Waldstein'ia: named for Franz de Paula Adam Norbert Ludwig Valentin von Waldstein (1759-1823), an Austrian soldier,

explorer and naturalist. He was born in Vienna to the noble Waldstein family. As a soldier he took part in the Habsburg campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and Russia. From 1789, he studied the botany of Hungary with the Hungarian botanist and chemist Pál Kitaibel. Waldstein's herbarium is archived in Prague. Together with Kitaibel he wrote Descriptiones et icones plantarum rariorum Hungariae ("Descriptions and pictures of the rare plants of Hungary," published in Vienna in three volumes, 1802–1812). In 1814, Waldstein was appointed a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and

Humanities. He died at his manor in Litvínov. Waldstein published the genus Sternbergia after the Bohemian theologian, mineralogist, entomologist and botanist Caspar Maria Sternberg (1761-1823) as well as  the species Peucedanum officinale. The genus Waldsteinia was named for him by Carl Ludwig von Willdenow in 1799.

wal'teri:: named for Thomas Walter (1740-1789), a British-born American botanist and plantation owner best known for

his book Flora Caroliniana (1788), the first flora set in North America to utilize the Linnaean system of classification. He was born in Hampshire but little is known of his early life and education. By 1769 he had arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked as a merchant. He later acquired a rice plantation on the Santee River where he lived for the rest of his life. During the next 20 years, he acquired 4,500 acres in St. James, Goose Creek, St. John, Berkeley, St. Stephen, Christ Church, and St. Marks parishes. And in 1771, he received two Royal Grants, 200 acres in Berkeley County and 300 acres

near the High Hills of the Santee. He became interested in botany and undertook a detailed plant survey within a fifty-mile radius of his home, collecting seeds for his garden and building an extensive herbarium. Based on this effort, Walter completed a manuscript in 1787 containing a summary of all the flowering plant species found in the region. It was the first comprehensive and detailed regional flora set in eastern North America and the first to use Linnaeus' binomial naming conventions. Walter gave the manuscript to fellow botanist John Fraser who took it to England and arranged for its publication in 1788. Flora Caroliniana provided brief Latin descriptions for over 1,000 plant species in 435 genera. He is credited with the discovery of some 200 new species and four new genera. During the American Revolution, he was Deputy Paymaster for the state militia. After the war, he was involved with the planning of the Santee Canal. Walter was married twice in the USA first to Sarah Peyre and then to Dorothy Cooper and he had four daughters and a son. He died on January 17, 1789, shortly after the publication of his flora. His herbarium was taken to England by Fraser and eventually purchased by the British Museum of Natural History where it still exists. Since his death, eight plant species have been named in his honor. Thomas Walter’s 1788 will listed 32 slaves, 7 oxen, 9 cows, 39 sheep, 19 hogs, 230 bushels of corn, 45 barrels of rice, and 2700 bushels of rough rice. He was buried in his garden on the south side of the Santee River in Berkeley County.

weatherbia'na: named for Charles Alfred Weatherby (1875-1949), American botanist born in Hartford, Connecticut. Not long after his birth, the family moved to Colorado. However, when he reached school age his parents sent him back to Connecticut, where he studied literature at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude in 1897. From 1899 to 1905 he was ill and lived with his mother in East Hartford. It was during this time he began his interest in botany and joined the Connecticut Botanical Society. In 1910 Weatherby went to Europe, where he met Una Leonora Foster, an artist with an interest in botany, whom he married in 1917. Weatherby later volunteered as an assistant at the Gray Herbarium, then was an assistant curator and eventually the curator, specializing in the study of wildflowers. In 1910, he published and described a new tree, Quercus rysophylla.

Wei'gela/weigel'ii: named for Christian Ehrenfried von Weigel (1748-1813), German scientist. He was born in Stralsund,

studied under Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in Göttingen, and received a degree in 1771 from the University of Göttingen. In 1806 he was ennobled and added a ‘von’ to his name, and in 1808 he became the personal physician of the Swedish royal house. Among other things, Weigel developed a cooling heat exchanger in 1771, which was later improved upon by Justus von Liebig and then became to be known as the Liebig condenser. Beginning in 1774, he was a professor of chemistry, pharmacy, botany, and mineralogy at the University of Greifswald. At his own expense, he set up a chemical

laboratory (in the former "Black Monastery," on the site of today's medical clinics in Friedrich-Loeffler-Strasse) and occasionally held chemical exercises for physicians there. In 1792, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was honored with the genus name Weigela published by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1780.

willdeno'vii/willdenowia'na/willdeno'wii: named for Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812), eminent German botanist

and taxonomist who was director of the Berlin Botanical Garden 1801-1812 and who in his multi-volume Species plantarum published many of the new species discovered by Gotthilf Henry Muhlenberg. He was born in Berlin and studied pharmaceutics at Wieglieb College, Langensalza, completing those studies in 1785. He also studied medicine and botany at the University of Halle, graduating in 1789 with an M.D.  His father ran a pharmacy in the Unter den Linden and when Carl was done with his schooling he worked for his father. By this time he was intensely interested in botany

and in 1787 was published his Florae Berolinensis prodromus. In 1790 he took over his father’s pharmacy which he operated until 1798. In 1792 he published Principles of Botany and two years later was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1798 he was made professor of natural history at the Berlin Medical-Surgical College and in 1810 a professor of botany at the University of Berlin. Wikipedia says: “He is considered one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants. Willdenow was also a mentor of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the earliest and best known phytogeographers. He also influenced Christian Konrad Sprengel, who pioneered the study of plant pollination and floral biology. His early interest in botany was kindled by his uncle J. G. Gleditsch and he started a herbarium collection in his teenage years. He was a director of the Botanical garden of Berlin from 1801 until his death. In 1807 Alexander von Humboldt helped to expand the garden. There he studied many South American plants, brought back by Humboldt. He was interested in the adaptation of plants to climate, showing that the same climate had plants having common characteristics. His herbarium, containing more than 20,000 species, is still preserved in the Botanical Garden in Berlin. Some of the specimens include those collected by Humboldt.” He died in Berlin in 1812.

Wister'ia: named for Dr. Caspar Wistar (1761-1818), anatomist and professor of chemistry and physiology. Wistar was a

friend of Thomas Jefferson who had worked with him on identifying fossil remains that Jefferson was interested in, and was one of those who instructed Meriwether Lewis on the natural sciences in preparation for the Lewis and Clark expedition.  He received his M.D. at the University of Edinburgh in 1786, and later served as staff physician at several Philadelphia area hospitals.  He created for instructional purposes a set of life-sized anatomical models, which were actual human remains that were injected with wax to preserve them. He was an early advocate for vaccinations against disease.  He

almost died of yellow fever during an epidemic in 1793 while helping others.  He published the first American textbook on anatomy in 1811.  The work, in two volumes, was entitled A System of Ananatomy for the Use of Students of Medicine.  He held the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania medical school.  He was also President of the American Philosphical Society from 1815 to 1818, and President of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.  His home was a meeting place for students and scientists.  He was particularly interested in botany and paleontology.  The genus Wisteria was named for him in 1818 by his friend, the English botanist Thomas Nuttall of Harvard, who wrote in The Genera of North American Plants: "In memory of Caspar Wistar M.D., ... a philanthrophist of simple manners, and modest pretensions, but an active promoter of science." For some reason the genus name was spelled 'Wisteria' with an 'e'.  This is one of those cases where the genus name and the common name are the same. Occasionally, it is spelled 'Wistaria,' in recognition of the spelling of Wistar's name, as with the famous Sierra Madre Wistaria Festival, and the plants often carry the common name of Wistaria, but according to the rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, since the original name given by Nuttall to the genus was spelled 'Wisteria,' that must remain its correct Latin name regardless of the inconsistency. It is unclear why Nuttall did not assign a name that was consistent with Wistar's name, but the fact that he published it in the same year that Wistar died may perhaps not be a coincidence. Nuttall's biographer Jeannette Graustein wrote in Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808-1841 (1967): "Queried about the spelling, Nuttall stated that it was chosen for euphony ["a pleasing or sweet sound, the acoustic effect produced by words so formed or combined as to please the ear"]. However, in the Wister branch of the family Nuttall had a very good friend, Charles Jones Wister, Sr., (1782-1865), often his host and his companion on mineralogical and botanizing excursions." Back in those days, spelling was not as firmly established as it is now, and it was not uncommon for different members of the same family to spell their names differently. According to my South African friend Hugh Clarke, "Thomas Nuttall, the botanist who named the genus Wisteria attributed the error to 'euphony' as Wister and Wistar are acceptable American spellings of his original German family name 'Vüster'." The ICBN rules are that the spelling of originally published epithets may be changed for typographic or orthographic reasons, but in this case, seeming to have been a purposeful choice, the spelling must remain as it was.

wisteria'na: named for Charles Jones Wister, Sr.  (1782-1865), astronomer, horticulturalist, inventor and merchant, and grandson of German immigrant John Wister (Johannes Wüster), who built the house later known as Grumblethorp. It was the house upon which Benjamin Franklin erected his first lightning rod, connecting it with a bell which gave an alarm whenever the atmosphere was surcharged with electricity. Charles Jones Wister was born in Philadelphia to Daniel Wister and  Lowry Jones Wister. It is unclear to me what his professional career was, but he was less interested in business and much more drawn to the natural sciences. Charles’ interests were extensive and although not a professional scientist, he was a serious student of a wide range of scientific disciplines including mineralogy, botany, chemistry, astronomy, horticulture, invention, geology, beekeeping, clock making and meteorology. He had a close relationship with Thomas Nuttall who was often his companion on mineralogical and botanizing excursions. He was a principle founder of the Academy of Natural Sciences. His grandfather had a number of properties in the Philadelphia area, and built the house, known then as John Wister’s Big House, in 1744 as a summer retreat. Set on 7.5-acres, the property included a farm, gardens, and orchards with fruit trees to supplement John’s wine importing business. After the house had been taken over by the British and used as their headquarters during the Battle of Germantown, Daniel's family presumably moved back in. At some point during the early 19th century, Charles Jones Wister made the property his permanent home, and he was the one who named the house Grumblethorpe. He made a number of alterations to Grumblethorpe in the 1820s, adding a workshop for building and improving tools and other inventions and objects. He also erected an astronomical observatory equipped with a telescope, through which he watched the heavens, and upon every clear day, observed the sun crossing the zenith. He issued bulletins of the time, and every clock in Germantown was set by his standard. Three times daily he took the temperature, read his barometer, making careful notes, which were regularly published in the Germantown Telegraph. A meticulous gatherer of data, Charles was renowned for his ongoing recording of the weather in one of the first systematic approaches to monitoring and collecting changes in weather in Germantown. Reflecting his many intellectual interests, Charles was also a member and/or officer of numerous prestigious organizations including the Philadelphia Library Company, the Library Company of Germantown, the Linnaean Society of Philadelphia (whose purpose was the cultivation of the natural sciences), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the American Philosophical Society. Charles was also a member of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, whose founding members included Samuel Powel, Benjamin Rush, and George Washington, and a trustee of the Germantown Academy and very much involved with the institution. He donated chemicals, various apparatuses and maps of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, along with his mineralogical collection. He retired in 1819 to devote himself to botany and mineralogy, subjects he lectured on at the Germantown Academy. He was a remarkedly versatile genius, for besides all his other accomplishments, he could repair clocks, and many which needed repairs were put into working order by his hands. Wister left the house to his son, Charles Jones Wister, Jr., a musician, writer and artist with a passion for photography. Charles Jr. became known as the ‘Grand Old Man’ of Germantown. He was the President of the Board of Germantown Academy, where is father had been a longtime trustee. Hundreds of boys during that era recalled Charles Jr.’s weekly visit to wind the clocks. He would live and enjoy Grumblethorpe house and its gardens and grounds until his death at age 88 in 1910. Being a lifelong bachelor, he left the property to his two nephews. It was his final wish, according to his descendants, that "no one but a Wister should live at Grumblethorpe.” The relationships are not clear to me but it is apparent that the Wister and Wistar branches of the family were related and that Charles Jones Wister, Sr. was a relative, probably a cousin, of the Dr. Caspar Wistar (see previous entry) for whom the genus Wisteria was named.

Wolff'ia: named for Johann Friedrich Wolff (1778-1806), German botanist, entomologist, physician and natural history illustrator. He wrote and illustrated Commentatio de Lemna and Icones Cimicum descriptionibus illustratae. The genus Wolffia was published in 1844 by Matthias Jacob Schleiden based on a previous description by Johann Horkel, and it is called watermeal.

Wolffiel'la: a diminutive of Wolffia. The genus Wolfiella was published by Christoph Friedrich Hegelmeier in 1895.

wolf'ii: named for John Wolf (1820-1897), Illinois botanist and naturalist who accompanied the 1873 Wheeler expedition to the West, making numerous collections under the direction of Joseph Trimble Rothrock, and who collected the type specimen of Eleocharis wolfii in Fulton County, Illinois. He was the author of List of Trees in Fulton County. One source refers to him as Prof. Wheeler.

wood'ii: named for Dr. William Avery Wood (1811-1892). He was born in Thetford Center, Vermont, and lived there until the age of 9 when his family moved to some undisclosed location. He commenced medical training with a Dr. Burge of Ellisburg (New York?) and concluded with Dr. J.B. Crawe of Watertown, New York. He commenced the practice of his profession in Chaumont, N.Y. He was married and had seven children, and the family moved to Rock County, Wisconsin in 1852. After a year and a half they moved again to Washington, Wisconsin, where he was for one year each Chairman and Town Clerk. He was also Justice of the Peace for a time. He passed away in Sandusky, Wisconsin. No further information available. To my knowledge Carex woodii is the single species in the North America flora to have been named for this individual.

Wood'sia: named for Joseph Woods (1776-1864), English architect and botanical author. The following is quoted from a website of the University of Toronto: "Joseph Woods was born in Stoke Newington, Middlesex, England on 24 August 1776. He was the second son of Joseph and Margaret Woods. As a child, he was educated at home and mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Modern Greek. Disliking his initial occupation in business, Woods studied architecture under Daniel Asher Alexander at the age of sixteen. In 1806 he founded the London Architectural Society and became the first president. However, even while occupied with his profession, he devoted much time to geology and botany. The end of the Napoleonic Wars permitted him to travel throughout the continent. In 1816, after travelling through France, Switzerland, and Italy, Woods completed one of his most prominent works, “Letters of an Architect,” which was published in 1828. He retired from architecture in 1835 and thereafter devoted his time mainly to botany. His work on the genus Rosa, “Synopsis of the British Species of Rosa” was published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society in 1818 and established Woods’ reputation as a systematic botanist. The botanical notes made during his Continental and British excursions were published in the Companion to the Botanical Magazine in 1835 and in 1836, and in successive volumes of Phytologist beginning in 1843. His work The Tourist’s Flora: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British Islands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands, published in 1850, was based on his many years of work in Europe and the British Isles. Woods contributed work to the fields of architecture, botany, and geology. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a Fellow of the Geological Society, a Member of the Society of Antiquaries, and an Honorary Member for the Society of British Architects." The genus Woodsia was named in his honor by well-known English botanist and President of the Linnaean Society Robert Brown (1773-1858).

Woodwar'dia: named for Thomas Jenkinson Woodward (1745-1820), a British phycologist and botanist. He was born at Huntingdon in the Cambridgeshire district of England and was educated at Eton and Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated with an LL.B. in 1769. Woodward was appointed a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for the county of Suffolk. When he moved to Walcot Hall, Diss, Norfolk, he took on the same posts for that county. On the establishment of the volunteer system he became Lieutenant-colonel of the Diss volunteers. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1789. Sir James Edward Smith described him as “one of the best English botanists, whose skill and accuracy are only equalled by his liberality and zeal in the service of the science," and he named the fern genus Woodwardia in his honor in 1793. Woodward contributed greatly to James Sowerby’s English botany, to William Withering’s Systematic Arrangement of British Plants, and to Philip Miller’s Gardeners’ Dictionary. He died at Diss on 28 January 1820, and was buried there.

wrightia'na/wrightia'num/wright'ii: named for Charles Wright (1811-1885), a prolific American botanical collector. He was

born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and he studied the classics and mathematics at Yale. His career began as a tutor for a family in Natchez, Mississippi, then he moved to Texas to work as a teacher and a surveyor for the Pacific Railroad Company, but he soon began collecting plants and sending specimens to Professor Asa Gray at Harvard, eventually becoming one of his most trusted collectors. Gray procured passage for him on an Army supply mission in 1849 across western Texas, but he ended up walking almost 700 miles from San Antonio to El Paso, all the time keeping his eyes glued to the ground all the

better to see small desert flowering plants. In 1851, again with Gray’s help, he became part of the Mexican Boundary Survey, and helped collect many of the 2,600 species that were sent back to Professor John Torrey for description and identification. His name was honored by George Engelmann who gave it to a cactus, Opuntia wrightii. Asa Gray based the first botanical work published by the Smithsonian on Wright's collection, Plantae Wrightianae (1852–53). Altogether he spent eight years botanizing in Texas and another eleven in Cuba. Wikipedia adds: “Between 1853 and 1856, he took part in the Rodgers-Ringgold North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition, collecting plants in Madeira, Cape Verde, Cape Town, Sydney, Hong Kong, the Bonin Islands, Japan (at Hakodate, Tanegashima, the Bonin Islands and the Ryukyu Islands including Okinawa) and the western side of the Bering Strait. He collected over 500 specimens while the ships were delayed at Simon's Bay, near Cape Town. Wright left the expedition at San Francisco in February 1856 and went south to Nicaragua. His collection of plants from Hong Kong was used by George Bentham for his Flora Hongkongensis (1861). Between 1856 and 1867, he led a [number of] scientific expeditions to Cuba. In 1859 he joined Juan Gundlach in the area around Monteverde, and in the winter of 1861-1862 they explored together around Cárdenas. He was also still in communication with Asa Gray and via him, Charles Darwin, discussing orchids. This was possible because at the start of the American Civil War, he was in Cuba and Gray kept him there until 1864 to keep Wright safe and his ongoing botanical work intact. In 1871, he went with the US Commission to Santo Domingo. From 1875-1876, he was the librarian of the Bussey Institution at Harvard University.” In 1868 he served as acting director of the Gray Herbarium. He is commemorated in the genus Carlowrightia of the Acanthaceae, and in the names of many species. Wright, who never married, spent his last days in Wethersfield with his brother and sisters, all unmarried, and died on August 11, 1885, of a heart ailment dating back to his years in Cuba.