asked of Aurora to become immortal, but finding himself immortally old, he asked her to take back the gift and was transformed into a grasshopper." Elsa Pooley says Tithonis was another name for Aurora, and this would seem to be what the above quote implies, but this cannot be correct since Aurora and Tithonus were two different individuals. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Tittmannia: for Johann August Tittman (1774-1840), German botanist, agronomist, pharmacist, physician and medical writer. He was lecturer in Pharmaceutical Botany at Dresden 1804-1813. The genus Tittmannia in the Bruniaceae was published in 1826 by French botanist Adolphe Théodore Brongniart. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Biographical Etymology of Marine Organism Names)

Todea: for Heinrich Julius Tode (1733-1797), German clergyman, educator, botanist and cryptogamist, architect, draftsman and author. The website Hymnary.org describes him as a "parson in Pritzier; later cathedral and court preacher and superintendant at Schwerin; known for botanic studies and as poet of hymn and cantata texts." Another website says he was interested mainly in "small, strange-looking things." He was the author of Fungi Mecklenburgenses selecti (Selected Fungi from Mecklenburg). The genus Todea in the Osmundaceae was published in 1801 by German doctor and botanist Johann Jacob Bernhardi based on a previous description by German botanist and pharmacist Carl Ludwig von Willdenow. Just as an amusing aside, the Wikipedia translation of his name to English is Heinrich Julius Death. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Hymnary.org)

Tomasellia: for Giuseppe (Joseph) Tomaselli (1733-1818), Italian scientist and scholar, originally intended to be a priest, then studied chemistry, agriculture, geology and meteorology, became interested in botany and was associated with the Botanic Garden of Verona, wrote and published a great deal on many subjects, and researched fossil ichthylogoy. The lichen genus Tomasellia in the Naetrocymbaceae was published in 1856 by Italian lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo. (from an Italian website about the community of Soave)

tomasi: this is odd because the POSA database includes the taxon Conophytum tomasi, but neither IPNI, nor Kew's Plant List database nor the Missouri Botanical Garden's Tropicos database include either this taxon or any taxon with the specific epithet tomasi. I have no information as to its derivation, nor am I sure that it is even an eponymous name. It was supposedly published by Josef Jakob Halda. IPNI records no member of the Aizoaceae or Mesembryanthemaceae published by Halda.

Toninia: for Carlo Tonini (1803-1877), chemist and botanist of Verona, who had a herbarium with a well-classified collection of lichens. He was a friend of Italian lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo, who published the genus Toninia in the Catillariaceae in 1852.

Topeliopsis: the '-opsis' ending of this epithet indicates that it was not chosen to honor a specific individual but rather to highlight some similarity to the genus Topelia, which was however named for Josef Poelt (1924-1995), Austrian lichenologist. Hugh Clarke provides the following about Poelt: "[He was] a professor in Systematic Botany and Plant Geography at the Free University of Berlin from 1965 and later from 1972 Chair of Systematic Botany at the University of Graz. His first publication was in 1950 and he wrote more than 200 lichenological publications on floristics, taxonomy, morphology, evolution and biology of lichens and some 100 papers on bryophytes, non-lichenized fungi and vascular plants. He authored the highly respected book Bestimmungsschlüssel europäischer Flechten (1969) [which became a standard lichenological reference work]. He received the Acharius Medal in 1992 [from the International Association of Lichenologists]." He had also been a curator and lecturer at the University of Munich. He was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, an honorary member of the Regensburg Botanical Society, a foreign member of the Linnean Society, and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Botanical Society of America. He was also honored with the generic epithets Topelia, Josefpoeltia, Melanotopelia, Poeltiaria, Poeltidea, and Poeltinula, so he was a very significant figure in lichenology. The genus Topeliopsis in the Thelotremataceae was published in 2007 by the head of the Tasmanian Herbarium at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Ginteras Kantvilas and Czech lichenologist Antonin Vězda. (Gattungseponyme bei Flechten un lichenicolen Pilzen by Hannes Hertel; JSTOR; Hugh Clarke; Josef Hafellner, pers. comm.)

Torenia: for Rev. Olof Torén (1718-1753), Swedish clergyman, traveller, botanist and plant collector, ship's chaplain with the Swedish East India Company, sent plants to Linnaeus from India and China. He died only a year after returning to Sweden from China. The genus Torenia in the Scrophulariaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

Tornabenia: for Francesco Tornabene Roccaforte (1813-1897), Sicilian Benedictine friar and botanist. Hugh Clarke provides the following: "[He was the] founder of the Botanical Gardens in Catania [Sicily], and professor of botany at the University of Catania. He trained at the School of Cosentini, began its cultural and religious education in the Benedictine monastery of San Nicolò l'Arena. He was a particularly important figure in the history of botany in Catania. He lobbied for the founding of the Botanical Gardens in Catania in 1843 but it took until 1858 before it was opened. He authored a number of books including Lichenographia Sicula (1849), Flora fossile dell'Etna (1859), Flora Sicula juxta methodum naturalem vegetabilium exposita (1887) and Flora Aetnea, seu, Descriptio plantarum in Monte Aetna sponte nascentium (1889-1892). He was a member of the Academy Goenia." The genus Tornabenia in the Physciaceae was published in 1853 by Italian lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo. He was also honored by the generic epithet Tornabenea in the Apiaceae. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Hugh Clarke)

torreana: for António Rocha da Torre (1904-1995), Portuguese biologist and plant collector in Angola and Mozambique, commemorated with Xylia torreana, which he collected in 1943 in Mozambique. He began his career as a pharmacist and then became one of the greatest ever collectors of Mozambique flora amassing some 18,000 specimens. A Wikipedia translation amusingly refers to him as Antonio Rock Tower. (JSTOR; Congresso Internacional Saber Tropical em Moçambique, 2012)

torresiana: for either (1) a Luis de Torres, with no further information. Thelypteris torresiana was first described from the Mariana Islands, according to Dr. John Thieret's Louisiana Fern and Fern Allies. or (2) Don José Torres, resident on Guam in 1819, when the type specimen was collected during the expedition under de Freycinet in L'Uranie, according to Flora of Australia online. Another source (The Plant World, Vol. 7) refers to him as Don Luis de Torres of Guam. It was originally named by Charles Gaudichaud Beaupré and published by Arthur Hugh Garfit Alston in 1960, and is now the taxon Macrothelypteris torresiana. This is probably another case of all of these names referring to the same person. The fern is referred to as Torres fern or Torres's fern.

Tournefortia/tournefortii: for Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), French botanist and physician, naturalist, professor of medicine and botany at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and author of Eléments de botanique, ou Méthode pour reconnaître les Plantes which was actually a step backward in plant taxonomy since it ignored such divisions as between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between dicots and monocots. He has been credited as the first to define genus and genera, but others such as Kaspar Bauhin had preceded him in this. He travelled and collected in Western Europe, particularly the Pyrenees, the Greek islands, Constantinople, Armenia, Georgia and the borders of the Black Sea. He was killed by a carriage in Paris. He is commemorated with Brassica tournefortii and the former taxon Veronica tournefortii, now synonymized to V. persica, as well as the genus Tournefortia in the Boraginaceae which was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; California Desert Flowers by Sia Morhardt and J. Emil Morhardt)

townsendiae: the collector of the isolectotype of the former taxon Homeria townsendiae (now synonymized to Moraea pallida) is recorded by JSTOR as C.E. Moss, ex C. Townsend. Whether this indicates a name change due to marriage seems unlikely inasmuch as the Harvard University Database of Botanists lists a C.E. Moss as Charles Edward Moss, a British-born South African botanist who died in 1930. The plant was collected in 1927 in the Transvaal region of South Africa, and the only Townsend listed as having collected in South Africa is Charles Wendell Townsend (1859-1934), author of A Labrador Spring, Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes, Birds of Labrador, and other works. The 'ae' ending typically indicates that the eponym is for a woman. So this is something of a puzzle. (JSTOR)

Tradescantia: for John Tradescant the Elder (1570/1575?-1638), British traveller and botanical collector, gardener to Charles I, also to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and Sir John Wotton. He was one of the first Western European botanists to visit Russia, and also visited the Levant, Algiers and France; and for his son John Tradescant the Younger (1608-1662), naturalist and botanist, traveller, and plant collector in Virginia, succeeded his father as gardener to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, and author of Musaeum Tradescantianum, a book about his father's celebrated collection of rare and unusual objects of natural history and ethnography that became the first museum open to the public in England. They were both buried in the churchyard of St-Mary-at-Lambeth, and the tomb of The Bounty's Captain Bligh is nearby. There seems to be some dispute about which of the Tradescants this name honors. The CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says that it is for both Tradescants, and clearly only the Younger actually went to Virginia where the plant was originally found. However, David Hollombe has told me that Linnaeus took the name Tradescantia from Ruppius' Flora Jenensis (1718) in which he stated that it was a plant described by the great English herbalist John Parkinson, who refers in his Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (1629, when John Tradescant the Younger was only 21) to the fact that knowledge of the spider-wort of Virginia was due to the John Tradescant who had been in the employ of the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Wotton, and the Duke of Buckingham, which would be the Elder. Linnaeus published the name Tradescantia in the Commelinaceae in 1753.

Tragia/Tragus: for Hieronymus Bock (latinized name Hieronymus Tragus) (1498-1554), German botanist and physician, teacher, herbalist author, Lutheran priest who began the transition from medieval botany to the modern scientific worldview by arranging plants by their relation or resemblance. The genus Tragia in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. The grass genus Tragus which was published in 1768 by Swiss anatomist and naturalist Albrecht von Haller was also named for him. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

trauseldii: for William Trauseld (1911-1989), photographer and amateur botanist, author of Wild Flowers of the Natal Drakensberg, and game ranger with Natal Parks, warden at the Royal Natal National Park, commemorated with Selago trauseldii and Xysmalobium trauseldii. (Elsa Pooley; Gunn & Codd)

travisiana: for William Gladstone Travis (1877-1958), British botanist from Liverpool, lichenologist and plant collector, member of the Moss Exchange Club, Secretary of the South Lanchashire Flora Committee, commemorated with the former taxon Aneura travisiana, now synonymized to Riccardia amazonica. He was a patent agent and author of Travis's Flora of South Lancashire and an extensive series of articles on local flora. He was also very interested in paleoecology and with his wife wrote an article about the plant remains in post-glacial gravels at Seaforth, north of Liverpool. ("Notes on a Collection of Hepatics from the Cameroons" by William Henry Pearson in Manchester Memoirs, 1921; History of Botanical Investigation by John Edmondson)

Treichelia: for Alexander Johann August Treichel (1837-1901), German botanist. The genus Treichelia in the Campanulaceae was published in 1874 by German botanist Johann (Georg) Karl Wilhelm Vatke. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

treubii: for Melchior Treub (1851-1910), Dutch botanist who spent many years in the Dutch East Indies, recognized for his work on tropical flora of Java and for the organization of the Bogor Botanical Garden, commemorated with the former taxon Utricularia treubii, now synonymized to U. sandersonii. (Botanische Zeitung, Vol. 57 by A. Förstner)

tribblei: for Derek Vautin Tribble (1952- ), British software engineer and succulent plant enthusiast, co-author of The Adromischus Handbook, member of the British Cactus and Succulent Society and former chairman of the Haworthia Society, has made fifteen trips to SA to photograph succulents in the field. He was the discoverer of Tylecodon tribblei. (Haworthia Society; Oxotica: The Newsletter of the Oxford Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society, Vol. 9, No. 1, June 2004)

triebeliae: for Dagmar Triebel (1957- ), German lichenologist at Munich, although the 'ae' ending is usually because the commemoration is either for a woman or for a man's name that ends in 'a'. The lichen taxon Xanthoparmelia triebeliae was collected in the Cape Province by Dagmar Triebel and Gerhard Walter Rambold. (Atlas of Living Australia; Index Fungorum)

triebneri/triebneriana: for Wilhelm Triebner (1883-1957), German horticulturist and plant collector who went to what is now Namibia in 1904 as part of his military service and stayed as a succulent gardener and farmer, and established a succulent plant nursery near Windhoek. He was married to Lydia Triebner (née Müller) (commemorated with a number of species having the generic epithet lydiae) and his sons were Siegfried (1928-1990) and Werner (1925-2000). He is commemorated with Bulbine triebneri, Schwantesia triebneri, Hoodia triebneri, Gasteria triebneriana, Haworthia triebneriana, and the former taxa Lithops triebneri (now synonymized to L. schwantesii), Ophthalmophyllum triebneri (now Conophytum friedrichiae), Adromischus triebneri (now A. alstonii) and Crassula triebneri (now C. capitella). His wife Lydia was also commemorated with several taxa such as Conophytum lydiae, Ophthalmophyllum lydiae and the former Lithops lydiae, now Lithops fulviceps. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd; Women and Cacti)

Trieenea: named for Elsie Elizabeth Esterhuysen (1912-2006), botanical collector and botanist at the Bolus Herbarium at the University of Cape Town, according to CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names. At least one species of this genus was named elsiae for its collector, E.E. Esterhuysen, and according to Terry Trinder-Smith in the The Levyns Guide to the Plant Genera of the Southwestern Cape, Contributions from the Bolus Herbarium No 21, and the protologue in Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinb. (45: 489, 1989), the generic epithet has three 'e's for the initials of E.E. Esterhuysen who played a large role in the knowledge of, and description of, the genus. Hence, the name 'Tri-eenea,' Three 'e's. The genus Trieenea in the Scrophulariaceae was named in 1989 by the noted South African botanist Olive Mary Hilliard. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

trinkleriana: possibly for Dr. Emil Trinkler (1896-1931), German geographer, geologist and explorer who died in a motor accident at the age of 35. He was the author of Tibet (1922), Through the Heart of Afghanistan (1928) and The Stormswept Roof of Asia (1930). The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Ficinia trinkleriana (now synonymized to Carpha bracteosa), and to my knowledge it is the only taxon that bears this epithet. There is a Trinkler listed by JSTOR as a plant collector in China but no further information is given. Emil Trinkler did explore areas along the Silk Road iin China and may have collected some plants. To facilitate his researches during his travels, he learned Russian and English, and later mastered Tibetan, Hindustani and Persian. He was considered one of the most promising geographers of his day and his early loss was a tragic one. (Wikipedia; Ancient Sites on the Silk Road by Neville Agnew; Himalayan Journal 04, 1932)

Tritonia: after Triton, in Greek mythology the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite and messenger of the sea, usually portrayed with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish. The genus Tritonia in the Iridaceae was published in 1802 by British botanist John Bellenden Ker Gawler. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Triumfetta: for Giovanni Battista (sometimes written as Giambatista) Trionfetti (1658-1708), Italian botanist, professor of botany at the University of Rome, Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens there from 1676 to 1706, and author of Observationes de Ortu, ac vegetatione Plantarum cum Novarum Stirpium historia iconibus illustrata. The genus Triumfetta in the Malvaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and has sometimes been listed as being in the family Tiliaceae. One source says the commemoration may also be for his brother Lelio Trionfetti (1647-1722), a professor of botany at Bologna. I have no explanation for why the generic epithet is spelled as it is. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Western Australia Plant Names and their Meanings by F.A. Sharr)

trollii: for Professor Dr. Carl (Karl) Troll (1899-1975), German geographer and botanist of Berlin who was commemorated with Commiphora trollii. He was a professor of geography at Berlin and then at Bonn, used aerial photos in his researches, coined the term 'landscape ecology,' was president of the International Geographical Union 1864-1967 and travelled extensively in northern Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama, East and South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. According to JSTOR he is considered the father of mountain geoecology. He was professor of geography and director of the Geographisches Institut in Bonn 1938-1966. . He was the younger brother of German botanist Wilhelm Julius Georg Hubertus Troll (1897-1978). The website Chrono-Biological Sketches gives the following history: "Carl Troll was one of the twentieth century's most influential physical geographers, both as an innovative thinker and researcher, and as perhaps the single most important person helping to get German geography--once by far the world's leading school of thought on the subject--back on track after the years of Nazi domination of that country. Troll was already a well-established scientist when he published his landmark 1939 paper introducing the concept and term Landschaftsoekologie, which became even better known in its English translation as "landscape ecology." Originally trained as a von Humboldt-influenced botanist, his interests, like Humboldt's, extended to most of the now recognized areas of physical geography, with a decided leaning toward phytogeographical and ecological subjects. He was especially known for his work in periglacial geomorphology, glaciology, high altitude studies, air-photo interpretation, microclimatology, soil structure, ecozonation, plant physiognomy, and, in general, for his systems-level approach to his subjects. Troll managed to survive the war years and in 1947 established at his own expense the journal Erdkunde, a leading geography title (he would later found several more titles). He left behind several monographic studies, and several hundred shorter works." The moss genus Trolliella which does not appear in southern Africa was named for him. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Chrono-Biological Sketches: Carl Toll; Wikipedia; JSTOR)

trothae/trothai: for Lothar von Trotha (1848-1920), German soldier rising to the rank of Lt. General in German South-West Africa (Namibia), responsible for the massacres of Herero and Nama peoples there during the war, for which the German government later apologized. He collected plants there and in Tanzania. He is commemorated with the former Zygophyllum trothai, which is now Z. rigidum, and the former Oldenlandia trothae, now Kohautia subverticillata. There was also a Hellmuth von Trotha who collected plants in Tanzania but I have no idea whether they were related, and I'm not sure whether the other taxa that formerly had trothae as the specific epithet such as Lycium trothae and Freyliniopsis trothae were named for either of these individuals. (Gunn & Codd)

truteri: for J. Truter (fl. 1961), a farmer in Brakfontein, Eastern Cape. Interestingly, both Delosperma truteri and Ruschia truteri were collected by Philip Albert Brand Van Breda, officer in charge of the Veld Reserve in Worcester, and both were collected in the Somerset East area, so perhaps they were found on Mr. Truter's farm. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

tuckii: for William Tuck 1824-1912), horticultural collector who worked in the garden of Joachim Brehm, who introduced the navel orange to South Africa, commemorated with Cyrtanthus tuckii. When he emigrated to Natal in 1849 or 1850, he survived a shipwreck off of Durban. He was in charge of the Grahamstown Botanic Garden from 1866 to 1868, after which he worked in the gold fields of Kimberly for several years. He finally settled in Grahamstown after travelling to Australia, Tasmania and England. (Elsa Pooley; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

tugwelliae: for Mrs. Anna Marie Krige Tugwell (1876-1966), University lecturer at South African College, plant collector in South Africa and old friend of Louisa Bolus. She was educated at the South African College and became a teacher,  married Mr. A.D.R. Tugwell, Registrar, South African College, 1913, became Head of the Arthurs Seat Women’s Hostel of the South African College, Head of the Hope Mills Women’s Hostel of the South African College and University of Cape Town 1917-1928, Head of the New Women’s Residence on the Rondebosch campus (which was later renamed Fuller Hall) 1928-1934. She is commemorated with Tritonia tugwelliae, Bijlia tugwelliae, Cylindrophyllum tugwelliae, and the former taxa Hesperantha tugwelliae (now synonymized to H. acuta) and Sceletium tugwelliae (now S. tortuosum). (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Cactus Art Nursery; Northants News; JSTOR; Register of Building Names, University of Cape Town)

Tulbaghia: for Ryk Tulbagh (1699-1771), Governor of the Cape Colony from 1751 to 1771, with whom Linnaeus corresponded. He joined the Dutch East India Company at the age of 16 and a year later sailed on the vessel Terhorst bound for South Africa. The town of Tulbagh in the Western Cape was named after him. The genus Tulbaghia in the Alliaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1771. Tulbagh also sent butterflies to Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; The A to Z of Plant Names by Allen Coombes)

turczaninowii: for Porphir Kiril Nikolai Stepanovitch Turczaninow (1796-1863), Russian botanist. After graduating from Kharkov University, he worked as a civil servant in St. Petersburg and quickly became interested in botany. In 1828 he was assigned an admininstrative position in Irkutsk and began collecting in the area of Lake Baikal. He opened a herbarium in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov but was prevented from further collecting due to physical injuries sustained in a fall. He was awarded the Demidov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg and wrote numerous papers. He is commemorated with Sisymbrium turczaninowii. (Wikipedia)

Turnera: for Rev. William Turner (c.1508-1568), British botanist, physician, herbalist, naturalist and zoologist, clergyman and traveler. He was physician to the Earl of Emden, Chaplain and physician to the Duke of Somerset, and twice Dean of Wells Cathedral. He was the author of Libellus de re herbaria novus, which was an early attempt to create a reliable list of English plants and animals. He also authored Avium praecipuarum, quarum Plinium et Aristotelum mentio est, brevis et succincta historia, which was the first printed book devoted entirely to birds. It was, however, A new herball, wherin are conteyned the names of herbes in three parts on which his fame rests, and which contains the first clear, systematic survey of English plants. The genus Turnera in the Turneraceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753 based on a previous description by Charles Plumier. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

turneri: for (1) Dawson Turner (1775-1858), whose area of interest is recorded by IPNI as mycology, bryophytes, algae and spermatophytes, and who collected the type specimen of Toninia turneri, now synonymized to T. aromatica, on the ruined walls of Trigby church near Yarmouth. (English Botany, Vol. 19, by Sir James Edward Smith, James Sowerby, and George Shaw; David Hollombe, pers. comm.); (2)  Ross C. Turner,  South African evolutuonary biologist and ecologist/botanist, lives in Cape Town, especially interested in Erica, commemorated with Erica turneri, received his MSC degree for studies on pollination of Erica hanekomii, co-author of "Evidence for Rodent Pollination in Erica hanekomii." (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

turneriana: for Mr. V.A. Turner who owned the farm named Varsrivier in Van Rhynsdorp, where the holotype of Antimima turneriana was collected by Philip Albert Brand van Breda in 1963. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

Turraea: possibly for Antonio Turra (1730-1796), Italian botanist and physician, minerologist, received degrees in medicine and philosophy from the University of Padua, author of Istoria del arbore della China, Florae italicae prodromus., and several other works. However the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture by L.H. Bailey (1917) says it's for Giorgio della Torre or Turra (1607-1688), physician and professor of botany at Padua, and this is repeated by Thomas H. Everett's Encyclopedia of Horticulture (1982) and other sources such as Trees and Shrubs of Mpumalanga, Sappi What's in a Name, Plants of Magnetic Island by Betsy Jackes, George Don's A General System of Gardening and Botany (1831), and Gledhill's Names of Plants. Apparently Linnaeus who published the name did not specify who it commemorated. The CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says: "Origin not very clear" but also says about the genus Turraeanthus "very likely for the Italian botanist and physician Antonio Turra." This is echoed by Flora of Southern Africa Vol. 18 (1963) by Robert Allen Dyer and L.E.W. Codd, Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society Vol. 2 (1968), Trees of Nigeria by Ronald William John Keay, and Linnaeus in Italy (2007) by Marco Beretta. Both genera were probably named for the same person, and either of these derivations could be the correct one. The genus Turraea in the Meliaceae was published in 1771 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus.

turrillii: for William Bertram Turrill (1890-1961), British botanist who worked at Kew (eventually made keeper of the herbarium and library), author of The Plant Life of the Balkan Peninsula (1929), editor Botanical Magazine, President of the British Ecological Society. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Cyperus turrillii.

tyrrhea: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Parmelia tyrrhea, with no information as to its derivation. It is by no means certain that it commemorates a person.

Tysonia/tysoniana/tysonianum/tysonii: for William Tyson (1851-1920), Jamaican-born South African botanist, plant collector, teacher and Fellow of the Linnean Society. He started studying medicine but had to give it up because of crippling arthritis in his hands. He worked for the Agricultural Department as librarian and sub-editor of the Agricultural Journal. He made a collection of marine algae which was donated to the Bolus Herbarium. The genus Tysonia in the Boraginaceae was published in 1896 by German-Australian botanist, physician and geographer Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, and William Tyson is also commemorated with many current species names in genera Scabiosa, Disa, Neobolusia, Habenaria, Disperis, Euryops, Helichrysum, Berkheya, Senecio, Lactuca, Xysmalobium, Argyrolobium, Jamesbrittenia, Stachys, Hesperantha, Dierama, Salvia, Cyphia, Dioscorea, Oxalis, Pelargonium, Kniphofia and many others that have been synonymized. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

Ugena: for Manuel Munõz de Ugena (Manuel Munõz y Matarranz) (1747-1807), Spanish botanical artist. Hugh Clarke adds: "[He was] court painter to Charles III of Spain who ruled Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759-1788. Munõz was a good friend of Casimiro Gómez de Ortega (1741-1818), Spanish physician and botanist and First Professor of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. Gómez published extensively on the new plant species collected during Spanish explorations of South America. Together, they authored the 2-vol. work Florae Hispanicae Delectus Florae, sive plantarum per Hispaniensis imperium Insigniorum nascentium icones sponte, et description (1791-1792)." Munõz Ugena did woodcuts for this volume. The genus Ugena in the Lygodiaceae or Schizaeaceae was published in 1801 by Spanish taxonomic botanist Antonio Jose Cavanilles.

uhligii: probably for Viktor Karl Uhlig (1857-1911), a German geologist at the University of Vienna who collected in Tanzania. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Carex uhligii, which was collected by someone named Uhlig in 1908 in Tanzania, and which has now been synonymized to Schoenoxiphium lehmannii. (Cyperaceae in Natal by K.D. Gordon-Gray, 1995)

ulbrichiana: probably for Oskar Eberhard Ulbrich (1879-1952), German professor, botanist and mycologist, student of Adolf Engler at the University of Berlin, plant name author and collector, and curator and professor at the Botanical Institute and Museum of the University of Berlin. In southern Africa there is the genus Crotalaria ulbrichiana, and it is my assumption that he is probably the one it was named for. He was also honored by the genus Ulbrichia which does not appear in southern Africa. According to Wikipedia he is commemorated with several other non-southern African taxa with the specific epithets ulbrichii, ulbrichiana and ulbrichianus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR; Wikipedia)

upingtoniae: there are several taxa that bear this specific epithet and all but one of them are in South Africa, including Hibiscus upingtoniae, the former Oligomeris upingtoniae (now O. dipetala) and Solanum upingtoniae (now S. tettense), and Peucedanum upingtoniae and Lefebvrea upingtoniae which are synonyms. I can't find any reference to anyone named Upington who might have been a botanist or plant collector. There is also a town of Upington in South Africa, although the 'ae' ending is not typically used for a geographical locality.

urbanskyana: for Josef Urbansky (1877-?), a seaman of the German South Polar Expedition of 1901-1903, commemorated with Porpidia urbanskaya, published by South African lichenologist Franklin Andrej Brusse. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Ursinia: for Johann Heinrich Ursinus of Regensburg (1608-1666), German cleric, theologian, botanist and author of Arboretum Biblicum, a description of botanical references in the Bible, and many other works. The genus Ursinia in the Asteraceae was published in 1791 by German botanist Joseph Gaertner. (Elsa Pooley; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; PlantzAfrica)

urvillei: for Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842), French naval officer, explorer and botanist who commanded the Astrolabe on a three-year circumnavigation of the world beginning in 1826 which brought back large collections of zoological, botanical and mineralogical reports. This was his second circumnavigation, the first having been aboard the hydrographic and botanical research vessel Coquille departing from France in 1822. He invented the terms Micronesia and Melanesia to distinguish those island groups from Polynesia. He later made a second equally significant voyage also on the Astrolabe including Antarctica, and eventually became President of the French Geographical Society. He discovered the Venus de Milo statue on the island of Milos in the Mediterranean, and was responsible for its purchase by the French government. He and his whole family died in a train disaster near Versailles. He is commemorated with the taxon Paspalum urvillei, which he discovered and collected. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Wikipedia; JSTOR)

uysiae: named by Louisa Bolus in 1931 for a Mrs. Uys, about whom I have no information, but who with a Mr. Buhr gave her a Gladiolus plant from the Nieuwoudtville area of Calvinia District which became Gladiolus uysiae. (Alice Notten, pers. comm.)

uysii: for Dr. Peter Uys, a doctor of medicine and an anesthetist, who collected Erica uysii in Bredasdorp, South Africa, in 1972. Thanks to Alice Notten at Kirstenbosch for this and the previous entry.

Vachellia: for Rev. George Harvey Vachell (1798-1839), born in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, and an 1821 graduate of Cambridge University, chaplain to the British East India Company's factory in Macao from 1828-1836 and a plant collector in China. He discovered several new taxa and W.J. Hooker and John Lindley received some of his collections. The genus Vachellia in the Fabaceae was published in 1834 by Scottish surgeon and botanist Robert Wight and Scottish botanist George Arnott Walker-Arnott. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Vahlia/vahlii: for Martin Henrichsen Vahl (1749-1804), Norwegian-born Danish botanist, traveler, pupil of Linnaeus, studied at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Uppsala, professor of botany, lecturer for the Society of Natural History in Copenhagen, elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, edited Flora Danica fasc. XVI-XXI (1787-1799), Symbolæ Botanicæ I-III (1790-1794), Eclogæ Americanæ I-IV (1796-1807) and Enumeratio Plantarum I-II (1804-1805), collected in Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Tunisia. His son, Jens Laurentius Moestue Vahl, was also a plant collector who worked in Italy, Greenland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, Norway Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands. The genus Vahlia in the Vahliaceae was published in 1782 by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg, and he is also commemorated in southern Africa with the former taxon Echium vahlii which has now been synonymized to Lobostemon glaber. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

vahrmeijeri: for Johannes Vahrmeijer (1942- ), Dutch-born economic botanist who settled in South Africa, worked at the Botanical Research Insttute, and collected there and in Botswana, Mozambique, and Namibia, collected in Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa, commemorated with Thesium vahrmeijeri and Brachystelma vahrmeijeri. He was particularly interested in poisonous plants and plants of survival value for military personnel. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

vaillantii: for Sébastien Vaillant (1669-1722), French botanist, surgeon and author of Sermo de structura florum (1718), who studied botany at the Jardin des Plantes under Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and and was employed there as a curator of living plants and then as sous-démonstrateur . He was apparently the first French botanist to argue for the existence of sexuality in plants. He built the first glass greenhouse in France and was a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His work had great influence on Carl Linnaeus who said of him: “He was a great observer, and every day I become more convinced that no one has been more skillful in establishing genera.” He was also the author of Botanicon parisiense (published posthumously by Herman Boerhaave and which introduced the terms stamen and ovary as they are used today) and Discours sur la structure des fleurs. He had an asthmatic condition and died prematurely from some pulmonary disease. He is commemorated with Crassula vaillantii and also by the genus Vaillantia which does not appear in southern Africa. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; JSTOR; Native Crassula in Italy by Massimo Afferni and Giuseppe Tavormina; Encyclopedia.com)

vainioi: for Edvard (Edward) August Vainio (1853-1929), Finnish mycologist and lichenologist, lecturer in botany at the University of Helsinki, professor and director of the botanical gardens at the university of Turku, Finland, made collecting trips to Lapland, Brazil and the Urals, commemorated with the fungus taxon Tricharia vainioi. His boyhood friend and future brother-in-law and noted plant geographer Johan Petter Norrlin was largely responsible for imbuing him with an interest in cryptograms, especially lichens. His first publication which was based on his own collections was the first on plant geography in the Finnish language. He was also the author of Monographia Cladoniarum which was a two-volume study of the lichens of Brazil and Lichenographia Jennica on the flora of Finland. He described in total about 1700 species of lichens that were new to science, and thus must be regarded certainly as one of the foremost lichenologists of his day. His final years were spent as curator of the cryptogamic herbarium at the University of Turku. (Flora Neotropica Issue 103, 2008; JSTOR)

Vallisneria: for Antonio Vallisneri (sometimes spelled as Vallisnieri) (1661-1730), Italian physician and botanist, naturalist, biologist, professor of medicine at the University of Padua, member of the Royal Society of London. He was one of the first scientists to advocate abandoning the Aristotelian approach to science in favor of the Galilean approach, and worked in the fields of biology, botany, veterinary medicine, hydrology and the new science of geology. Over his lefetime he collected numerous specimens of animals, minerals and other natural objects, and broke away from the tradition of using Latin in his discourses and used Italian instead. He was the author of On the Strange Origin of Many Insects, Origin of Fountains, which was a ground-breaking explanation of the origin of many springs and artesian wells, and Of marine Bodies found on Mountaintops, which was a study of how seashells and the remains of other marine organisms came to rest on the tops of mountains. The genus Vallisneria in the Hydrocharitaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; Answers.com; "Seashells on the mountains: Antonio Vallisneri, fossils, and the Republic of Letters," Doctoral Dissertation of Michael Doucette Cunningham, University of Connecticut)

Vallota: for Antoine Vallot (1594-1671), French botanist and physician, personal physician to King Louis XIV of France and Director of Jardin du Roi. When his royal patient contracted venereal disease at the age of 17, Vallot studied the resulting discharge and diagnosed it as a " 'weakness of the spermatic vessels' combined with long hours on horseback and too much violent exercise." The genus Vallota in the Amaryllidaceae was published by British botanist William Herbert in 1821 based on an earlier description by his countryman Richard Anthony Salisbury. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Green Pharmacy: The History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine by Barbara Griggs et. al.)

vanbalenii: for Jan C. van Balen, Dutch-born horticulturist, on the staff at Kew Gardens before coming to South Africa, Superintendent of Government Gardens in the Public Works Department, and then Assistant Director and Director of the Park Department in Johannesburg, South Africa, who first collected Aloe vanbalenii. (Gunn & Codd)

vanbredae/vanbredai: for Philip Albert Brand van Breda (1922- ), officer in charge of the Veld Reserve in Worcester, Western Cape. The taxa in southern Africa with one of these specific epithets are Ruschia vanbredai and the former Conophytum vanbredai (sometimes listed apparently incorrectly as vanbredae), now synonymized to C. globosum, Astridia vanbredai (now A. longifolia), Cheiridopsis vanbredai (now Ihlenfeldtia excavata), and Machairophyllum vanbredai (now M. bijliae). (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

vandeleurii: for Lt. Col. Crofton Bury Vandeleur (1867-1947), British officer who went to Sandhurst and was in the Scottish Rifles first in India and then served in the Anglo-Boer War. After being married in England, he went again to India and South Africa and finally to France where he served in WWI, being wounded and taken prisoner toward the end of 1914. He became the first British prisoner to escape the Germans, a feat no doubt aided by his ability to speak fluent German which he developed as a young man during the time he spent several years in Germany. After returning to service in France, he was wounded again in 1915, fairly seriously this time, and spent a long period in hospital. But he returned to service once again and eventually received the Distinguished Service Order. He collected east of Pretoria in the Transvaal, and is commemorated with Streptocarpus vandeleurii. (JSTOR; Website of the Cameronians or Scottish Rifles)

vandenberghenii: probably for Constant Vanden Berghen (1914-2004), Belgian professor of botany at the Catholic University of Lovain, long-standing employee at the National Botanical Garden of Belium, a major specialist in the field of African liverworts, co-author with Adrien Manga of Un Introduction á un Voyage en Casamance: Enampor, Un Village de Riziculteurs en Casamance, Au Sénégal (1999), a detailed description of the soil and vegetation of the Enampor region of southern Senegal, and of the first three editions of New Flora of Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and author of the first volume of Flora of Senegal, Genera des Lejeuneaceae, Étude sur la végétatieon des Grands Causses du Massif-Central France, Hépatiques épiphylles récoltées au Burundi pair Jose Lewalle, and a great many scientific articles such as "Contribution A L'Étude Des Espèces Africaines de Genre Metzgeria." He made extensive botanical trips to Tunisia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Ireland, Andorra, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, and Iceland. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Metzgeria vandenberghenii, now synonymized to M. consanguinea. It's curious to me that his name is Vanden Berghen rather than van den Berghen. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Geo-Eco-Trop, 2004; Wikipedia)

Vandenboschia: for Roelof Benjamin van den Bosch (1810-1862), Dutch physician and botanist, author of Hymenophyllaceae javanicae (1861) and Synopsis Hymenophyllacearum (1859), and one of several authors of Prodromus Florae Batavae (1850). Van den Bosch was a medical student at Leyden (1828-1837), where he obtained his doctorate. He became a physician in Goes, but found that he was also in high demand due to his botanical knowledge. In 1840, Julian Hendrik Molkenboer and Frans Dozy first began work on arranging and describing Asian (Indonesian) plant specimens at the Rijksherbarium, but were only able to continue work on its collection for a few years due to a loss of funding and had to carry on privately. On the death of Molkenboer in 1854 and Dozy in 1856, van den Bosch did his best to carry on their work in investigating and describing the moss collection further, and entered into a collaboration with Cornelius Marinus van der Sande Lacoste, who completed Bryologica javanica, a major work which described besides the already known species over three hundred new mosses, after van den Bosch's death in 1862. Van den Bosch was also a founding member of the Royal Dutch Botanical Society in 1845. The genus Vandenboschia in the Hymenophyllaceae was published in 1938 by American botanist and agriculturist Edwin Bingham Copeland. He is also commemorated with the hepatic genus Boschia Mont. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

vanderbergiae: for Miss M. van der Berg (fl. 1935), plant collector in South Africa, commemorated with Ruschia vanderbergiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

vanderbylii: for Paul Andries van der Bijl (Byl) (1888-1939), South African ecologist and plant pathologist, and a collector of succulents. He was on the staff of the Division of Plant Pathology in Pretoria, then in 1918 he was transferred to Durban as officer in charge of the Botanic Station and Natal Herbarium, to work on diseases of sugarcane and other tropical crops. In 1921 he was appointed Professor of Phytopathology in the newly formed Agricultural Faculty of Stellenbosch University, the first professor in this subject in South Africa, and built his department up from scratch to a leading place for teaching and research in phytopathology and mycology. He was the first professor of plant pathology in South Africa, and his department was also the first department of plant pathology in the British Commonwealth. In 1928 he became principal of the Stellenbosch Elsenburg Agricultural College, a post he held until his death. During his career he established one of the most extensive lichen collections ever obtained in South Africa, and after his death, the P.A. Van Der Bijl Herbarium was merged with the National Collection of Fungi (PREM). In 1928 he also published the first South African book dealing with diseases of plants. He is commemorated with Chiodecton vanderbylii and Paraparmelia vanderbylii. See also bylei/bylii. (South African Society of Plant Pathology; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

vanderietiae: for Mrs. M. van de Riet of Grahamstown, commemorated with Sarcocaulon vanderietiae, in whoe garden it was growing. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants by Urs Eggli; The Flowering Plants of Africa Vols. 46-47 by the Botanical Research Institute of South Africa)

vandermerwei: for (1) Frederick Ziervogel van der Merwe (1894-1968), South African medical inspector of schools in the Transvaal and Natal, plant collector particularly interested in Aloe and Scilla, also a collector of sheet music and compiler of a glossary of Afrikaans medical terms, and author of Mediese Woordeboek (1935) with J. Louw and Suid-Afrikaanse Musiekbibliografie (1958). He is commemorated with Euphorbia vandermerwei, Delosperma vandermerwei, and Eucomis vandermerwei), as well as the former Aloe vandermerwei (now synonymized to Aloe zebrina). (Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR); (2) N.J.S. van der Merwe (fl. 1929), commemorated with Gladiolus vandermerwei and Drosanthemum vandermerwei, and the former Ornithogalum vandermerwei (now synonymized to O. dubium). There are two other taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet, the former Ferraria vandermerwei (now F. crispa) and Cephalophyllum vandermerwei (now C. diversiphyllum), and since they were both collected in the same Swellendam area as the Gladiolus, Drosanthemum and Ornithogalum, it seems reasonable to suggest that they were also intended to honor N.J.S. Van der Merwe. There is an N.J. Van der Merwe listed as an author of several journal articles between 1964 and 2003, but this is the South African anthropologist Nikolaas Johannes van der Merwe, born in 1940. Also this appears to be a not uncommon name in South Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

vanderspuyiae: for Mrs. Melt van der Spuy, a resident of Piketberg, who provided flowering material of Watsonia vanderspuyiae for the botanical description by Louisa Bolus and for whom she named this species. (PlantzAfrica)

vanderwaltii: for Johannus Jacobus Adriaan van der Walt (1938-2003), lecturer in botany at the University of Zululand, professor and head of the Department of Botany at the University of Stellenbosch and head of the university botanical garden, and plant collector in South Africa and Namibia. He was a co-author of the three volume Pelargoniums of Southern Africa which featured the watercolor paintings of botanical artist Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst. Pelargonium vanderwaltii is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (Kew Bibliographic Databases; Gunn & Codd)

Vanheerdea/vanheerdei/Vanheerdia: for Pieter van Heerde (1893-1979), South African teacher, University lecturer in Cape Town, school principal at Springbok School in Namaqualand from 1926 until his retirement in 1952, and prolific plant collector. He propagated at the Hester Malan Nature Reserve. Vanheerdiain the Aizoaceae was published by South African botanist Louisa Bolus in 1938, but the name was apparently changed to Vanheerdea by German botanist Heidren Elsbeth Klara Osterwald Hartmann in 1992. Van Heerde is also commemorated with the taxa Peersia vanheerdei, Lampranthus vanheerdei, Astridia vanheerdei, Jensenobotrya vanheerdei, Ruschia vanheerdei, Conophytum vanheerdei, Namaquanthus vanheerdei, and former (now synonymized) taxa in genera Ophthalmophyllum, Sphalmanthus, Cheiridopsis, Conophyllum, Cephalophyllum and Eberlanzia. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

vanheurckii: for Henri Ferdinand van Heurck (1838-1909), Belgian industrialist, self-taught botanist and plant name author, Director of the Antwerp Botanic Garden, expert on diatoms, author of Prodrome de La Flore Des Algues Marines Des Iles Anglo-normandes (1908) and Synopsis des Diatomées de Belgique (1865), commemorated with Erica vanheurckii. (Ericas of South Africa by Dolf Schumann, Gerhard Kirsten and E.G.H. Oliver; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

vanjaarsveldii: for Ernst Jacobus van Jaarsveld (1953- ), South African horticulturist and plant collector, worked at Lowveld Botanic Garden, Nelspruit, and at Kirstenbosch, commemorated with Colchicum (formerly Androcymbium) vanjaarsveldii and Anginon jaarsveldii. (Gunn & Codd)

vanniekerkiae: for Grace van Niekerk (?-1983), South African teacher and botanist on the staff of the Bolus Herbarium, commemorated with Ruschia vanniekerkiae. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

vanputtenii: for Joost van Putten (fl. 1929), a farmer in South Africa, commemorated with Lampranthus vanputtenii. A mistake in spelling took place here and was later corrected by Louisa Bolus because she originally published several taxa with the specific epithet pittenii which were intended to commemorate van Putten, and Mesembryanthemum pittenii (now Lampranthus vanputtenii) was one of them. (JSTOR)

vanrensburgii: for Mr. A.D. van Rensburg (fl. 1953), plant collector who collected a number of taxa in 1952 and 1953, commemorated with Prenia vanrensburgii and Braunsia vanrensburgii. There are three van Rensburgs in Gunn & Codd, but none of them are A.D. van Rensburg. There are quite a few Van Rensburgs in the JSTOR listings, many of whom collected in South Africa, but again none of them are A.D. van Rensburg, yet under specimen records he is listed as the collector of Prenia vanrensburgii in 1952 and 1953. All four of the taxa with this specific epithet in the IPNI listings were published originally by Louisa Bolus. This is a bit of a mystery. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

vanrooyenii: for Mr. Pieter van Rooyen of Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal, well-known South African gardener who according to the authors, Gideon Francois Smith and Neil R. Crouch, "...stimulated and facilitated further taxonomic studies of this unique maculate aloe." He and his son Francois are Clivia experts and have an extensive collection. The species in question here is Aloe vanrooyenii, which is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

vansonii: for George van Son (1898-1967), Russian-born entomologist at the Transvaal Museum 1925-1967, worked mainly on butterflies, collected in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and was interested in particular in succulent plants. He was in the Russian navy as a cadet and witnessed the shooting of his father duriing the Russian revolution. He could speak and write six languages fluently. The taxon with this epithet which he is commemorated with is the former Caralluma vansonii, now synonymized to Orbea lutea, which he collected iin Botswana in 1930. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

vanthielii: for Jacques van Thiel (1941-2011), Dutch general practitioner and educationalist, Department of General Practice at Maastricht University, enthusiastic Anacampseros/Avonia specialist and noted explorer of these plants in Southern Africa. He is commemorated with Anacampseros vanthielii. This is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (Jacques van Thiel, pers. comm.)

Vanwykia: for Pieter van Wyk (1931-2006), South African botanist, ecologist, biologist, plant collector, pasture research officer in the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, head of the Department of Research and Communication of the National Parks Board of South Africa, and authgor of Trees of the Kruger National Park and Field Guide to the Trees of the Kruger National Park. The genus Vanwykia in the Loranthaceae was published in 1978 by American botanist Delbert Wiens. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

vanwykiana/vanwykii: for Abraham (Braam) Erasmus van Wyk (1952- ), South African plant taxonomist, Curator of the Herold Georg Wilhelm Johannes Schweikerdt Herbarium, University of Pretoria, author of Field Guide to Wild Flowers of the Highveld, Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa, A Photographic Guide to Wild Flowers of South Africa and How To Identify Trees in Southern Africa, and co-author with Gideon Smith of Aloes of Southern Africa. His floristic work has mainly been focused on KwaZulu-Natal, Pondoland, Maputaland (including southern Mozambique) and the northeastern Drakensberg Escarpment, and he is commemorated with Pavetta vanwykiana and Canthium vanwykii. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Gunn & Codd)

Vanzijlia/vanzijliae/vanzyliae: for Mrs. Dorothy Constantia van Zijl (1885-1937), South African plant collector. The genus Vanzijlia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1927 by South African botanist Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus. She is also commemorated with Babiana vanzijliae, Ixia vanzijliae, Lampranthus vanzijliae, and the former Carpobrotus vanzijliae (now C. acinaciformis) and Romulea vanzyliae (now R. subfistulosa). (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

vanzylii: for Gert H. van Zyl (fl. 1930-1932), postmaster at Pofadder in the Northern Cape, commemorated with Conophytum vanzylii, Antimima vanzylii, Dinteranthus vanzylii and Ihlenfeldtia vanzylii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

varderi: for an R. Varder, who collected Erica varderi near Grahamstown in South Africa in 1916, and took it to the Albany Museum Herbarium. Louisa Bolus said it was an undescribed species and there is no record of any follow-up having been done. May have been a hybrid. This is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (JSTOR; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

Vascoa: for Vasco da Gama (1460/1469–1524), Portuguese explorer who pioneered the first sailing route from Europe to India in 1498-1499. While this trip was commercially successful, more than half his men died (mainly of scurvy). He also failed to secure a commercial treaty with the king of Calicut. Subsequently war broke out between Portugal and Calicut. In 1502, Da Gama led a fleet of 15 ships and 800 men to India during which he inflicted barbarous acts of cruelty upon competing traders and local inhabitants, e.g. he looted a ship with over 400 Muslim pilgrims including 50 women, locked them in the ship and burnt them to death. In 1524 he returned to Portuguese India as Governor and Viceroy but died shortly after from malaria. The genus Vascoa in the Fabaceae was published in 1825 by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. (A General History of the Dichlamydeous Plants by George Don)

vasselotii: for Médéric de Vasselot de Regnier (1837-1912), forest conservator, commemorated with Disa vasselotii which is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (JSTOR)

vaupeliana: for Friedrich Karl Johann Vaupel (1876-1927), German botanist and explorer, collected cacti in Mexico and Samoa, commemorated with the former Lapeirousia vaupeliana (now synonymized to L. bainesii). (Wikipedia)

Vellozia: for Joaquim Velloso de Miranda (1733-1815), Portuguese botanist, plant collector mostly in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil. He was partly responsible for the creation of the botanic gardens of Ouri Preto in 1798. The genus Vellozia in the Velloziaceae was published in 1788 by Italian naturalist Domingo (Domenico) Vandelli, under whom Velloso de Miranda studied. Vandelli also sent samples to Linnaeus of plants collected in Brazil by Velloso de Miranda. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR; Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, Vol. 13)

Veltheimia: for August Ferdinand Graf von Veltheim (1741-1801), German mineralogist, geologist and patron of botany, financial advisor to the Duke of Braunschweig, inspector of mines in the Hartz Mountains, owner of an important scientific library, and later appointed by Catherine the Great as general inspector of mines and saltworks in the western regions of the Russian empire. He was the first to correctly attribute the origins of granite to a volcanic mechanism, and of his proposed geologic history of the Earth, only the first volume, Etwas über die Bildung des Basalts, was published in 1789. The genus Veltheimia in the Hyacinthaceae was published by German botanist and physician Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch in 1771. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Curtis Schuli's Biobibliography of Mineralogy)

ventenatii/ventenatiana: for Étienne Pierre Ventenat (1757-1808), French botanist and clergyman, canon in the Order of Sainte-Geneviève and employed by them as head librarian, author of Monographie du genre Tilleul., Choix de Plantes, and Jardin de la Malmaison, or his younger brother Louis Ventenat (1765-1794), Catholic priest, naturalist and botanical collector, for whom the species Peperomia ventenatii (which does not appear in southern Africa) was named by Dutch botanist Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miguel. After the French Revolution, Étienne Pierre Ventenat left the church and became more interested in botany, an interest that had been fostered by an earlier trip to visit botanical gardens in England. He was taught how to describe plants correctly by Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle. He also translated Jussieu's Genera Plantarum from Latin into French. His brother Louis served as chaplain and naturalist on the mission that was sent out to search for the French mariner and explorer Jean-François de La Pérouse (1741-1788), whose expedition had vanished after leaving Australia and of whom there had been no news for five years. After being captured by Dutch authorities, and imprisoned in the Dutch East Indies, he went to the Ile-de-France (Mauritius) where he died. His collections were preserved by Benjamin Delessert at an herbarium in Geneva. There are two former taxa in southern Africa with one of these specific epithets, Castalis ventenatii, now Dimorphotheca tragus, and Agathosma ventenatiana, now A. corymbosa, and it is my assumption that they honor one or the other of the above brothers.(Botanophilia in Eighteenth Century France by R.L. Williams; Wikipedia)

venteri: for (1) Dr. Stephanus (Fanie) Venter (1953- ), South African botanist, former curator of the herbarium at the University of the North (now called University of Limpopo), author of Making the Most of Indigenous Trees with Julye-Ann Venter and Trees of Botswana with Moffat P. Setshogo, director of his own botanical and environmental consultancy firm, has collected in all the countries of southern Africa and elsewhere, commemorated with Euphorbia venteri, Kleinia venteri, and Plectranthus venteri. (Dr. Fanie Venter, pers. comm.); (2) J.D. (Kobus?) Venter (fl. 1997), amateur botanist and collector, Haworthia enthusiast, described several species of Haworthias with Steven A. Hammer, commemorated with Haworthia venteri. (JSTOR)

venusta: for Grace Violet Britten (1904-1987), botanical assistant at the Albany Museum Herbarium at Grahamstown, and enthusiastic cultivator of indigenous plants, especially succulents. She was a cousin of Lilian Louisa Britten (1886-1952), and is commemorated with Haworthia venusta in addition to species with the epithets britteniae and gratiae. 'Venusta' is Latin for 'beautiful' or 'graceful,' and that is probably the derivation for the other taxa that have this specific epithet. (Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Women and Cacti)

verae: for Vera Haehnlein, who collected Ornithogalum verae at age 17. This taxon was originally described by the Muller-Doblies in 1996 from a discovery made near Sutherland on the Roggeveld Escarpment in the western Karoo. There are a number of other taxa with this specific epithet but I suspect that they derive from the Latin verus, "true or real." (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

verdickii: for Edgard (Antoine Auguste) Verdick (fl. 1899-1903), Belgian-born plant collector, author of Les Premiers jours au Katanga, commemorated with the former taxa Cassia verdickii (now Senna didymobotrya), Markhamia verdickii (now M. obtusifolia) and Trichodesma verdickii (now T. embacense). (Bulletin du Jardin botanique de l'état, Bruxelles, 1910; JSTOR)

verdoornia: possibly for Frans Verdoorn (1906-1984), botanist and biohistorian, born in Amsterdam, Director of the Biohistorical Institute at the University of Utrecht, editor of Chronica Botanica, although the following entry is perhaps more likely. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Tulbaghia verdoornia, and it is the only one with this epithet.

verdoorniae: for Dr. Inez Clare Verdoorn (1896-1989), South African botanist at the Botanical Research Institute, Pretoria. Vol. 28 of the Flowering Plants of Africa is dedicated to her. She is commemorated with the genus Inezia, and the taxon Chasmatophyllum verdoorniae and the former taxon Senecio verdoorniae (now S. lydenburgensis), also possibly with Crinum verdoorniae, Eugenia verdoorniae and Salsola verdoorniae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

Verea: for James Vere (1739-1803) of Kensington-Gore, a wealthy silk merchant who had a large collection of plants, some very rare, and also collected botanical art which was displayed in Curtis' Magazine and elsewhere. The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Volume 49, indicates that he had ‘literary talent’. Seemingly he was a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society but he was not at the founders meeting. The genus Verea in the Crassulaceae was published in 1799 by German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow.

verekeri: for Louis Stanhope Amos Vereker (1874-1948), succulent plant collector of Zimbabwe who collected the type specimen of Huernia verekeri. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Flora of Zimbabwe)

vermeuleniae: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Mesembryanthemum vermeuleniae (now synonymized to Ebracteola wilmaniae), with no information as to its derivation except that the "iae" ending suggests that the person honored with it is a woman. There is a Pieter Vermeulen (1899-1981), Dutch botanist and plant collector in South Africa and elsewhere, who may be related. (JSTOR)

vermoesenii: for Francois (Frans) Marie Camille Vermoesen (1882-1922), Belgian lichenologist, studied plant diseases in the Belgian Congo, appointed mycologist for plant diseases in the Belgian colonial ministry, made a study tour to India and the Dutch East Indies, Director of the Eala Botanic Garden in what is now Zaire, curator at the Rijksplantentuin in Brussels, author of Manuel des essences forestières du Congo belge, commemorated with Acacia vermoesenii. (JSTOR)

vernayi: for Arthur Stannard Vernay (1877-1960), British-born antiques collector who came to the United States and created a business selling antiques and providing restoration and interior design services, including the installation of period paneled rooms. He had an interest in collecting animal specimens for the American Museum of Natural History and went on several collecting expeditions to India, Tibet, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, and Burma and led an expedition to Nyasaland in 1946 on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Kaffrarian Museum of South Africa, during which many hundreds of botanical and zoological specimens were collected. There are two former taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet, Ottelia vernayi (now O. ulvifolia) and Aspilia vernayi (now A. mossambicensis), and it is my presumption that they honor him. He is also commemorated with the rodent genus Vernaya. (Wikipedia)

Vernonia: for William Vernon (1666/1667-1711), British botanist, entomologist and bryologist at Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Society, who collected plants in Maryland in 1698. After returning to England, he collected in Kent, specializing in mosses. He helped John Ray with the cryptogamic sections of his Historia Plantarum. The genus Vernonia in the Asteraceae was published in 1791 by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

Veronica: for Saint Veronica, one of the women who accompanied Christ to Calvary, and offered him a towel on which he left an imprint of his face. The genus Veronica in the Scrophulariaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

verreauxii: for Jules Pierre Verreaux (1807-1873), French botanist, ornithologist, and taxidermist of the French natural history museum who studied anatomy under Georges Cuvier. He was a professional collector of and trader in natural history specimens for the family business which was the foremost company dealing in such specimens in the 19th century and provided much material for the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. He visited South Africa where he helped Andrew Smith found the South African Museum in Cape Town. He also travelled to Australia and China. His brother was the naturalist Jean Baptiste Édouard Verreaux who joined him on his second trip to South Africa, and his uncle was the naturalist Pierre Delalande whom he accompanied to the Cape at the age of 11, bringing back among some 13,000 specimens the first hippopotamus skeleton acquired by the Paris Museum. His third trip to the Cape was in the company of his other brother Alexis who remained there for the remainder of his life. Jules is commemorated with Elegia verreauxii, and the former taxa Craspedolepis verreauxii (now Restio filiformis) and Atriplex verreauxii (now A. patula). His name is also on several birds and mammals. (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR; Wikipedia)

versfeldii: there is a JSTOR specimen record for Watsonia versfeldii having been collected by a W. Versfeld near Piquetberg in South Africa either in 1914 or 1915, so I assume this is the person it is named for. The 1973 work Cape Floral Kingdom by Conrad Lighton states that "In 1917 Walter Versfeld asked his sister Jessie to forward a parcel of pink and white Piketberg Mountain watsonias to Miss Joan Davison of Kirstenbosch." A website called Piket-Bo-Berg, A Gem at the Top of the Magnificent Versfeld Pass contains pictures of Walter Versfeld on horseback and a map showing the location of the Versfeld Lodge which was Walter Versfeld's home.

veseyfitzgeraldii: for Leslie Desmond Edward Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald (1910-1974), Irish-born entomologist, ornithologist, conservationist, and plant collector. Wikipedia says "In 1964 he became an ecologist and conservationist in the National parks of Tanzania where he experimented with an electric fence in the Arusha National Park. He further went on ornithological, entomological, and botanical surveys to Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, the Mascarenes, the Seychelles, and Trinidad and Tobago. His plant collections are on display in the Natural History Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Botanische Staatssammlung Munich, the NU Herbarium, University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, and in the National Herbarium and Botanic Garden of Avondale, Harare, Zimbabwe." He was the author of On the Vegetation of Seychelles, Central African Grasslands and other publications. He is commmemorated with the taxon Scleria veseyfitzgeraldii. (Wikipedia)

Vicoa: the genus Vicoa in the Asteraceae was published in 1829 by French botanist and naturalist Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini. Cassini did not really explain the derivation of the name. Hugh Clarke has suggested the following: "After Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Vico or Vigo (1688-1744), Italian philosopher and historian, Professor in Rhetoric at the University of Naples (1699), later royal historiographer to Charles III, King of Naples (1734). His major work was Scienza Nuova (The New Science, 1725), revised 1730. He describes ‘history ‘as the account of the birth and development of human societies and their institutions, not of individual biographies. Each era in history goes through phases that have distinct characteristics that recur throughout history, always in the same sequence, but do not exactly replicate themselves, as the social and political character of each age is subject to the modifications and circumstances of each new era.' Vico is regarded by many as the first modern historian." Apparently he gave a clue when he said "We propose the name of Vicoa, reminiscent of the famous author of the new science." (Wikipedia; Annales des sciences naturelles; comprenant la physiologie et végétale, l'anatomie comparée des deux règnes, la zoologie, la botanique, la minéralogue et la géologie, Vol, 17:418, 1829)

victoris: for Victor Stanley Peers (1874-1940), Australian botanist, civil servant and amateur archeologist who came to South Africa and was wounded during the Boer War, later emigrated to the Cape and was employed by South African Railways, found ancient skeletons at a location since named Peers Cave, collected succulents and other plants, died in Cape Town, South Africa, commemorated with Ruschia victoris and the former taxon Conophytum victoris (now C. pageae), as well as other taxa with the specific epithet peersii and the genus Peersia which does not appear in southern Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

Vieusseuxia: for M. Vieusseux, Swiss botanist and physician from Geneva. The genus Vieusseuxia in the Iridaceae was published in 1766 by his friend the Swiss-born physician and botanist Daniel Delaroche. This person is likely to be Gaspard Vieusseux (1746-1814), who did pioneer work with neurological disorders and was an early advocate of vaccinations for treatment against smallpox. He was the author of De la saignée, et de son usage dans la plupart des maladies. (Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture by Peter Henderson; The Cyclopaedia, Vol. 37 by Abraham Rees; Wikipedia)

Vigna: for Domenico Vigna (?-1647), Italian botanist, professor of botany and Director of the Botanical Garden of Pisa who wrote a commentary on Theophrastus in 1625. The genus Vigna in the Fabaceae was published in 1824 by Italian naturalist Gaetano Savi. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Western Australia Plant Names and their Meanings)

viguieri: for either (1) Louis Guillaume Alexandre Viguier (1790-1867), a French physician and botanist, commemorated with the genus Viguiera which does not appear in southern Africa and several taxa with this specific epithet Wikipedia); or, more likely, (2) René Viguier (1880-1931), French botanist and paleontologist specializing in mycology, professor at the University of Caen, interested in plants of Madagascar, and definitely honored by the name Euphorbia viguieri which does not appear in southern Africa. In addition to Madagascar he collected in France, the Comoros, Algeria and Tunisia. The type and holotype specimens of Bryum viguieri were collected in Madagascar. (Flowers of India; JSTOR)

Villarsia: for Dominique Villars (1745-1814), French botanist and physician, professor of botany and medicine at the University of Strasbourg, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Strasbourg, and author of Prospectus de l'Histoire des plantes du Dauphiné. The genus Villarsia in the Menyanthaceae was published in 1803 by French botanist Étienne Pierre Ventenat. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

villaumei: probably for Rév. Père Edouard S.J. Villaume (1849-1920) who collected bryophytes in Madagascar. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Lejeunea villaumei.

villetiae: for Elizabeth Maria (Mrs. C.T.) Villet, the wife of the Dr. C.T. Villet referred to in the next entry, commemorated with Stapelia villetiae. (Women and Cacti; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

villetii: for Dr. A.C.T. Villet (fl. 1936-1956), a collector of succulents in South Africa. The holotype for this species was collected in 1936 and the isotype in 1941. There is confusion regarding this name. The JSTOR website lists an A.C.J. Villet (fl. 1924-1937), plant collector in South Africa. The previous entry from Women and Cacti refers to a Mrs. C.T Villet who Eggli & Newton have as the wife of A.C.T. Villet. Gunn & Codd refer to Dr. C.T. Villet after whom Caralluma villetii (now synonymized to Quaqua inversa) is named. Dr. C.T. Villet's great-grandfather was Carolus Johannes Villet (1817-1877), flower painter and dealer in natural history artifacts, and his great-great-grandfather was Charles Mathurin Villet(te) (1778-1856), French by birth, a teacher, promoter of stage productions, and dealer in natural history materials born in Santo Domingo who came to the Cape in 1797. There are JSTOR specimen records (date unspecified) of Lithops villetii being collected by a C.J. Villet, although another source says this taxon was collected by Dr. C.T. Villet in 1938 and named for him. So the bottom line is that this specific epithet probably is for Dr. C.T. Villet of Worcester, and all the different JSTOR listing of C.T., A.C.T., C.J., and A.C.J. Villet refer to the same person. Other taxa in southern Africa with this epithet which are commemorative of him are Stomatium villetii, and the former taxa Conophytum villetii (now C. pageae), Ophthalmophyllum villetii (now Conophytum concordans), Argyroderma villetii (now A. subalbum), Ruschia villetii (now R. dualis), and Aloinopsis villetii (now A. luckhoffii). (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

villiersii: for Mr. H.L. de Villiers (fl. 1932-1959), commemorated with Lampranthus villiersii and Erepsia villiersii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

vincentii: for Vincent de Vries who was a Haworthia collector in South Africa. The taxon in question here is Haworthia vincentii, listed by IPNI as being a taxon published in 2004 by Ingo Breuer, but which POSA does not list as a taxon in southern Africa and neither Tropicos nor Kew's Plant List list as a valid species at all. There have been many such Haworthia publications which have turned out not to be valid. (All You Want To Know About Haworthias)

Virgilia: for Virgil (70 BC-19 BC), the greatest of Roman poets and author of three major works, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. The genus Virgilia in the Fabaceae was published in 1808 by French clergyman, botanist and explorer Jean Louis Marie Poiret, and I have no idea why he would have chosen to honor the poet in this fashion since he had no obvious connection with botany or natural history. (PlantzAfrica)

visseri: for (1) Mr. Floors Visser, who collected a plant in 1947 and sent a sample of it to Professor Compton at Kirstenbosch who in turn realized that it was an undescribed species of Freylinia. In 1954 Mr. Visser became aware that the population of these rare plants had been or was on the verge of being destroyed due to a field being ploughed, and he quickly collected several of the already ploughed-up plants and planted them in his own garden, where two survived. Cuttings from these plants were cultivated at Kirstenbosch in 1983, and 20 of these plants were re-planted in their original location in 1992 by the Botanical Society Search and Rescue Team. Thus Mr. Visser saved Freylinia visseri from possible extinction and is honored with its name. (PlantzAfrica); (2) Johannes Hendrik Visser (1931-1989), South African plant physiologist, Senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria, Professor of Botany at the University of Stellenbosch, author of South African Parasitic Flowering Plants, commemorated with Cytinus visseri. P.M. Burgoyne in his Novon article "A New Species of Cytinus from South Africa and Swaziland" says that "Cytinus visseri was first noted by Visser (1981) as a new species, but was never described by him because of his untimely death..." (IPNI; Novon, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2006; JSTOR)

Vittia: for Dale Hadley Vitt (1944-?), American bryologist, plant collector and peatland expert. Hugh Clarke adds: "He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (1970) and became a biology professor at the University of Alberta (1970-2000). He was director of the Devonian Botanic Garden from 1990-2000 and was Chair of the department and Professor of Plant Biology at Southern Illinois University from 2000-2011. Currently he is Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at SIU. He specializes, inter alia, in moss systematics, and community dynamics and development of peatlands. He has authored four books and more than 250 papers and carried out plant collections in many countries. He was editor-in-chief of The Bryologist from 1994-2004 and received the University Outstanding Scholar Award from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in 2010." Some works of his include Mosses, Lichens and Ferns of Northwest North America (1988), The Bryophyte Flora of the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea (1995), Compendium of Bryology (1985), and A Revision of the Genus Orthotrichum in North America North of Mexico (1973). He was also co-author of Plants of the Western Boreal Forest and Aspen Parkland (1995). The genus Vittia in the Amblystegiaceae was published in 1987 by Polish bryologist Ryszard Ochyra. (JSTOR; WorldCat)

Vlokia/vlokii: for Johannes Hendrik Jacobus Vlok (1957- ), active plant collector, Research Forester at Saasveld, and Environmental Advisor to the Cape Department of Nature Conservation. He collected a specimen of Freylinia vlokii on the Rooiberg together with Mr. Mike Viviers, and is also commemorated with Erica vlokii, Rafnia vlokii, Coelidium vlokii, Romulea vlokii, Moraea vlokii, Gasteria vlokii, Haworthia vlokii, and Anderbergia vlokii. The genus Vlokia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1994 by American botanist Steven A. Hammer. (PlantzAfrica; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.; Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

Vogelia: sources such as the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names say this generic epithet was named for the German botanist and plant collector Julius Rudolph Theodor Vogel (1812-1841), however the genus Vogelia in the Plumbaginaceae was published in 1792 by Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck, before J.R.T. Vogel was born, so that derivation cannot be correct. Johann Friedrich Gmelin published the name Vogelia in a different family (Burmanniaceae) the year prior in Systema Naturae ed. 13. A German physician and naturalist/chemist whose 'Practisches mineralsystem' is heavily cited in Volume 3 (Regnum Lapideum) of Systema Naturae was Rudolph Augustin Vogel (1724-1774), and this is one possibility for the derivation of the name. A perhaps more likely derivation is Benedict Christian Vogel (1745-1825), a professor of botany at the University of Altdorf and co-author of the great 18th-century botanical plate work Plantae selectae, which Carl Linnaeus described as 'one of the miracles of our century' due to its beautiful illustrations by Georg Dionysius Ehret. It is perhaps by some coincidence that Friedrich Kasimir Medikus published the genus Vogelia in the Brassicaceae (which does not appear in southern Africa) also in 1792. The book Glossary of the British Flora published in 1950 by H. Gilbert Carter does specifically credit the genus Vogelia to Benedict Christian Vogel. For the time being, this remains uncertain.

vogelii: for Julius Rudolph Theodor Vogel (1812-1841), German traveller, explorer, botanist and plant collector, brother of explorer and plant collector Eduard Vogel, and co-director of the Botanical Gardens of Bonn, commemorated with Ficus vogelii. This is the only one of the taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet that I can confirm as being named for J.R.T. Vogel. The other taxa include Tephrosia vogelii (published 1849), Alectra vogelii (published 1846) and the former Androcymbium vogellii (now Colchicum exiguum), Amphithalea vogelii (now A. tortilis), and Cyclopia vogelii (now C. buxifolia). He worked at the University of Berlin and then at the University of Bonn, where he took over the job of Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck after his death. In 1841 he joined the disastrous and unsuccessful Niger Expedition sponsored by the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade Society and for the Civilization of Africa and commanded by Henry Dundas Trotter and William Allen bound for the Niger and Benue Rivers in what is now Nigeria. He was the chief naturalist and his assistant was the botanist John Ansell after whom the genus Ansellia was named. Approximately 1/3 of the European members of the crews of the three ships involved died of fevers, most likely malaria, and Theodor Vogel was one of them at a very young age. (JSTOR; Wikipedia)

vogelpoelii: for Dr. Louis Vogelpoel (1922-2005), South African physician, cardiologist and horticultural scholar and researcher, considered an expert on Ericas and South African orchids especially genus Disa, collected the isotype of Erica vogelpoelii in the Bredasdorp mountains in 1972. He was born in Lourenco Marques, Portuguese East Africa, and died in Cape Town. He spent two years at the National Heart Hospital in London and then was a part-time physician and lecturer in the department of medicine and the cardiac clinic at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. (JSTOR)

vogtsiae: for Marie Murray Vogts (née Neethling) (1908-1998), a well-known and much respected South African Protea specialist, author of the first popular book on the Proteaceae of South Africa called Proteas, Know Them and Grow Them. She was "Senior Professional Officer in the Department of Agriculture Technical Services in 1960, first in Pretoria under the Botanical Research Institute and then from 1965 at Betty's Bay under the Fruit and Food Technology Research Institute, until her retirement in 1975." She is commemorated with Protea vogtsiae which is the only taxon with this specific epithet. (Protea Atlas Project; Backyard; Botanary; Gunn & Codd)

vogtsii: for Mr. Lewis R. Vogts (fl. 1930), South African administrator and succulent plant horticulturist, commemorated with Aloe vogtsii, Delosperma vogtsii, and the former taxa Gladiolus vogtsii (now G. antholyzoides) and Huernia vogtsii (now H. stapelioides). (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

volckameri: possibly for Johann Georg Volckamer the Younger (1662-1744), German physician and botanist, and a wealthy merchant of Nuremberg who published Flora Noribergensis with 16 illustrations of Cape plants, or for his father Johann Georg Volckamer (1616-1693), a physician and scientist, or for his brother Johann Christoph Volkamer (1644-1720), also a botanist and author of Nürnbergische Hesperides. One of these people is the person for whom the genus Volckameria (which does not appear in southern Africa) is named. There is also in southern Africa a taxon formerly named Mesembryanthemum volckameri, which has now been synonymized to M. aitonis, but I'm not sure who this epithet commemorates. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia; JSTOR)

volkartii: for George Volkart from Switzerland, friend of botanist John Gossweiler who published the taxon Huernia volkartii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)
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volkensii: for Georg Ludwig August Volkens (1855-1917), German botanist, traveller and botanical researcher in Egypt and Arabia, assistant and collaborator of A. Engler at the Botanical Museum in Berlin, Curator of the Botanical Gardens in Berlin, collected in Mozambique, South Africa, the Mariana and Caroline Islands, Java, Mt. Kilimanjaro and elsewhere, commemorated with Eragrostis volkensii, Polygala volkensii, Gardenia volkensii, and the former taxa Bauhinia volkensii (now B. tomentosa), Ficus volkensii (now F. natalensis), Strychnos volkensii (now S. spinosa) and Tenaris volkensii (now Brachystelma rubellum). His original herbarium was mostly destroyed by World War II bombing. He is also commemorated with the genus Volkensinia which does not appear in southern Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; Flora of Zimbabwe; JSTOR)

Volkiella/volkii: for Otto Heinrich Volk (1903-2000), a professor who went to Namibia and then taught botany to Johan Wilhelm Heinrich Giess, R.G. Strey, H. Kinges, and H.J. Wiss in an internment camp during WWII. He was a German/South African pharmacist who lived in Namibia during the war, and later a visiting lecturer at the University of Kabul (1950-1952) during which time he collected 1600 specimens, also Director of the Institute of Pharmacognosy in Wüerzburg. He made at least seven trips to Namibia from 1956 to 1985 working on pplant geography and collecting some 6000 specimens. He became particularly interested in the genus Riccia. The genus Volkiella in the Cyperaceae was published in 1953 by German botanists Herman Merxmüller and Gerald Czech. He is also commemorated with Caloplaca volkii, Lasiopogon volkii, Riccia volkii, Searsia volkii (formerly Rhus volkii), and the former taxa Lippia volkii (now L. pearsonii) and Lithops volkii (now L. pseudotruncatella). (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd; Discover Life)

volkmanniae: for Miss Margareta Volkmann (fl. 1928), owner of the farm Auros in Namibia, commemorated with Euphorbia volkmanniae and Eriospermum volkmanniae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

vorsteri: named in 1994 by Karen Louise Wilson. Gunn & Codd include two Vorsters, (1) South African botanist Pieter Johannes Vorster (1945- ), on staff at the National Herbarium, Pretoria, worked on nomenclature of South African Poaceae, Botany Department at the University of Stellenbosch, and a plant name author, and (2) Thomas Butler Vorster (1948- ), a South African cytogeneticist, on staff at Botanical Research Institute 1971-1979. Of the two, P.J. Vorster seems the more likely, and in fact a Spanish Wikipedia article does say that he is commemorated with Cyperus vorsteri, which is the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet. Given the closeness of the years of their birth, it's possible that the two are related.

vosseleri: possibly for Dr. Julius Vosseler (1861-1933), German zoologist and entomologist, Director of the Hamburg Zoo, member of the Leopoldina and an expedition to Algeria, Tunisia and Asia Minor, worked as an entomologist and tropical plant collector in German East Africa. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Pittosporum vosseleri, now synonymized to P. viridiflorum.

Vossia: for Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826), German poet known for translations of Homer. The genus Vossia in the Poaceae was published in 1836 by Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich and British doctor, naturalist and botanist William Griffith. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

vossii: for Mr. Harold Voss (fl. 1936), commemorated with Aloe vossii. The type specimen was collected by Dr. Gilbert Westacott Reynolds in 1935 on Schyffontein farm in Soutpansberg, but it was first collected by Mr. Voss in 1927 and named for him by Reynolds. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; "Endemic Flora of the Soutpansberg" by Norbert Hahn)

Vulpia: for Johann Samuel Vulpius (1760-1846), German chemist/physicist, pharmacist and amateur botanist who investigated the flora of Baden. The genus Vulpia in the Poaceae was published in 1805 by German botanist Carl Christian Gmelin. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Wachendorfia: for Evert Jacob van Wachendorff (1702-1758), a Dutch professor of medicine, botany and chemistry at Utrecht University, author of Horti ultrajectini index (1747) and Oratio botanico-medica de plantis (1743) and one of the first directors of the Botanic Gardens of Utrecht. The genus Wachendorfia in the Haemodoraceae was published in 1757 by Dutch botanist and physician Johannes Burman. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

wachteri: for Willem Hendrik Wachter (1882-1946), Dutch botanist and bryologist, commemorated with Aristida wachteri. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

wageneri: for G.E.H. Wagener, who collected the type specimen of Euryops wageneri in the Matjiesrivier area of the Cederberg. I found a photo of the headstone of a Gert Ernst Hendrik Wagener (1848-1918) which states that he signed his name in the Stadsdaal Cave, and the Stadsdaal Cave is in the Cedarberg. However the Euryops was collected in 1943 so cannot have been collected by him. I also found a photo of the headstone of a Gerrit E.H. Wagener (1891-1944) who could be his son or another relative. Both of these headstones are from cemetaries in the Matjiesrivier area, so this is possibly the G.E.H. Wagener who collected the Euryops. There are JSTOR records for five other taxa collected by G.E.H. Wagener in 1943 or 1944 all in the Matjiesrivier area of Clanwilliam Division, so apparently he did not do any collecting anywhere else, and his collecting seems to have been confined to those years. (PlantzAfrica; JSTOR)

wageri: for (1) Horace Athelstan Wager (1876-1951), British-born South African bryologist who came to SA in 1903, professor of botany and zoology at Transvaal University College (now Pretoria University), main interest was in mosses and ferns, author of A Check List of the Mosses of South Africa (1917), commemorated with Fabronia wageri, Fissidens wageri, and Sematophyllum wageri; (2) Vincent Athelstan Wager (1904-1989), son of Horace Athelstan Wager, South African plant pathologist, founder of the Natal Wildlife Society, author of Vegetable Diseases in South Africa, Diseases and Pests of Garden Flowers, All About Tomatoes, and The Frogs of South Africa. He was employed in the Division of Botany and Plant Pathology at Pretoria University (1926-1940) and later transferred to the Natal Herbarium (1940-1969), There is a JSTOR specimen record of Sphaerothylax wageri (= S. algiformis) being collected by V.A. Wager in 1934 and it was published in 1938 so this one commemorates the son. There are two other taxa, Oligotrichum wageri published in 1969 based on a basionym named Psilopilum wageri published in 1920, almost certainly named for the father, and Gymnostomum wageri, published in 1979, about which I can only speculate. (JSTOR; Tropicos)

wahlbergii: for Johan August Wahlberg (1810-1856), Swedish naturalist, forestry engineer and explorer, brother of botanist Prof. Pehr Fredrick Wahlberg (1800-1877), studied forestry and agronomy, joined the Office of Land Survey and was appointed an engineer in 1836, becoming an instructor at the Land Survey College. He met the zoologist William John Burchell in London and learned collecting techniques from him, and arrived in Cape Town in 1839. He travelled in southern Africa between 1839 and 1856, collecting in Natal, the Transvaal and Zululand, and sending thousands of natural history specimens back to Sweden. He was exploring the headwaters of the Limpopo River when he was killed by a wounded elephant during a hunting expedition . He is commemorated with Entada wahlbergii and the former taxon Euphorbia wahlenbergii (now synonymized to E. epicyparissias). His name is also on the Wahlberg's eagle, Aquila wahlbergi, Wahlberg's zebra (Equus burchellii wahlbergi), and Wahlberg's epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus wahlbergi), as well as a number of other species. (Wikipedia; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

Wahlenbergia: for George Wahlenberg of Uppsala (1780-1851), Swedish maturalist leading expert on Scandinavian mountain flora. He was born in Kroppa, Värmland County. Wahlenberg enrolled at Uppsala University in 1792 and received a  doctorate in medicine in 1806. He was appointed as botanices demonstrator in 1814, and professor of medicine and botany in 1829, succeeding Carl Peter Thunberg. He was the last holder of the undivided chair that in the previous century had been held by Linnaeus. He studied homeopathy and introduced it into Sweden. Wahlenberg made his greatest contributions in the field of plant geography and published, among other things the Flora lapponica (1812) and other works on the plant world of northernmost Sweden. Swedish provincial floras in the full sense of the word begin with his. Flora Upsaliensis is considered a masterpiece of the genre. He was among the first major scholars to contribute to the plant taxonomy and geography of the High Tatra Mountains. He came to the Tatras, a range lying between Slovakia and Poland, on behalf of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences in order to systematically explore the rich flora of the central Carpathians and compare it with the flora of some of the Swedish mountains and the Austrian Alps. He worked in the High and Low Tatras and in the Great Fatra until 1813. The result of his work in the Tatras is the Flora Carpatorum Principalium (1814), which describes some 1345 plant species. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1808. The genus Wahlenbergia in the Campanulaceae was published in 1821 by German physician and botanist Albrecht Wilhelm Roth based on a previous description by German botanist and mycologist Heinrich Adolph Schrader. The genus Wahlenbergia was published by Heinrich Adolph Schrader in 1821. There is also a genus Wahlenbergia in the Rubiaceae named for Wahlenberg but it does not appear in South Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

waillyi: for M. de Wailly (fl. 1936-1937) who collected Pycreus waillyi in 1937 in Mali and the Sudan. He also collected in Guinea and Senegal. (JSTOR)

wainii: for Dr. Edvard August Vainio/Wainio (1853-1929), Finnish lichenologist, author of Lichenes insularum Philippinarum in 4 vol. (1909-1923) and co-author of Contributions to the Knowledge of the Vegetation of the Canary Islands. The taxon in southern Africa with this name is the lichen Parmotrema wainii. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

wakefieldii: for Rev. Thomas Wakefield (1836-1901), Methodist minister in Kenya for 27 years who translated the Bible into native languages, explorer, geographical pioneer, and plant collector who sent samples of Albuca wakefieldii (which has now been synonymized to A. abyssinica) to Kew. He is also commemorated with the former Ipomoea wakefieldii (now I. albivenia), which he collected in Kenya in 1878, the former Strychnos wakefieldii (now S. madagascariensis) collected also in Kenya in 1884, and also the former genus Eulophia wakefieldii which along with Lissochilus wakefieldii is a synonym of Eulophia speciosa, collected by T. Wakefield in Kenya in 1878. (Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Vol. 105, 1879; JSTOR; Society for the History of Discoveries Abstract of Papers 2007)

Walafrida: for Walahfrid Strabo (aka Walahfrid der von Reichenau) (c.809-849), German Benedictine monk at the Monastery of Reichenau in Alemania, poet, politician, diplomat and theologian, author of Hortulus. Strabo means 'cross-eyed' in Latin so he was called the Squinter priest or Walafrid the Squinter. The genus Walafrida in the Scrophulariaceae was published in 1837 by German botanist Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

walgateae: for Marion Meason Macnae (née Walgate) (1914-?), English-born botanist who emigrated to South Africa in 1920, lecturer in botany at the University of Cape Town, assistant at the Charles Moss Herbarium of the University of the Witwatersrand where her husband W. Macnae was professor, commemorated with Lampranthus walgateae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR; Women and Cacti)

walkeria: probably for Mr. Joseph Walker of Liverpool, mentioned in Curtis's Botanical Magazine as having a large collection of plants at Stockwell.  The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Erica walkeria. Ted Oliver says that "The taxon was published by Henry Charles Andrews in Colored Engravings of Heaths. Ted Oliver says that "In most cases he gave no derivation and most likely picked them off the labels in nurseries or private collections where he obtained the plants for painting." (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

wallacei: the taxon former Schizoglossum wallacei (now synonymized to S. nitidum) was collected by someone named Wallace in 1892 in Namibia. The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, Vol. 33, has a reference to a Rev. Wallace in connection with Schizoglossum. (JSTOR)

walleri/Walleria/walleriana: for Rev. Horace Waller (1833-1896), British botanist, plant collector and missionary in Central Africa, member of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa under Bishop Mackenzie from 1861 to 1863, member of Livingstone's Zambesi expedition, and editor of two volumes of his last journals, commemorated with Jumellea walleri, Eulophia walleri and Impatiens walleriana, and also with the genus Walleria in the Tecophilaeaceae which was published in 1864 by British physician and naturalist John Kirk. He had a close relationship both with Livingston and also with Charles George Gordon, Governor-General of the Sudan, and most of his contemporary East African explorers. He was Rector of Twywell, Northamptonshire, from 1874 to 1895. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Les Orchidées du genre Jumellea; Orchids of Malawi by I.F. La Croix, E.A.S La Croix and T.M. La Croix; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

walliana: for Eric Torsten Selim Wall (1871-1959), plant collector in South Africa, Rhodesia, Uganda, Jamaica, Norway, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Canada, the U.S., Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Israel, Syria and Turkey. He travelled with Adolf Hjalmar Frederick Hafström in a car driven by the South African botanist John Phillip Harrison Acocks on their extensive botanical explorations in South Africa and Rhodesia. Dimorphotheca walliana was collected by him at Gordons Bay, South Africa, in 1938. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

wallichii: for Dr. Nathaniel Wallich (born Nathan ben Wulff) (1786-1854), Danish physician and botanist who made extensive collections of plants from Asia (India and Malaya) and South Africa, founder and first curator of the Oriental Museum of the Asiatic Society (now called the Indian Museum), Superintendent of the East India Company's Botanic Garden at Calcutta and professor of botany at Calcutta Medical College, friend of Sir Stamford Raffles and travelled to Singapore at his bequest to design the Botanical Gardens, although it is unclear how much he actually did there. A major work of his was Plantae Asiaticae Rariores (3 vols., 1830-1832) and he was also the author of Tentamen Flora Nepalensis Illustratae. He had many taxa named for him including Tylecodon wallichii, Ischyrolepis wallichii and the former taxa Tephrosia wallichii (now T. purpurea), Widdringtonia wallichii (now W. nodiflora) and Spatella wallichii (now S. incurva). He met Ecklon and Zeyher in Cape Town and also the botanical artist Arabella Elizabeth Roupell, whom he assisted in the publication of her Specimens of the Flora of South Africa by a Lady. He is commemorated with two genera named Wallichia (one in the Arecaceae and one in the Sterculiaceae), neither of which appear in southern Africa. His son was the doctor, marine biologist and plant collector in India, Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha George Charles Wallich (1815-1899). (Gunn & Codd)

Wallinia: possibly for Georg/Jöran Wallin the Younger (1686-1760), Swedish bishop and antiquarian, librarian at the University Library at Uppsala and professor of theology there, Bishop of Göteborg, corresponded with Linnaeus. The genus Wallinia in the Lophiocarpaceae was published in 1849 by French naturalist Christian Horace Bénédict Alfred Moquin-Tandon. The taxon Wallinia polystachya is considered a synonym of Lophiocarpus polystachyus. There is also an American biologist named Ivan E. Wallin whose name is on a genus of fishes, but he doesn't seem to have any connection with botany.

walshii: for Mr. Albert Edward Walsh (1853-1930) who first collected Agapanthus walshii at the Steenbras Railway Station in 1918. He was born in Britain and emigrated to South Africa in 1877, and became manager of the Port Elizabeth branch of B.G. Lennon Ltd, moved to Cape Town in 1902, inerested in horticulture. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

walteri/walteriana/walterorum: for Heinrich (Karl) Walter (1898-1989), German-Russian geobotanist, soil scientist, traveller and plant collector who collected Colchicum walteri in Namibia in 1953. He was a lecturer and then Associate Professor of Botany at the University of Heidelberg, later Director of the Botanical Institute and Garden of the Institute of Technology (now University) in Stuttgart. He was the author of The Basics of Plant Life and Its Significance for Humans. He and his wife Erna Walter (née Schenck) (1893-?), daughter of botanist Heinrich Schenck, collected jointly on trips to eastern and southern Africa, mainly what is now Namibia, and were honored jointly with the name Euryops walterorum. Gunn & Codd say that Heinrich is commemorated with Acacia walteri (now A. nebrownii). The taxa Aristida walteri (now Stipagrostis fastigiata), Mollugo walteri, Xanthoparmelia walteri, Eragrostis walteri, and Crinum walteri (now C. minimum) were collected by both, but since they did collect together, it is difficult to say whether it was intended that these and other taxa such as Colchicum walteri and Portulaca walteriana (now P. quadrifida) should honor one or the other or both, or someone else. Heinrich Walter also travelled in Anatolia, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina. (Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

waltersii: for Ian Basil Walters (1917-1983), dental surgeon, bomber pilot, flight instructor in the R.A.F. during World War II, and plant collector mostly in the Western Cape after giving up his medical practice due to illness, commemorated with the former taxon Lebeckia waltersii, now Polhillia obsoleta. A foreign Wikipedia article credits this taxon to Stuart Max Walters (1920-2005), British botanist, herbarium curator, deacon, author and Director of the University of Cambridge Botanical Garden, however I have found that when these foreign Wikipedia sites list eponymous derivations, they are frequently incorrect. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

Waltheria: for Augustin Friedrich Walther (1688-1746), German anatomist, botanist and physician, professor of pathology and author of Designatio plantarum quas hortus AF Waltheri complectitur, Director of the Leipzig Botanical Gardens and Rector of the University of Leipzig. The genus Waltheria in the Malvaceae (Sterculiaceae) was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

waltoniae: for a Miss A. Walton (fl. 1923) who collected Orthopterum waltoniae near Grahamstown. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

Warburgia: for Dr. Otto Warburg (1859-1938), German botanist and industiral agriculture expert who was born in Hamburg. He lectured in botany at the University in Berlin and was also the author of numerous botanical papers. He was President of the World Zionist Congress which sought a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. He was the author of the three-volume Die Pflanzenwelt based on his four year expedition to Southern and Southeastern Asia, an expedition from which he brought back a large collection of plant specimens that were later donated to the Royal Botanical Museum in Berlin, and co-founder and editor of the journal Der Tropenpflanzer. He had an interest in economic plants especially as related to the German colonies. He was a founding director of the Agricultural Experimental Station in Tel Aviv, which later became the Institute of Agriculture and Natural History and subsequently became part of the Faculty of Science of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was also Chairman of the Department of Botany and founder of the botanical garden of the Hebrew University. The genus Warburgia in the Canellaceae was published in 1895 by German botanist Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler. He is also commemorated with the genera Warburgina and Warburgiella which do not appear in southern Africa. (PlantzAfrica; Wikipedia; Botanischer Zionismus: Otto Warburg (1859-1938) und die Anfänge institutionalisierter Naturwissenschaften in "Erez Israel" by Frank Leimkugel; JSTOR)

Wardia: for Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868), British-born physician interested in botany and entomology, created the first 'terrarium,' a sealed glass container for growing ferns and other plants without exposure to ambient air which came to be known as Wardian Cases. They were used extensively for transport of plants back to England. One of the people who used them most successfully was Joseph Dalton Hooker. The orchid craze of the Victorian age was made possible by these terraria, rubber trees were shipped from Brazil to Malaya and Sri Lanka to create the British colonial rubber industry, the Chinese banana was introduced into Fiji in Wardian Cases, and 20,000 tea plants were shipped from Shanghai to the Assam region of India where much of today's finests teas are grown. He also used these cases for rearing butterflies, worked on microscopy, and helped to develop the Chelsea Physic Garden. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and a fellow of the Royal Society. The Digital Library and Archives of Virginia Tech University credits the genus Wardia (along with Kingdon-wardia and Wardaster) to Francis Kingdon Ward (1885-1958), British explorer in Asia, geographer, ethnologist, photographer, professional plant-hunter and author, however the genus Wardia, a genus of mosses in the Wardiaceae, was published in 1837 by British botanists William Henry Harvey and William Jackson Hooker, and Francis Kingdon Ward had not been born yet. (PlantExplorers.com; Wikipedia; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

wardii: for Cecil James Ward (1926-1959), South African ecologist , author of The Plant Ecology of the Isipingo Beach Area, Natal, South Africa (Masters thesis at University of Natal), commemorated with Nesaea wardii and the former taxon Salacia wardii, now S. leptoclada. (JSTOR)

warmingii/warmingiana: for Johannes Eugenius (Eugen) Bülow Warming (1841-1924), Danish botanist and a main founding figure of the scientific discipline of ecology, wrote the first textbook (1895) on plant ecology, taught the first university course in ecology and gave the concept its meaning and content. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen (1885–1911) and wrote a pioneer work in his field, Plantesamfund (1895), which, rewritten and enlarged, appeared in English as Oecology of Plants (1909). He also wrote A Handbook of Systematic Botany and many textbooks on botany and plant geography which were translated into several languages and were immensely influential at their time and later. He was a major figure in the science of botany. He is commemorated with Ledermanniella warmingiana and the former taxa Leiothylax warmingii and Dicraeia warmingii, both of which are now synonyms of Letestuella tisserantii. He is also commemorated with the orchid genus Warmingia which does not appear in southern Africa. R.J. Goodland in his The tropical origin of ecology: Eugen Warming’s jubilee (1975) said “If one individual can be singled out to be honoured as the founder of ecology, Warming should gain precedence.” (JSTOR; Wikipedia; Infoplease; Podostemaceae: Institute of Systematic Botany University of Zurich)

Warneckea/warneckei: for Otto Warnecke (1872/1873-?), German plant collector around the early 20th century, gardener in Togo, commemorated with the former taxa Erythrina warneckei (now E. abyssinica) and Tiliacora warneckei (now T. funifera). The genus Warneckea in the Melastomataceae was published in 1904 by German botanist Ernest Friedrich Gilg. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

warnstorfii: probably for either (1) Carl Friedrich Warnstorf (1837-1921), German bryologist, author of at least 100 journal articles (most likely); or (2) his son Johannes (1866-?), also a collector of bryophytes. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Metzgeria warnstorfii, now synonymized to M. madagassa. (Lexikon Deutschsprachiger Bryologen, Vol. 1, 2001, by Jan-Peter Frahm and Jens Eggers)

watermeyeri: for a certain Mr. E.B. Watermeyer (fl. 1916-1931), collector of succulents in the Van Rhynsdorp area, farmer and land surveyor of the. Nieuwoudtville district, sent specimens to Hermann Wilhelm Rudolf Marloth, commemorated with Lampranthus watermeyeri, Aridaria watermeyeri, Antimima watermeyeri, Tritonia watermeyeri, Gladiolus watermeyeri, Bokkeveldia watermeyeri, Strumaria watermeyeri, and the former taxon Cephalophyllum watermeyeri, now synonymized to Jordaaniella dubia, also probably for the former taxon Monilaria watermeyeri, now synonymized to Dicrocaulon microstigma. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR; Indigenous Bulb Association of South Africa)

watkinsonii: for a Mr. H. Watkinson of the Transvaal Forest Department. He is commemorated with the former taxon Eulophia watkinsonii, published in 1913 by British botanist Robert Allen Rolfe, and now synonymized to E. hians var. inaequalis. Information about him is confusing because according to David Hollombe "the published letter concerning his collections is attributed to J. S. Watkinson, and Transvaal Dept. of Agriculture publications list him as T. S. Watkinson. [The Transvaal Agricultural Journal, Vol. 2, 1904, also refers to an F.S. Watkinson of Leeuwkill Vineyard]. He was Thomas Samuel Watkinson, who died at Cairn Siding near Barberton in 1917 (he may have been born in England in 1874)." (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Watsonia/watsonius: named by British botanist Philip Miller of Chelsea for his friend Sir William Watson (1715–1787), a London physician apothecary, botanist, horticulturist and naturalist, Fellow of the Royal Society, Trustee of the British Museum and member of the Royal College of Physicians. He helped to introduce the ideas of Carl Linnaeus into England. The genus Watsonia in the Iridaceae was published in 1758 by British botanist Philip Miller. I have been unable to confirm the fact (and I only assume it to be the case) that the taxon Gladiolus watsonius is also named for William Watson. It was published in 1784 by Carl Peter Thunberg, which would have been three years before Watson's death. In addition to the genus Watsonia, the journal Watsonia, subtitled "Journal & Proceedings of the Botanical Society of the British Isles" was formed in 1949 and named in his honor, not after as is sometimes stated the British botanist and phrenologist Hewitt Cottrell Watson (1804-1881). He is remembered also for his studies of electricity, especially those conducted with the Leyden jar. He was knighted in 1786 shortly before his death. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

wattii: for James Duff Watt (1789-1837), Assistant Commissary General to the Forces. (Sparaxis wattii)

wattii: for Dr. James Shaw Watt (1906-2002), Scots-born plant collector, moved to South Africa with his parents in 1906, then to Namibia in 1929. He was Director of Agriculture in the South-West Africa government until his retirement in 1969. He was also Vice-Chairman of the Nature Conservation Board of South-West Africa. He is commemorated with Combretum wattii, and Sphaeranthus wattii. (JSTOR)

wawreana: for Heinrich Wawra (Ritter von Fernsee) (1831-1887), German/Austrian botanist, naturalist and ship's surgeon who published a series of botanical papers from 1872 to 1875 as Beitriige zur Flora der hawai'schen Inseln about his collections in Hawaii. Wawra collected on several around-the-world expeditions as well as in Brazil accompanying European royalty, and wrote Les Broméliacées brésiliennes (1881), and Itinera principum S. Coburgi (1883-1888). He is commemorated with Pertusaria wawreana. (An Annotated Catalogue of the Generic Names of the Bromeliaceae; Gunn & Codd)
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wealei: for James Weale (1838-1911), Oxford-trained British farmer, amateur naturalist and correspondent with Charles Darwin especially on the subject of the pollination of orchids. He named the species Bonatea darwinii for his friend. He emigrated to South Africa and collected both botanical and zoological materials. He is commemorated with the taxon Disperis wealei. (Elsa Pooley; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

Webbia/webbiana: for Philip Barker Webb (1793-1854), British botanist and first person to collect in the Tetuan Mountains of Morocco, also collected extensively on the Canary Islands from 1828 to 1830 and co-authored L'Histoire Naturelle des Iles Canaries in 9 volumes, the text of which took 20 years to complete. The genus Webbia in the Asteraceae was published in 1843 by German physician and botanist Carl Heinrich 'Bipontinus' Schultz. He is also commemorated with the taxon Arachniodes webbiana. (Wikipedia; Flora of Zimbabwe)

Webera: for Georg Heinrich Weber (1752-1828), German physician, botanist and Professor at the University of Kiel, known for his work on lichens, algae, and bryophytes. The genus Webera in the Rubiaceae was originally published in 1791 by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, but it has since been synonymized to Tarenna. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

weberi: for William Alfred Weber (1918- ), American lichenologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder, founder and former curator of the University of Colorado Herbarium Museum, author of Rocky Mountain Flora, Catalogue of the Lichens of Australia, The King of Colorado Botany: Charles Christopher Parry, co-author of Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope, Colorado Flora: Western Slope, Bryophytes of Colorado, and over 50 publications, Fellow of the Linnean Society, commemorated with Xanthoparmelia weberi (formerly Parmelia weberi). There is also a Lithops weberi in southern Africa, which may or may not have been named for him. (JSTOR)

weberlingiorum: for Focko Weberling (1926-2009) and Dorothea (Bauer) Weberling (1928-1988), German botanists, commemorated with Albuca weberlingiorum (formerly Ornithogalum weberlingiorum) and almost certainly also for the former taxon Hessea weberlingiorum which is now synonymized to Hessea stellaris. Professor Focko Weberling is the author of Morphology of Flowers and Inflorescences (1989) and co-author of the textbook Pflanzensystematik. He was the head of the department of botany at the University of Ulm. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Websteria: for George W. Webster (1833-1914), American botanist and farmer. The genus Websteria in the Cyperaceae was published in 1887 by American botanist and physician Samuel Hart Wright. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Wedelia: for Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645-1731), German physician and botanist, professor of medicine at Jena and physician, defender of alchemy and astrology. The genus Wedelia in the Asteraceae was published in 1760 by Dutch chemist and botanist Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

weigangiana: for Mr. Weigang (fl. 1923), about whom I have no information, commemorated with Leipoldtia weigangiana. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Weihea: for Carl (Karl) Ernst August Weihe (1779-1834), German botanist and physician, batologist (i.e. person who studies brambles), described approximately 160 new species and established a small botanical garden at Mennighüffen. He was a collaborator of the taxonomist, botanist, entomologist and Professor of Natural History Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck, and did important work with the genus Rubus. With Nees von Esenbeck he produced Rubi Germanici descripti et illustrati, a monograph of German brambles. The genus Weihea in the Rhizophoraceae was published in 1825 by German botanist and physician Curt (Kurt) Polycarp Joachim Sprengel. There was also a genus Weihea published in the Iridaceae by Ecklon in 1827 (now considered a synonym of Geissorhiza) that may also be named for him. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Weinmannia: for Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1741), German pharmacist and botanist, appointed Hospital Apothecary in Regensburg, city assessor 1725-1733, established a small botanical garden and published Catalogus Alphabetico ordine exhibens Pharmaca. The Missouri Botanical Garden Library Rare Books website says: "Weinmann’s major creation was Phytanthoza iconographia (1737-1745), a great project which comprised eight folio volumes with over a thousand hand-colored engravings of several thousand plants [text by Regensburg physician Dr. Johann Georg Nicolaus Dieterichs and his son Ludwig Michael Dieterichs]. The first artist employed by Weinmann was none other than Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770) who would become one of the foremost floral illustrators of the eighteenth century. When he was introduced to Weinmann in 1728, he had no employment and was so poor that he had not been able to pay his river passage from Ulm to Regensburg, but had worked it off by taking turns at the oars. When Weinmann saw examples of Ehret’s work, he hired him to draw a thousand illustrations in a year’s time for which he would be paid fifty thaler. He was also given room and board and lived in the Weinmann house with the apothecary apprentices. At the end of a year, the artist had completed half of the assignment, and Weinmann, claiming that the contract was unfulfilled, gave him twenty thaler and sent him on his way. Several years later, Ehret brought a suit against his former employer in order to obtain compensation, but Weinmann claimed that Ehret had deserted him, and the suit failed. In spite of these early difficulties, the latter’s career was filled with success stories on the Continent and in England where he had many wealthy patrons." This work was the first important botanical publication to utilize colour engraved prints, and though vast in scope was not without its detractors and subject to serious criticisms, valuable and memorable perhaps more from an aesthetic standpoint than a scientific one. The genus Weinmannia in the Cunoniaceae was published in 1759 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Rare Books from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library)

Weissia: for Friedrich Wilhelm (Fridericus Guilielmus) Weiss (1744-1826), German bryologist and lichenologist of Göttingen, author of Plantae cryptogamicae florae gottingensis. The genus Weissia in the Pottiaceae was published in 1801 by German botanist Johann Hedwig. (Flora of North America; Ohio University Bryophyte Web Page)

weisseana: for Max Weiss (1874-?), commemorated with Vernonia weisseana . (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

weissianum/weissii: for Professor Frederick Ernest Weiss (1865-1953), British botanist, President of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Royal Society, Professor of Botany at Manchester University, travelled in the Karoo, Transvaal and Natal while on a trip to South Africa in 1905, commemorated with the former taxa Crassula weissii (now C. umbella) and Anthericum weissianum (now Trachyandra falcata). (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR)

wellandii: for Welland Cowley (1945- ), South African engineer and nurseryman, owner of Cape Flora Nursery which specializes in breeding and exporting Clivias and Strelitzias, discoverer of Cyrtanthus wellandii, keenly interest in conservation and eradication of alien species taking over the fynbos. (Welland Cowley, pers. comm.; "The discovery of Cyrtanthus wellandii - A morning hike leads to the discovery of a new species of Cyrtanthus." by Welland Cowley, 2000)

Wellstedia: probably for James Raimond Wellsted (1805-1842), British naval officer, surveyor and traveller, officer of the East India Company's surveying ship Palinurus in the Red Sea, fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and author of Travels in Arabia in 2 vols. (1838), Memoir on the island of Socotra and Travels to the City of The Caliphs Along the Shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean (1840). In 1836 he "succumbed to fever and 'in a fit of delirium he discharged both barrels of his gun into his mouth, but the balls passing upwards only inflicted two ghastly wounds in the upper jaw'." After retiring he lived in a mental health facility until his death at the age of 37. The genus Wellstedia in the Boraginaceae was published in 1884 by Scottish botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

Welwitschia/welwitschii: named for Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch (1806-1872), Austrian botanist, explorer and medical doctor who discovered Welwitschia mirabilis in 1859 in the Namib Desert of southern Angola. The story goes that he was so overcome by his find that he knelt down next to it and simply stared! Welwitsch sent the first material of Welwitschia to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of Kew, in 1862. Hooker described it in the family Welwitschiaceae and named it in 1862 in honor of Welwitsch, despite the fact that Welwitsch recommended that it be named Tumboa, its native Angolan name. It is a unique plant and has the longest-lived leaves (1500-2000 years) in the plant kingdom. Welwitsch was born at Maria Saal in the Duchy of Carinthia, Austrian Empire. His father was a wealthy local judicial official and town councilor of Salzburg. He grew up speaking German like his mother and received a good education including studies in botany. His father led long walks in the woods and helped him identify plants. Despite an obvious interest and facility for the natural sciences, his father nevertheless steered him into he attending the Faculty of Law at Vienna University. Frederick’s will held out however and he found himself studying medicine and botany in Vienna and working as a physician in the Austrian provinces of Carniola and Moravia, although he was cut off from his family’s wealth. His interest in the plant kingdom, where he discovered a number of plants hitherto unknown, was so great that in 1839 he abandoned the medical profession altogether. After the mayor of Vienna awarded him at the age of 28 a prize for a paper on the cryptogamic flora of southern Austria, realising that his son was flourishing in his self-chosen field, he welcomed him back into the fold. He worked as a travelling tutor for a noble family before he graduated in 1836, and then was commissioned by the Unio Itineraria, a German scientific society in Württemberg, to collect in the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and to remit specimens. In 1839 he left Austria never to return. He arrived in Lisbon but his journey onward was delayed by bad weather. He never reached the Azores, but instead spent the time collecting thousands of specimens, learning Portuguese, and ended up remaining in Portugal for 14 years. He sent some 56,000 specimens back to the Unio Itineraria. He was the author of Some notes upon the cryptogamic portion of the plants collected in Portugal (1853). During this time he managed the botanical gardens both at Coimbra and Lisbon, and supervised the Duke of Palmella's gardens throughout the country. He became friends with the King, Pedro V, and when the government decided to send a naturalist to explore their territory in present day Angola, Welwitsch was the first name that came to mind. He arrived in the capital of Angola in 1853. He spent nine years there struggling with tripocal diseases and an insufficient salary which forced him to sell duplicate specimens to London. He published an important contribution to the flora of Angola while in Africa: Apontamentos phyto-geographicos sobre a Flora da Provincia de Angola (1857). It was while he was in Angola that he discovered the bizarre plant that bears his name, a plant that has only a pair of leaves that can live for many hundreds of years. He also discovered Rhipsalis baccifera which is the only cactus species occurring outside the New World and which was likely transported to Africa either by migratory birds, floating vegetation, or on early ships. He returned to Portugal in 1861, but decided to go to England to study his 10,000 specimens at Kew and the British Museum. He also had a zoological collection of 3,000 specimens. Although he was assisted by Hooker, who was head of Kew, his relationship there deteriorated. They were not satisfied with his level of publication, although he did release Fungi angolense in 1868 and his one particularly substantial work, the Sertum Angolense (1870). His funding was cut off, and after a fire nearly destroyed his specimens, repeated bouts of illness and the pressures of poverty assailed him, and he died in 1872. Controversies ensued between Kew and the Portuguese government but were finally settled, and his specimens were a vital resource for the authors of the Flora of Tropical Africa at the British Museum with some 1,000 types having since been identified in his collection. He was buried in Welwitsch was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery. He is also commemorated with specific epithets in many genera including Protea, Alectra, Sporobolus, Anthospermum, Disa, Eulophia, Odontella, Utricularia, Polygala, Wolfiella, Asystasia, Petalidium, Oncocalyx, Schoenobryum, Acacia, Balanites, Ipomoea, Marcelliopsis, Eriocaulon, Swertia, Corallocarpus, Dactyliandra, Momordica, Isoetes, Scleria, Kyllinga and many others that have since been synonymized. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; JSTOR; Flora of Zimbabwe; Gunn & Codd)

wendlandiana/wendlandii: for (1) Hermann Wendland (1825-1903) of Hanover, German botanist and horticulturist, commemorated with Streptocarpus wendlandii. In 1870 he became the Director of the Royal Gardens at Herrenhausen. He was particularly interested in and was a noted authority on palms, author of a major monograph on the family Arecaceae, naming some 130 species of palms, and having his name associated with more palm genera than any other botanist. He became a major figure in the botany of Central America, and is credited with having brought many now familiar house plants into cultivation for the first time. He is the author of Index palmarum, cyclanthearum, pandanearum, cycadearum, quae in hortis europaeis coluntur published in 1854. He is also commemorated with the South American palm genus Wendlandiella which does not appear in southern Africa. (JSTOR; Wikipedia); (2) either Johann Christoph Wendland (1755-1828), grandfather of Hermann Wendland, or Heinrich Ludolph Wendland (1792-1869), Hermann's father. Johann Christoph was a botanist and horticulturist, was a gardener and then inspector at the Herrenhausen Gardens at Herrenhausen, and author of several works including Hortus Herrenhusanus, Botanische Beobachtungen nebst einigen neuen Gattungen und Arten, and Collectio plantarum tam exoticarum quam indigenarum. He is commemorated with the genus Wendlandia which does not appear in southern Africa, and he published a good deal on Ericas which he grew at Herrenhausen. Heinrich Ludolph was the author of Commentatio de Acacias aphyllii in which he published a number of Acacia species, and became Director of Herrenhausen Gardens at Herrenhausen. There are two taxa in southern Africa with the specific epithet wendlandiana, Erica wendlandiana, published in 1834, and the former Stapelia wendlandiana (now Orbea verrucosa), and since Johann Christoph published on Ericas, he is likely the honoree for the Erica. The Stapelia was published in 1820 and could have been named for either one. (Technische Universitat Darmstadt; Wikipedia; Palm and Cycad Societies of Australia; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

wentzeliana: for Frau Elizabeth Wentzel-Heckmann (1833-1914), commemorated with the former taxon Indigofera wentzeliana (now synonymized to I. hilaris). (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin)

wercklei: for Carlos Wercklé (1860-1924), an eccentric German horticulturist who obtained a significant collection of ferns and orchids, contributed to the knowledge of the flora of Costa Rica, commemorated with Agave wercklei. Wikipedia describes him as French and born in Alsace. He is also commemorated with the genera Werckleocereus and Wercklea which do not appear in southern Africa. (Taxon, Vol. 52, No. 3, Aug. 2003; JSTOR; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

werneri: for Werner Triebner (fl. c.1950), South African farmer, son of Wilhelm Triebner of Windhoek, commemorated with Lithops werneri. (Lithops: Flowering Stones; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

wesselsii: for Dr. Dirk C.J. Wessels (1950- ), South African lichenologist, Department of Botany, University of the North, commemorated with Xanthoparmelia wesselsii.

westae: for Ethel West (later Mrs. Anderson) (c.1870-1939), British-born South African housewife and naturalist who married Thomas Anderson, member of the Eastern Province Naturalists Society, collected over 500 specimens mainly in the East Cape, commemorated with the former taxon Leonotis westae (now L. dubia) and possibly also for Felicia westae. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

westii: for (1) Oliver West (1910-?), ecologist, agronomist, plant collector in Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Zambia, undertook first ecological studies in Zimbabwe in the 1950's, author of The vegetation of Weenen County, Natal, co-author of Aloes of Zimbabwe, nephew of Ethel West Anderson, commemorated with Polygala westii. (Flora of Zimbabwe; JSTOR); (2) W.C.West who collected the former Erica westii (now E. straussiana) on Cathkin Peak, Drakensberg, Sept 1912. (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.; Annals of Bolus Herbarium)

wethamae: for Mrs. Boddam Wetham, commemorated with Delosperma wethamae. This is likely Ruby Elizabeth Boddam-Whetham (1882-1948) (née Newberry), author of A Garden in the Veld, supposedly South Africa's first book on gardening, wife of Edward Tudor Boddam-Whetham (1874-1951), sometimes written as Wetham, English-born emigrant to South Africa, owner of the farm "Van Niekerk's Rus," later changed to "Kirklington" after his ancestral home in England. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; British 1820 Settlers to South Africa)

wettsteinii: for Richard Wettstein von Westersheim (1863-1931), Austrian botanist, lecturer at the Botanical Garden and Museum in Vienna, then Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanical Garden and Institute of the University of Prague, later full professor of systematic botany at the University of Vienna, author of several works including Handbuch der systematischen Botanik, president of the Vienna Zoological and Botanical Society, took trips to Brazil and to South and East Africa, commemorated with Conophytum wettsteinii, and also with the genera Wettsteinia and Wettsteiniola which do not appear in southern Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Whiteheadia/whiteheadii: for Rev. Henry Whitehead (1817-1884), British Anglican missionary stationed near Springbok and plant collector in South Africa. Tropicos lists it as being in the Asparagaceae published by Harvey in 1868. IPNI lists it as being in the Liliaceae published by Harvey in 1868. Other sources list it as being in the Hyacinthaceae published by Harvey. The Pacific Bulb Society says that "Manning, Goldblatt & Fay (2004) in their revision of Sub-Saharan Africa Hyacinthaceae combined the genus Whiteheadia into Massonia." So clearly there has been much taxonomic upheaval regarding this taxon. Whitehead is also commemorated with the taxon Crassula whiteheadii. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

whitei: for Alfred Samuel White (c. 1812-1870), South African farmer at Fundisweni in KwaZulu-Natal who came to South Africa from England in 1820 and sent the first plant material (roots) to Kew via Colonial Botanist at the Cape of Good Hope J.C. Brown The third batch sent was eventually successfully grown and recognized as a new species, Mondia whitei. The common name is White's ginger. (Elsa Pooley; Flora of Zimbabwe; PlantzAfrica)

whitesloaneana: for Alain Campbell White (1880-1951), American botanist and chess champion, and Boyd Lincoln Sloane (1885-1955), American botanist specializing in cacti, President of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, commemorated with Huernia whitesloaneana and the former taxon Hoodia whitesloaneana, now synonymized to Hoodia gordonii. White was the author of several books on chess, the two were co-authors of the three-volume edition of The Stapelieae (1933, 1937), considered a major work in the field, and they also co-authored with R.A.Dyer The Succulent Euphorbieae. They are also commemorated with the genus Whitesloanea in the Apocynaceae which does not appear in southern Africa.

whyteana/whytei: for Alexander Whyte (1834-1908), Scottish New Testament scholar, plant explorer, and botanist who lived most of his life in Ceylon, then collected plants in Liberia, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Zoological Society, Curator of the Entebbe Botanic Garden in Uganda, commemorated with Diospyros whyteana, Anthericum whytei and the former Widdringtonia whytei (now W. nodiflora) and probably also for the former Peucedanum whytei (now Lefebvrea grantii). He was head of the Scientific Department in Zomba, Malawi, where he also laid out the foundations of a botanical garden. (PlantzAfrica; Witkoppen Wildflower Nursery; JSTOR; Trees and Shrubs of Mpumalanga and Kruger National Park; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; British Central Africa by Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston; Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists; Gunn & Codd)

Wiborgia: for Erik Nissen Viborg (1759-1822), Danish veterinarian, botanist and professor of botany at the University of Copenhagen, foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Director of the Botanical Garden. He was assistant to Professor Peter Christian Abildgaard at the Vetarinary School in Copenhagen. The genus Wiborgia in the Fabaceae was published in 1800 by Carl Peter Thunberg. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

wickensii: for John Edward Wickens (1867-1949), British-born horticulturist and plant collector who went to South Africa in 1888, established a nursery at Claremont, worked in the Public Works Department in Pretoria for 14 years, designed private gardens, commemorated with the former taxa Aloe wickensii (now A. cryptopoda) and Cotyledon wickensii (now C. barbeyi). (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia; Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists)

Widdringtonia: for Samuel Edward Widdrington (1787-1856) (formerly Samuel Edward Cook), a Royal Navy commander, traveller in Spain, Fellow of the Royal Society, Sheriff of Northumberland, and conifer botanist of the late 1700's and early 1800's, who published Spain and the Spaniards, Sketches in Spain, and a book on European pines. He was among the first to describe scientifically the coniferous species of Spain. The genus Widdringtonia in the Cupressaceae was published in 1842 by Austrian botanist Stephan Friedrich Ladislaus Endlicher. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

widmeri: for Marc Widmer, with no further information, commemorated with the former taxon Hesperantha widmeri, now synonymized to H. longicollis, which he collected in the Transvaal in 1905. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; JSTOR)

wiesei: for Tobias Gerhardus de Buys Wiese (1923- ), South African farmer, husband of Margaretha Wiese, and former owner of the Kokerboom Nursery in Vanrhynsdorp now owned by his son Danie. His farm Quaggaskop was declared a national nursery. He is commemorated with Bulbine wiesei which he collected in 1983 near Vanrhynsdorp. (JSTOR)

wiesemannianum: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Conophytum wiesemannianum, with no information as to its derivation, except that it was published in 1938 by Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes, and it is the only taxon with this epithet.

Wiesneria: for Dr. Julius Ritter von Wiesner (1838-1916), Austrian botanist, professor of plant anatomy and physiology at the University of Vienna, and traveller in India, the Dutch East Indies and North America. The genus Wiesneria in the Alismataceae was published in 1881 by Swiss botanist Marc Micheli. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Wigandia: for Johannes Wigand (1523-1587), German author and theologian, Bishop of Pomerania, professor of theology at Jena, wrote on Prussian plants. The genus Wigandia in the Hydrophyllaceae was published in 1819 by German botanist Karl Sigismund Kunth. W.P.U. Jackson states that the genus name commemorates the German botanist Julius Wilhelm Albert Wigand (1821-1886), Director of the Botanical Garden at Marburg, but since it was published two years before his birth this is clearly incorrect. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Sappi What's In a Name: the Meanings of the Botanical Names of Trees by Hugh Glen)

wiggettae: for a Mrs. I. Wiggett according to Women and Cacti. An article by Mrs. Louisa Bolus in The Cactus Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4, June 1939, states: "This species [Conophytum wiggettae] was described without flowers from material sent to Kew by Mrs. Wiggett from Hazenjacht, near Oudtshoorn."

wightii: for Robert Wight (1796-1872), Scottish surgeon and botanist, Director of the Botanic Garden in Madras, Fellow of the Linnean Society and Fellow of the Royal Society. He went to India in 1819 as a military surgeon but soon became interested in botany. In addition to being in charge of the botanical gardens, he was also appointed as naturalist for the East India Company. He sent numerous samples to Sir William Hooker. He was the author of Spicilegium Neilgherrense in 2 volumes with 200 coloured plates, and also llustrations of Indian Botany and Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (Illustrations of the plants of Eastern India) in 6 volumes. A work of the highest botanical quality was the Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indicae which he worked on with Dr. George Arnott Walker-Arnott, Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow. When he took a three-year sick leave back to Scotland, he took with him 100,000 specimens of 3000-4000 Indian species. He described many genera and thousands of species, and his name is on many current and synonymized taxa. He is one of the major figures in the history of Indian botany. He left India in 1853. In addition to the genus Wightia which does not appear in southern Africa, taxa that are there that bear his name include Thelotrema wightii, Neonotonia wightii, Ophioglossum wightii, Myriotrema wightii and probably Paremelia wightii (now synonymized to Xanthoparmelia phaeophana). (Checklist of the Lichens of Australia and Its Island Territories; Wikipedia; JSTOR)

Wijkia: for Professor Roelof van der Wijk (1895-1981), Dutch bryologist, primary school teacher, later a college teacher of science and professor of botany at the University of Groningen.. He specialized in mosses of the Malesian region (Malay peninsula to New Guinea) and was co-editor of the major 5-volume work Index Muscorum published in 1969. The genus Wijkia in the Sematophyllaceae was published by American botanist Howard Alvin Crum in 1971. (JSTOR; Bryologist 74:170, 1971)

wildemaniana/wildemanianum/wildemanii: for Émile August(e) Joseph de Wildeman (1866-1947), Belgian botanist specializing in fungi and ferns, Director of Jardin Botanique de l'État at Brussels, an authority on Congolese flora, and author of Les phanérogames des Terres Magellaniques., (1905), Documents pour l'ètude de la geo-botanique congolaise (1913), and Sur des plantes médicinales ou utiles du Mayumbe (Congo Belge) (1938). He also collected in Mexico and Vietnam. He is commemorated with the former taxa Asparagus wildemanii, published in 1937 by Swedish botanist August Henning Weimarck (now synonymized to A. schroederi) and Cissampelos wildemaniana (now C. torulosa), and probably also with Peucedanum wildemanianum (now Lefebvrea grantii). (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Gardener's Chronicle and New Horticulturist 1904; JSTOR; Sappi What's in a Name: The Meanings of the Botanical Names of Trees by Hugh Glen)

wildii: for Professor Hiram Wild (1917-1982), British botanist and taxonomist of the University of Zimbabwe, plant collector and major contributor to Flora Zambesiaca, former Head of the National Herbarium of Zimbabwe (SRGH), founder and first editor of the journal Kirkia. He emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1945 after graduating and became a Systematic Botanist in the Dept. of Agriculture. He collected well over 8000 specimens in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Caprivi, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. He left Zimbabwe and returned to England in 1980. In southern Africa he is commemorated with Rotheca wildii, Aristida wildii, Commiphora wildii, Corallocarpus wildii and the former taxa Canthium wildii (now Psydrax livida) and Lobelia wildii (now L. erinus). (Flora of Zimbabwe; JSTOR; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Willdenowia/willdenowiana: for Karl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812), German botanist, plant taxonomist, pharmacist, physician, naturalist, professor of botany at the University of Berlin, professor of natural history at the Berlin Medical-Surgical College, mentor of Alexander von Humboldt who brought him many specimens from South America, and Director of the Berlin Botanical Garden from 1801 until he died in 1812. His herbarium of over 20,000 specimens is still preserved there. He was the author of Florae Berolinensis prodromus (1787), Linnaei species plantarum (1798–1826 in 6 volumes), Anleitung zum Selbststudium der Botanik (1804), and Hortus Berolinensis (1816) among other works. He is considered as one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of plant distribution. The genus Willdenowia in the Restionaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg in 1805. A genus in the Rubiaceae which does not appear in southern Africa was also named for him, but Tropicos does not record it currently as a valid taxon. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia; Chrono-Biographical Sketches)

williamsiana: for Dr. Ion James Muirhead Williams (1912-2001), commemorated with Tritoniopsis williamsiana, see williamsiorum below. (Newsletter of the Hermanus Botanical Society No. 98 Dec. 2010)

williamsii: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Serruria williamsii, named for Dr. Ion James Muirhead Williams (1912- ).

williamsiorum  for Dr. Ion James Muirhead Williams (1912-2001) and his wife Mrs. Sheila Williams, founders and owners of Vogelgat Nature Reserve, Hermanus. He was an engineer who retired very early and  took up botany as a hobby and got his doctorate on Leucadendron (Proteaceae) and published on Rutaceae, commemorated with Erica williamsiorum. See also  ionii/ioniana. (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

williamsonii: for (1) Graham Williamson (1932- ), dental surgeon born in Zimbabwe, made extensive collections in Zambia and Malawi, particular orchids, author of Orchids of Central Africa (1977) and Richtersveld, The Enchanted Wilderness (2000), commemorated with Nemesia williamsonii. (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR; Biodiversity Explorer); (2) Thomas Williamson (1807-?), British baker, soldier and plant collector for W.H. Harvey, served in South Africa 1828-1840, commemorated with Amphithalea williamsonii and Indigofera williamsonii. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

Willkommia: for Heinrich Moriz Willkomm (1821-1895), German botanist, explorer, traveler, naturalist, professor of botany and Director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Prague. The genus Willkommia in the Poaceae was published in 1888 by Swiss explorer and botanist Hans Schinz based on a previous description by Austrian botanist Eduard Hackel. There is also a genus Willkommia in the Asteraceae that does not appear in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

wilmaniae: for Maria Wilman (1867-1957), South African botanist, archeologist and geologist, volunteer and then assistant in the geology department of the South African Museum in Cape Town, first Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, and only the second female South African to attend the University of Cambridge in England. She was the author of Rock engravings of Griqualand West and Bechuanaland (1933) and Preliminary Checklist of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Griqualand West (1946). She is commemorated with Euphorbia wilmaniae, Watsonia wilmaniae, Delosperma wilmaniae, Hereroa wilmaniae, Ebracteola wilmaniae and synonymized taxa in the genera Indigofera, Stapelia, Petalidium, and Aloinopsis. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR; Women and Cacti; Wikipedia)

wilmotianus: for Mr. C. Wilmot (fl. 1939), commemorated with Dinteranthus wilmotianus which he collected in 1937. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Cactus Art Nursery; JSTOR)

wilmsiana/wilmsianum/wilmsii: for Dr. Friedrich Wilms (1848-1919), German apothecary (pharmacist), botanist and plant collector residing in Lydenburg who spent thirteen years collecting extensively in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. He was the son of German plant collector Friedrich Heinrich Wilms (1811-1880). Later he was assistant in the moss section of the Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem. There is also a Friedrich Heinrich Wilms (1811-1880) who was probably the above Wilms' father. His name is on a great number of taxa in southern Africa including the genera Pyrenowilmsia and current species in the genera Mololobium, Argyrolobium, Otholobium, Lotononis, Asterella, Searsia, Lindernia, Craterostigma, Tetraselago, Watsonia, Marchantia, Tylimanthus, Hypericum, Adenia, Gnidia, Sonchus, Helichrysum, Polygala, Streptocarpus, Kirkia, Bouchea, Lippia, Lobelia, Plagiochila, Arthonia, Pyrenula, Cephalaria, Barleria, Peucedanum and others that have been synonymized. (PlantzAfrica; JSTOR; Trees and Shrubs of Mpumalanga and Kruger National Park; Wikipedia)

wilsoniana: for Francis Robert Muter Wilson (1832-1903), Presbyterian minister and pioneer Australian lichenologist, wrote no fewer than 20 authoritative articles for eight different journals and described many new species. He is commemorated with the lichen taxon Porina wilsoniana, now synonymized to Porina corrugata. (Australian National Herbarium; Flora of Australia: Lichens 3, Vol. 58A, Vol. 3; Wikipedia)

wilsonii: Wilson is a very common name and the eponymous derivations of the taxa with this specific epithet in southern Africa well illustrate this point and demonstrate the difficulty that arises in attempting to figure out who various taxa are named for. (1) Gladiolus wilsonii was collected by Alexander Wilson, brother of Dr. John Hardie Wilson (1858-1920) who was the founder of the St. Andrews University Botanic Garden, and was probably named for one or the other of the brothers. (JSTOR; HerbWeb; University of St. Andrews Archive Catalog); (2) Polystichum wilsonii was collected in western Szechwan by Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930), English plant collector who introduced around 2000 Asian plant species to the west.and was presumably named for him. He was Associate Director and then Keeper of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Some of the areas he made expeditions to include China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America and East Africa. (JSTOR); (3) for the taxon Leptobryum wilsonii, I found the clue that the genus Leptobryum was published in 1855 by William M. Wilson (1799-1871), described by Wikipedia and the Florida Institute of Technology Evans Library as a pioneering Australian botanist who wrote an early account of the mosses of Tasmania, but described in an online article by Mark Lawley entitled "William Wilson (1799-1871)" as "Britain’s leading bryologist in the mid-19th century" and a man who "discovered sixty or more mosses new to Britain, Ireland or science" and "published under his own name Bryologia Britannica in 1855." Various sources such as Handbook of the New Zealand Flora by Joseph Dalton Hooker and Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania refer to a prominent muscologist named Wilson and this may refer to William Wilson, although the Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosphical Society, Vol. IX, dated 1870, has a reference to the "death of the late Mr. William Wilson," which again raises the question of whether there is some confusion here. The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1874) states "In 1855 the late William Wilson, of Warrington, published his classical Bryologia Britannica..." A website of the Australian government by Helen P. Ramsay entitled "History of Research on Australian Mosses" states that "An early account of Tasmanian mosses was provided by William M. Wilson (1799–1871) who described many novelties (Hooker & Wilson, 1844). (Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists); (4) for the taxon Ornithogalum wilsonii (now synonymized to Albuca corymbosa) I found an article entitled "On the Adaptation of Albuca corymbosa, Baker, and Albuca juncifolia, Baker, to Insect Fertilization," by John Hardie Wilson published in 1886 in Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Vol. 16, which states that in 1885 the writer's brother Alexander Wilson brought some bulbs of a liliaceous plant from their habitat near Port Elizabeth which flowered at St. Andrews, so this taxon may be named for Alexander as well.

Wimmerella: for Franz Elfried Wimmer (1881-1961), a Viennese botanist, naturalist and Roman Catholic priest who studied the Lobeliaceae sensu stricto (in the strict sense). The genus Wimmerella in the Campanulaceae was published in 1999 by Spanish botanists Luis Serra and Manuel Benito Crespo and American botanist Thomas G. Lammers. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.)

winkleriana/winklerianus: for a Professor Dr. J. Winkler in Hamburg, no other information available. The taxa in southern Africa with this epithet are Caralluma winkleriana and Sarcophagophilus winklerianus, both of which have been synonymized to Quaqua mammillaris, and which were collected around 1922 or 1923. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

winteri: for John Winter (1936- ), South African horticulturalist, educated in Zimbabwe and trained in Pretoria and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He held the position of Curator of Kirstenbosch Botanic Garden from 1967-1997. He discovered Erica winteri on the lower slopes of Watersvalsberg, north of Riversdale, Cape Province, and Leucospermum winterii at the summit of Watersvalsberg. In retirement he continues with his great interest in plants particularly Clivia and Veltheimia. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

wischkonii: there is a JSTOR specimen record of Anacampseros wischkonii being collected in Namibia by someone named Wischkon, possibly Karl Wischkon? The specimen is in the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem. Clues derived from online researches indicate that Karl Wischkon was a foreman at the Khan Copper Mine just four miles south of Arandis, where the specimen of A. wischkon was collected. This would have been around 1927. A communication with a relative, Kay Wischkony, indicates that he was born in Upper Silesia and may have been born around 1854 or 1855. The species name was published in 1929 by Moritz Kurt Dinter (who was in Namibia 1922-1925 and 1928-1929) and Karl von Poellnitz. There is another specimen record of this species being collected by George Julius Ernst Gürich (1859-1938) in 1888 in Namibia, but whether he was an acquaintance of Wischkon seems unlikely in light of further evidence gleaned from posts on the RootsWeb website, including the fact that he was born in 1872 and apparently went to the Swakopmond area of South-West Africa as a soldier in 1894 (according to the Chronology of Namibian History) and then again with his wife Clara in 1902. He died in 1943 and is buried in Swakopmond where he has a grandson. (RootsWeb; Kay Wischkony, pers. comm.)

wissii: for Mr Hans-Joachim Wiss (1903–1991), a Namibian farmer and naturalist who discovered Plumbago wissii in 1955 while working on the Brandberg. He had an interest in archaeology and collected the type specimen on Konigstein, the highest peak on the Brandberg. The plant was named by Friedrich in 1957. (PlantzAfrica)

Withania: the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says: "According to many authors the genus was named possibly (misspelling included!) for the English paleobotanist Henry Thomas Maire Witham (1779-1844), geologist, author of Observations on Fossil Vegetables." The genus Withania in the Solanaceae was published in 1824 by French botanist Charles Louis Constant Pauquy. A further source suggested that it is named for the plant's main ingredient, the alkaloid withanine, but it seems almost certain that withanine was named for Withania. (Wikipedia; PlantzAfrica; Flora Simlensis, 1902, by Henry Collett; Flora of South Australia; American Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1897, by Robert Hunter et. al.)

Witsenia: for Nicholas Witsen, an eighteenth century Dutch patron of botany. This first woody Iridaceae genus to be described was originally named Antholyza maura by Linnaeus in 1771. The genus Witsenia in the Iridaceae was published in 1782 by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. (PlantzAfrica)

wittebergense: not named for a person, but for the Witteberg Mountains of South Africa.

Wolffia/Wolffiella: for Johann Friedrich Wolff (1778-1806), German physician, botanist and entomologist. His most substantial work was the five-volume Illustrated Description of Bugs ( Icones Cimicum Descriptionibus Illustratae), which was completed by his father after his death at the age of 28. The genus Wolffia in the Lemnaceae was published in 1839 by German botanist Johann Horkel. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Plant Names: Scientific and Popular by Albert Brown Lyons)

wollastonii: for Alexander Frederick Richmond "Sandy" Wollaston (1875-1930), British medical doctor, plant collector, ornithologist, botanist, climber and explorer, took part in two British expeditions to New Guinea, also as doctor, ornithologist and botanist) in the first British reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest in 1921. He was killed in 1930 in his rooms at King's College by a deranged student, D.N. Potts, who fatally shot Wollaston and a police officer before shooting himself in a triple murder-suicide. (Wikipedia)

woodburniae: for Mrs. M. Woodburn (fl. 1925). (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

woodfordiana: for Emperor John Alexander Woodford (1764?-1817?), British naturalist, large-scale bibliophile, Captain in the 17th Leicestershire Regiment, rose to Colonel, fought at Salamanca and Waterloo, also a natural history collector and dealer in ornithological illustrations and paintings, had a large and valuable library. The African wood owl (Strix woodfordii) is named for him. 'Emperor' is not a title but derives from his mother's name, Mary Emperor. He was christened on 24 Mar 1764 (Hampshire Parish Registers, 1538-1980). 'Emperor' was not a title but derived from his mother's name, Mary Emperor. After an early military career, he was appointed Chief Inspector and Commissary General of Foreign Corps in Oct. 1794. In 1797 he inherited a great deal of money from an uncle, Peter Thellusson, and later held a position in the East India Company under his cousin, George Woodford Thellusson. He “retired” (i.e. fled) to the Americas in May of 1809, after it was discovered that he had diverted funds and sold government positions to buy rare books and artworks for his personal collection. He had obtained his position with the help of his father's sister's husband, who was also suspected in the crime, but Woodford claimed full blame. The matter was discussed at length in Westminster and was a major cause célèbre in post Napoleonic England. By September 1810 a number of newspapers were reporting that he was living in exile in the Court of the Prince Regent of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro. Some time later, he brought Passiflora racemosa (a synonym of  Passiflora princeps) from Brazil to Lisbon, but whether he ever returned to England is unclear.  He also kept hothouses of succulents and tropical plants. His younger half-brothers, Alexander George Woodford and John George Woodford, served in the Napoleonic wars. Emperor stole the pay of  French royalists and deserters who fought beside the British. Some sources say that he died in the Hôtel de Poissac, in Bordeaux, but The UK National Archives have letters from Emperor's executor in Bordeaux dated 1817-19 suggesting that he had indeed died in 1817 possibly in Brazil. It has also been suggested that the African wood owl (Strix woodfordii) was named for him by Sir Andrew Smith in 1834 but this seems unlikely given the notoriety of his offenses. He was also honored with the genus name Woodfordia published by Richard Anthony Salisbury in 1806, which publication would have preceded his public shaming in England.

Woodia/woodii: for John Medley Wood (1827-1915), Natal botanist, curator of the Natal Botanic Garden 1882-1903 and founder and director of the Natal Herbarium 1903-1913. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names) "John Medley Wood was a South African botanist who contributed greatly to the knowledge of Natal ferns, and is generally credited with the establishment of Uba sugar cane in Natal and for his extensive collection of Natal plants. Wood was born in Mansfield to a lawyer James Riddall Wood and Hannah Healy Weaver. His father remarried Mary Haygarth and emigrated to Durban, and John, who had spent seven years at sea after leaving school, joined him there in 1852. He soon acquired his own property at the mouth of the Umdhloti River north of Durban. Here he experimented with new crop plants. In 1855 he married his stepmother's younger sister Elizabeth Haygarth. For health reasons he moved further inland to Inanda in 1868, where he ran a trading store and did some farming. Here he developed an interest in cryptogams and started collecting ferns, mosses and fungi as well as flowering plants. He began corresponding with M.C. Cooke and Kalchbrenner, the mycologists at Kew and in Hungary. The Rev. John Buchanan, a local fern expert who had published a list of Natal ferns in 1875, assisted Medley Wood in that group. In 1880 Anton Rehmann, the Austrian botanist, visited Natal and took over Wood's collection of mosses. As a result of his growing interest in botany, he accepted the post of Curator of the Botanic Garden in Durban in 1882. From his interest in crop plants, he established the suitability of Uba sugar cane (Saccharum sinense), for conditions in Natal. During these years he collected plants extensively throughout Natal and exchanged duplicates with foreign herbaria. He was preparing the seventh volume of his Natal Plants at the time of his death in 1915. He is commemorated in the genera Woodia, Woodiella, and a large number of species names including that of Encephalartos woodii, which he first discovered in 1895 on a steep south-facing slope on the fringes of the Ngoye forest about 30 km from Mtunzini in KwaZulu-Natal. The genus Woodia in the Apocynaceae was published in 1894 by German botanist Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlechter. (Wikipedia)

Woodsia: for Joseph Woods (1776-1864), English architect and botanist, author and Fellow of the Linnean Society. The genus Woodsia in the Woodsiaceae was published in 1815 by British botanist Robert Brown. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Woodwardia: for Thomas Jenkinson Woodward (1745-1820), highly regarded British botanist and magistrate, Fellow of the Linnean Society, co-author of Observations on the British Fuci (1797) with Samuel Goodenough, and contributor to The Gardener's and Botanist's Dictionary by Philip Miller. He also wrote papers on algae and fungi for the Philosophical Transactions and the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London. He was educated at Eton and Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated with an LL.B. in 1769. The genus Woodwardia in the Blechnaceae was published in 1793 by British botanist James Edward Smith, who described him as "one of the best English botanists." (Wikipedia; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Wooleya: for Charles Hugh Frederick Wooley (1894-1969), a Major in the Royal Marines, self-taught naturalist and a citrus farmer at Addo, South Africa, who later moved to Knysna. Wooleya is a monotypic genus with only a single species, W. farinosa, which was found on the west coast of Namaqualand. The genus Wooleya in the Aizoaceae was published in 1960 by South African botanist Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus.

woolleyi: for Maj. C.H.F. Wooley (fl. 1917), South African plant collector of succulents for Kirstenbosch. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

woolliana: for a Mr. Woolley of Barberton, former Transvaal, Republic of South Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

woollsiana: for William Woolls (1814-1893), British-born Australian clergyman, schoolmaster and botanist, author of A Contribution to the Flora of Australia, Lectures on the Vegetable Kingdom, with Special Reference to the Flora of Australia, The Plants of New South Wales, and Plants Indigenous in the Neighbourhood of Sydney, fellow of the Linnean Society.

wormaldii: for William Henry Wormald (1847-?), Curator of Queen's Park, East London from 1880 to 1903, and secretary of the parks department. (Gunn & Codd)

wormskioldii: probably for Morten Wormskjold (1783-1845), a Danish botanist who led a naval expedition to Greenland in 1813 and made the first major collection of Greenland flora there, and who subsequently sailed with Adelbert von Chamisso and J.F. Eschscholtz on Captain Otto Kotzebue's exploring voyage on the Rurik, but left the expedition at Kamchatka before it reached North America. This specific name is often spelled wormskjoldii. He was honored with the generic name Wormskioldia, which does not appear in southern Africa.

worsdellii: for Wilson Crosfield Worsdell (1867-1957), American-born British botanist, trained as a horticulturist, demonstrator in botany at University College, London, author of The Principles of Plant-Teratology. He went to Cape Town in 1909 and spent several years in South Africa. He is commemorated with Pilea rivularis (formerly Pilea worsdellii) in the Zoutpansberg area of South Africa in 1909, and with Sphaerulina worsdellii, a fungus that grows on Welwitschia mirabilis. (Gunn & Codd)

Wrightia: for William Wright (1735-1819), British botanist and physician, traveller, plant collector in Jamaica, and author of many botanical publications on Jamaican plants. The genus Wrightia in the Apocynaceae was published in 1810 by British botanist Robert Brown. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

wrightii: for Felix Binns Wright (1907-2003), veterinarian, nature conservationist and plant collector in the Drakensberg Mts. (Elsa Pooley)

wrightii: for Charles (Carlos) Wright (1811-1885), American botanical collector, appointed botanist to the Unoited States North Pacific Surveying Expedition.

Wulfhorstia/wulfhorstii: for August Wulfhorst (1861-1936), German missionary. "He was a missionary of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft and came to Namibia in 1890. He established a mission station in Ondjiva (today Angola) in September 1891, together with Rhenish Missionary Meisenholl, then at Omupanda in 1892. From 1919 to 1927, Wulfhorst was stationed in Karibib. He was married to Thusnelda Wulfhorst, née Härlin in 1892." The genus Wulfhorstia in the Meliaceae was published in 1900 by Swiss botanist Anne Casimir Pyramus de Candolle. (Biographies of Namibian Personalities)

Wurmbea: for Friedrich von Wurmb (?-1781/1783), botanist, plant collector, Dutch colonial administrator. The genus Wurmbea in the Colchicaceae was published in 1781 by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

wurmbiana/wurmbii: for Theobald von Wurmb (1800-?), German missionary, plant collector and farmer.

wyleyana/wyleyi: for Andrew Wyley (1820/1822-1884 ), Irish-born geologist and plant collector in the Republic of South Africa who was appointed Geological Surveyor of the Cape of Good Hope. His name is sometimes spelled Wylie. He held several patents for improvements on firearms in the UK and one in the U.S.

wyliei: for James M. Wylie (1861-1947), Scottish-born botanist who was assistant to J.M. Wood at the Durban Botanical Gardens, trained at Kew.

Ximenesia: for José Salvador Ximénes Peset (1713-1803), Spanish apothecary, botanist,  and artist. I have found very little information about this man but Hugh Clarke has added: "[He] compiled a flora of Castellon de la Plana, in four volumes, in which he portrayed or described more than 700 plants, keeping a record of where they grew, when and whether they had any medicinal properties. He also recorded the butterflies and birds found in Castellon de la Plana on the east coast of Spain, about 71 km northeast of Valencia. When the author Antonio José Cavanilles met him, as recorded in his Observations on the natural history of the Kingdom of Valencia, he was astonished to find Ximénes had no botanical training or books, had not seen gardens, and was extremely poor with barely enough to eat.  Ximenes is said to have had an interest in the characteristics of flowers and the form of the floret and had an interest in the question of 'sex' in flowers." The genus Ximenesia in the Asteraceae was published in 1793 by Spanish taxonomic botanist Antonio José Cavanilles.

Ximenia: for Francisco Ximenez, Spanish monk and botanist, a native of Luna in the Kingdom of Aragon who came to New Spain in 1605 and wrote about the plants of Mexico in the 17th century. The genus Ximenia also occurs in America and the type species of the genus, X. americana, is the only species that occurs in southern Africa other than Ximenia caffra. The genus Ximenia in the Olacaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Florida Ethnobotany by Daniel F. Austin)

Youngia: for Edward Young (1684-1765), poet, writer, and royal chaplin, and for Thomas Young (1773-1829), a physician, physicist and Egyptologist, and member of the French and Swedish Academies of Sciences. French botanist Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini was the publisher of the genus in the Asteraceae in 1831. Apparently Cassini was taken by these two individuals as he wrote "[Named after] 'deux Anglais célèbres, l'un comme poète, l'autre comme physicien' (two English celebrities, one a poet, the other a physician." (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

youngii: for Ralph George Norwood Young (1904-1979), botanist and teacher, born in Italy, emigrated to South Africa in 1926, worked in the herbarium of the Transvaal Museum, farmed in the Transvaal, collected in Angola, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe, died while on a holiday visiting his birthplace.

zahlbruckneri: for Alexander Zahlbruckner (1860-1938), Austrian botanist, mycologist and lichenologist, author of Catalogus Lichenum Universalis and Plantae Pentherianae, commemorated with Aspicilia zahlbruckneri. He was the grandson of botanist Johann Baptist Zahlbruckner. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

Zaluzianskya: for Adam Zalusiansky von Zaluzian (1558-1613), Bohemian botanist and physician, lecturer and administrator at Charles University in Prague. He was the author of Methodus Herbariae (1592). He was the first person to argue for the separation of botany from medicine, and for a universal classification of plants that predated Linnaeus. There are two generic epithets Zaluzianksya listed for southern Africa, one in the Marsileaceae published either by German botanist Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze in 1891 (according to Tropicos) or by Belgian botanist Noel Martin Joseph de Necker (according to POSA), and one in the Scrophulariaceae published in 1793 by Bohemian botanist Franz Wilibald Schmidt. The epithet in the Marsileaceae is considered invalid. Flora Capensis by Harvey lists the published genera by Necker as Zaluzanskia, and JSTOR says that it is synonymous with Marsilea L. (Elsa Pooley)

Zanha: the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says this epithet is perhaps for K.H. Zahn, German plant collector (Karl Hermann Zahn 1865-1940), but the discrepancy in the spelling causes me to doubt this explanation. The genus was published in 1896 by British botanist and mathematician William Philip Hiern.

Zannichellia: for Giovanni Gerolamo Zannichelli (1662-1729), Italian botanist, physician and pharmacist. The genus was first published by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum 2 in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Zantedeschia: for Italian physician, pharmacist and botanist Giovanni Zantedeschi (1773-1846), author of ten works on the flora of the province of Brescia, and frequent correspondent with German botanist Kurt Sprengel who named the genus in his honor in 1826. It has often been stated that the name honors Giovanni's son, the Italian priest and physicist Francesco Zantedeschi (1797-1873), but this appears not to have been the case. Cythna Letty in The Genus Zantedeschia (Bothalia 11, 1 & 2, 5-26, 1973) says: "The genus was named by Sprengel in 1826 in honor of a Professor Zantedeschi; there is uncertainty however, whether Giovanni or Francesco Zantedeschi was intended. Engler states that it was the latter but Marloth and contemporary Italian botanists feel sure that it was the former. According to a letter from Professor Rodolfo Pichi-Sermolli of the University of Florence: 'As regards the question of Zantedeschia I believe that you are wrong in thinking that the genus is named in honor of Francesco Zantedeschi. According to Saccardo (La Botanica in Italia, Mem. R. 1st Veneto Sc. Lett. Art. 25, 4: 176, 1895), the genus Zantedeschia is dedicated to Giovanni Zantedeschi, a botanist of Brescia. I think that Saccardo is right. In fact in 1826 when Sprengel established the genus, Giovanni Zantedeschi was aged enough to be known [and was known to Sprengel], and had published already several botanical papers. On the contrary Francesco Zantedeschi (1797-1872) in 1826 was 29 years old only, and probably was completely unknown to Sprengel, above all because he was not a botanist.' " (Pacific Bulb Society, International Aroid Society, PlantZAfrica, CRC World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants)

zantneriana: for Major Alfred Zantner (1953- ), a succulent plant collector of Ingolstadt and major in the German Army, commemorated with Haworthia zantneri, with Karl von Poellnitz he published the taxon Haworthia agavoides. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

zastrowiana: for Berengar Moritz von Zastrow (1876-1951). (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Zehneria: for Joseph Zehner, Austrian botanical artist. The genus Zehneria in the Cucurbitaceae was published by Austrian botanist Stephan Friedrich Ladislaus Endlicher in 1833. (Elsa Pooley)

zenkeri: for Georg August Zenker (1855-1922), German explorer, botanist and plant collector.

Zeyherella/zeyheri/zeyheriana: for Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher (1799-1858), German botanist and botanical collector, a well-known German naturalist who collected plants in South Africa. Zeyher came to the Cape in 1822, was a botanist at the Botanical Garden there, published Enumeratio plantarum Africae Australis with Christian Friedrich Ecklon, and died of smallpox. Zeyherella in the Sapotaceae was published by French botanist Jean Baptiste Louis Pierre in 1958. (PlantzAfrica)

zierii: For John Zier (?-1793), Polish botanist, assistant to Ehrhart and William Curtis, elected a fellow of the Linnean Society at the second meeting of the Society. David Hollombe provided the following: "Zier is said to have been the real author of most of the plant descriptions in James Dickson's Fasciculus plantarum cryptogamicarum Britanniae (and Robert Brown of much of the rest.) He is also said to have written the technical descriptions in  William Curtis' Flora Londinensis." Zier was also honored with the genus Zieria in the Rutaceae which does not appear in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

zimmermannii: for Philipp Wilhelm Albrecht Zimmermann (1860–1931), a German botanist who was Director of the Biological-Agricultural Institute at Amani, Tanzania (predecessor of the East African Herbarium, Nairobi) from 1902 to 1920. (PlantzAfrica)

Zinnia: Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-1759), German botanist, physician, professor of botany, director of the botanical gardens at Göttingen, botanical collector and author. The genus Zinnia in the Asteraceae was published by Linnaeus in 1759. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

zoeae: for Mrs. Eric Harris (née Zoe Anne Borlase) (1895-1970), wife of farmer Eric Harris who farmed near Modder River Station. Zoe Harris collected plants on their farm Three Oaks, especially bulb plants, some of which were sent on to Kirstenbosch. The species with this specific eepithet is Delosperma zoeae. (Bothalia, vol. 15, page 640, 1985; Who's Who of South Africa, Vol. 26, p. 171, 1941)

zollingeri: for Heinrich Zollinger (1818-1859), Swiss botanist, plant collector and explorer whose foremost collection is now housed in the Dutch National Herbarium at the Universities of Leyden and Utrecht. Twenty species of plants, seaweeds and mushrooms bear his name and he is credited with publications on geology, meteorology and on molluscs. Although Swiss, he was considered a Dutch citizen, spoke fluent Dutch, was in the employ of the Dutch colonial government and spent all his collecting time in the Dutch East Indies. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses, Zollinger Family History Research)

Zornia: for German pharmacist and botanist Johannes Zorn (1739-1799, author of Icones plantarum medicinalium. The genus Zornia in the Fabaceae was published by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1792. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Zschackea: probably for (Georg) Hermann Zschack (1867-1937) of Bernberg, Germany. The genus was published in 1932 by Maurice Gustave Benoit Choisy and and Roger-Guy Werner.