ka'li: Gledhill says "Either from the Persian for a carpet, or a reference to the ashes of saltworts being alkaline. However an Israeli website called Flowers in Israel says "from the Arabic al qaly, from Kali, an area of Saudi Arabia called the Rub al-Kali or Rub al-Khali, the 'Empty Quarter.' It is likely that alkaline plants grow there."

Kal'mia/kal'mii: named for Pehr (Peter) Kalm (1716-1779), Finnish-Swedish explorer, botanist, agricultural economist and

student of Carl Linnaeus, considered as one of his most important disciples. He travelled extensively in Russia and then was sent by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences to study the botany and natural history of North America. He spent three years in New York, Pennsylvania and Canada, and wrote about it in Travels Into North America (English edition published in London 1772). After returning to Sweden, he became a professor of natural history and was elected to the Stockholm Academy of Sciences. He was born in Sweden to where his Finnish parents had fled to escape the Great Northern War between

Sweden and a coalition of Russia, Denmark-Norway and Poland-Saxony-Lithuania. His father died soon after his birth and his mother took him back to Närpes in the Ostrobothnia region of Finland at the cessation of hostilities. He studied at the Royal Academy of Turku which was the only university in Finland at that time, and then entered the University of Uppsala, where he was one of Linnaeus’s first students and was given instruction in astronomy by Anders Celsius.  From 1742 to 1746 he did field research in Sweden, Russia and the Ukraine. Linnaeus used his findings in his Flora Suecia. The following year Kalm then became a professor of economics at the Royal Academy of Turku. He had become a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1745 and in 1747 he was selected to travel to North America to study its flora and bring back seeds and plants useful to agriculture. He was the first trained scientist to describe Niagara Falls and published the first scientific paper on the North American cicada. He was specifically tasked to bring back a hardy species of mulberry from which they hoped to establish a silk industry. He spent six months in England and met many English botanists, then arrived in Philadelphia in 1748 and was befriended by no less than Benjamin Franklin who introduced him to the great botanist John Bartram. In the summer of 1749 he travelled up the St. Lawrence to Quebec where he botanized, gathering many plants of potential economic importance in Sweden such as walnut, early-ripening maize, pumpkin, cotton and watermelon. He also took many barometric, meteorological and cartographic measurements along the way. After travelling around in New York state, he got married and remained in Philadelphia until 1751, when he returned to Sweden. He continued to work as a lecturer in Turku, cultivated seeds he brought back, published numerous papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, andconcentrated on silviculture and forest conservation. Although the species he returned with failed ultimately to have economic significance, he had a great influence on the next generation of botanical explorers. In his Species Plantarum Linnaeus credited Kalm with 60 new species including the mountain laurel Kalmia which Linnaeus named in his honor in 1753.

Kalopan'ax: from the Greek kalos, "beautiful," and Panax, the name of a related genus.

kei'sak: no information available, possibly a name from East Asia where Murdannia keisak is from.

kennedya'na: named for George Golding Kennedy (1841-1918), an American botanist born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was educated at Roxbury Latin School and graduated with an AB degree from Harvard University in 1864. He received his MD degree also from Harvard in 1867.  After briefly practicing medicine, he took over management of his father's business, and continued to study botany. He published articles, including a flora of Willoughby, Vermont (1904), developed a sizeable herbariumm, and was active on the visiting committee of the Gray Herbarium and endowed the Library. He collected extensively in New England and was also a founding member of the New England Botanical Club. Sabatia kennedyana is called plymouth rose-gentian and was published in his honor by Merritt Lyndon Fernald in 1916.

kentuckien'se: of or from Kentucky.

Ker'ria: named for William Kerr (1779-1814), a Scottish gardener whose name is today perhaps better known for William Kerr’s Borders Gin than for his botanical accomplishments. He was a native of Hawick in the Scottish Borders and became a gardener at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, London. In 1804 he was sent to Asia where his work and exploits gained him his reputation as an accomplished plant collector. He sent back to Britain 238 plants new to European gardeners and to science, including the vigorous shrub named in his honor, the Kerria. He arrived in Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1812 to manage gardens on Slave Island and at King’s House. Kerr remained there until his death in 1814. According to the Borders Distillery in Hawick, the gin named for him "celebrates the man’s courage and sense of adventure, not to mention the innate explorer in us all." And about the gin itself, the Distillery page boasts that “with subtle aromas and complex flavours of juniper berries, herbs, roots, flowers and spices, the result is a classic gin of depth and taste!” He was only 35 when he died. The genus Kerria was published by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1818.

Kick'xia: named for Jean Kickx (Sr.) (1775-1831) and his son Jean Kickx (Jr.) (1803-1864) (photo shown). According to

Umberto Quattrocchi, Jean Kickx Sr. was a Belgian professor of botany, pharmacy and minerology at a tmedical school in Brussels, and was the author of Flora bruxellensis, published in Brussels in 1812. Jean Kickx Jr. was also a professor of botany and malacology in Brussels (1831-1835) and at the University of Ghent  from 1835 to 1864, and was the original author of Flore cryptogamique des Flandres (Cryptogamatic Plants of Flanders), a work completed and published posthumously in 1867 by his son Jean Jacques Kickx (1842-1887), also a botanist, professor and the Vice-Chancellor of the

University of Ghent. He received his doctorate at Leuven and was a co-founder of the Société royale de botanique de Belgique. He also published Specimen inaugurale exhibens synopsin molluscorum Brabantiæ Australi indigenorum with Francis Joseph Adelmann in1830, Flore cryptogamique des environs de Louvain, ou, Description des plantes cryptogames et agames qui croissent dans le brabant et dans une partie de la province d'Anvers (1835) and Notice sur quelques champignons du Mexique (1841).The genus Kickxia was named in 1827 by Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier and is called cancerwort or fluellen.

kobomu'gi: the specific epithet of Carex kobomugi, which is an invasive species in several East Coast states, comes from the Japanese name for the plant, kôbômugi. Called Japanese sedge or Asian sand sedge, it was promoted as a useful plant for stabilizing sand dunes and widely planted on the eastern seaboard until the 1980s. Having become securely established, Carex kobomugi has since developed into an invasive species.

Koeler'ia: named for Georg Ludwig Köler (Koeler) (1765-1807), German physician, pharmacist, botany professor, student of the grasses, and author of a work on the grasses of Germany and France entitled Descriptio graminum in Gallia et Germania (1802). He was born in Stuttgart and attended the University of Göttingen around 1780 to study medicine. He practiced as the personal physician of Count Carl Ludwig of Salm-Grumbach. He began botanical studies in 1786 in the Rheingau region. His goal was to write a Flora of Germany, France and Switzerland, and he collected herbarium material which he passed to de Augustin de Candolle, but the section on grasses was all he was able to complete. He was considered one of the outstanding botanists of his time. In 1799 he was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Mainz. He died in Mainz as a result of the flu and typhus epidemic which broke out there. The genus Koeleria was published in 1805 by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon.

Koelreuter'ia: named for Josef Gottlieb Kölreuter (1733-1806), German botanist, physician, professor of natural history

and Director of the Botanical Garden at Karlsruhe. He was born in Württemberg the son of an apothecary and took an early interest in natural history. He was educated at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig, and at Tübingen, where he received his medical degree in 1755 and received an appointment at the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg where he worked both on botany and the curation of fish and coral collections, and remained there until 1761. He pioneered the study of plant fertilization and hybridization, and was interested in sexual reproduction in plants. In 1761 he

returned to Germany and went to Karlsruhe in 1764 where he was professor of natural history and director and curator of the botanical garden. He was dismissed from the position as curator of the gardens after a dispute with the head gardener, but remained as a professor until he died in 1806. As part of his research into plant reproduction, he conducted nearly 500 hybridization experiments  and examined the pollen characteristics of over 1000 plants. Major works of his included Dissertatio inauguralis medica de insectis coleopteris, nec non de plantis quibusdam rarioribus... Tubingae: litteris Erhardianis (1755), Vorläufige Nachricht von einigen, das Geschlecht der Pflanzen betreffenden Versuchen (1761-1766), and Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Cryptogamie (1777). The Encyclopedia Britannica includes the following: “The experimental results he obtained foreshadowed the work of the Austrian biologist Gregor Johann Mendel. Kölreuter recognized the importance of insects and wind as agents of pollen transfer in plant fertilization. He applied the sexual system of classification of the Swedish botanist and naturalist Carl Linnaeus to lower plant forms. His work was not recognized or appreciated until long after his death.” The genus Koelreuteria was named in his honor in 1782 by Friedrich Kasimir Medikus.

Kostelet'zkya: named for Vincenz Franz Kosteletzky (1801-1887), a Bohemian botanist, educator, physician, and writer on medical botany. He was born in Brno, Czech Republic, and was Austro-Hungarian by citizenship. He was a university teacher at Charles University, oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic, and was twice its Rector. He studied medicine in Prague and received a doctorate in 1842. He was assistant to Johann Christian Mikan, the Austrian-Czech botanist, zoologist and entomologist, whose successor he became after his departure in 1831 as professor for medical-pharmaceutical botany (with the appointment as full professor in 1835). After the reorganization of the University of Prague (Charles University), he became a professor of botany. In 1852/53 and 1868 he was Rector of the University. He was particularly interested in systematics and pharmaceutical applications of botany and published an extensive handbook of medicinal plants. He was also known for his teaching and ran the botanical garden in Prague. He worked in Prague as a doctor for the poor during the cholera epidemic around 1830 and, since he had no children, left his fortune to charity. He was the author of Allgemeine Medizinisch-Pharmazeutische Flora (General Medical-Pharmaceutical Flora) and Clavis analytica in floram Bohemiae phanerogamicam (An analytical key to the phanerogamic flora of Bohemia). He retired in 1872 and died in Prague. The genus Kosteletzkya was published by Carl Presl in 1835 and is called seashore mallow or salt marsh mallow.

kralia'na: named for Robert Kral (1926- ), a retired Vanderbilt professor and major contibutor to southeastern botany. He has described or co-described some of Tennessee’s rarest plants such as Xyris tennesseensis and Arenaria cumberlandensis, and wrote a 1000-plus page tome on the rare plants of the Southeast. He has made many contributions to the Flora of North America and has amassed a herbarium of 100,000 specimens. He has worked extensively at the Texas Botanical Research Institute as a professor and taxonomist, and then at the Vanderbilt University Herbarium.

Krig'ia: named for David Krieg (1669-1710), a German surgeon, naturalist and plant collector who worked in Riga off and on from 1694 until his death. He spent an entire year in England in the company of English naturalists, and then went to the American colonies in 1698 to collect specimens of natural history in Maryland and Virginia with William Vernon. The more active period of Krieg’s work in Riga came during the Great Northern War, marked by the blockades of the city by Saxon forces in 1700-1701 and by Russian forces in 1709–1710, and by the outbreak of plague in the city. Even during the intervening years of the Great Northern War, the war taxes and economic uncertainty that burdened the city’s citizens provided Krieg with plenty of work as a doctor to the point where he did not have any time to devote to his work as a naturalist. In 1699 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and corresponded until 1708 with the Secretary of the Royal Society Hans Sloane and the collectionnaire James Petiver, famous for his specimen collections in which he traded and his study of botany and entomology. The genus Krigia was published in 1791 by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber.

Kuhn'ia: named for Adam Kuhn (1741-1817), American physician and well-known botanist who studied under Carl

Linnaeus. He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia of a German father and grandfather. Kuhn’s father had came to Philadelphia in 1733 as a successful doctor and removed to Lancaster to become a magistrate and an elder of the Lutheran Church. Adam studied medicine first with his father and then in 1761 went to Sweden to study botany as the only American student of Linnaeus at the University of Uppsala until 1764. He then went to London for a year, following which he went to Scotland where he earned the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1767.

After visiting France, Holland and Germany he returned to America in 1768 where he was appointed professor of materia medica and botany in the Medical Department of the College of Philadelphia, the first faculty of medicine in the thirteen colonies. This was a position which he held until 1789, when he was made professor of the theory and practice of medicine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1768 where he served as its curator from 1769 to 1770 and from 1771 to 1772. In 1791 the College of Philadelphia and the University of the State of Pennsylvania merged and became the University of Pennsulvania, and he maintained his position until his retirement in 1797. From 1775 until 1798 he was was a physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital. He was one of the founders of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the first of its kind in America, in 1787, and was its president from July, 1808 until his death. Although there is no evidence that he actually treated George Washington, he was considered his family physician and the leading physician in Philadelphia. He did treat George Washington Custis, the son of Washington's stepson. One of his students, Valentine Seaman, mapped yellow fever mortality patterns in New York and introduced the smallpox vaccine to the United States in 1799. Adam Kuhn died in Philadelphia at the age of seventy-six. The genus Kuhnia was published in 1763 by Carl Linnaeus. Adam Kuhn was also honored with the generic names Kuhniodes and Kuhnistera,

Kummerow'ia: named for Johannes Gotthilf Heinrich Kummerow (or Heinrich Johannes Gotthilf Kummerow) (1860-1929), a Polish professor in Bromberg and Poznań. The genus Kummerowia was published by Anton Karl Schindler in 1912 and is called korean-clover or japanese-clover.

Kyllin'ga: named after Danish botanist Peder Lauridsen Kylling (1640-1696). The following is an English translation of an essay by E. Rostrup in the Danish Biography Lexicon, Vol. 9, on a website of Project Runeberg: "Born in Assens, Denmark, Kylling was the son of Alderman Laurids Kylling (d. 1662). He completed his high school studies in 1660 and earned his degree in divinity in 1666. A few years later, he was ordained as a priest, but for unknown reasons his ordination was immediately canceled. Because of this, Kylling dedicated himself to his botanical studies with great zeal and continued to do so right up until his death. The botanist Jens Wilken Hornemann, who was a most competent judge of men, said about Kylling 'this excellent man was without a doubt the most thorough, dedicated, and most experienced of botanists in Denmark until the age of Rottbøll.' In 1680, Kylling was granted free residence at the Valkendorf College Dormitory on the condition that he restore and tend the garden - with the later additional condition that he 'take the students into the fields in the summer'. He then received special permission to live at the College for 16 years, until his death. In 1682, his patron Privy Councilor Moth had him appointed a royal botanist with an annual salary of 300 rix-dollars, which was a considerable sum in those days. His most famous work, Viridarium Danicum, was published in 1688 and contains an alphabetical list of all Danish plants known at the time with their localities in the different parts of the country, although mostly on the Islands. Henrik Gerner and Peder Syv were among the well-known men mentioned in the foreword who provided Kylling with information about the plants. The publication was later (in 1757) systematized by Jørgen Tyche Holm and critically treated (in 1859) by Morten Thomsen Lange. In 1889 Rudolf J.D.von Fischer-Benzon performed a critical study of the species from Schleswig. Kylling himself worked on a new expanded edition, but it was never published. It is said that the famous German botanist Albrecht von Haller kept the manuscript that Kylling intended to print in his library. Another shorter work by Kylling was published in 1684 under the name Gyldenlund ('Golden Grove'), containing a list of 404 plants observed by him in Gyldenlund (the present-day Charlottenlund north of Copenhagen). It was the first Danish compilation of special flora. The exactness and completeness of the work makes it especially interesting because one can compare the composition of present day flora with what it was then. Kylling’s contemporaries regarded him as a bit eccentric - and one joking tribute refers to him as 'a funny old fogey'. This was mainly because he lived at the College his whole life and remained unmarried, and because of his quiet, unassuming lifestyle, and his love of working in the garden and wandering about in the fields. Kylling had many enemies and he himself complained that when his Viridarium was being printed, one jealous hand had removed the letter 'n' from the title 'Urtekonstens Mester' ('Master of the Herbal Arts') in Henrik Gerner’s introduction so that it read 'Urtekostens Mester' ('Master of the Nosegay') instead. The introduction was placed in the beginning of the book according to the custom of that time. Christen Friis Rottbøll named a plant species in his honor [in 1773]." The genus Kyllinga was published in 1982 by Kaare Arnstein Lye and is called spikesedge.