abbottii: for Anthony Thomas Dixon Abbott (1936- ), British amateur botanist and farmer who came to South Africa in 1956 and became an authority on the rare flora of the Pondoland region of the Eastern Cape. He is commemorated with Psoralea abbottii, Apodytes abbottii, Erica abbottii, Maytenus abbottii and Lydenburgia abbottii (which is one of the rarest South African endemic tree species). (Gunn & Codd; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

abdessammadii: for Mohammed abd es-Ssamadi, Kenyan travelling companion of German botanist Georg August Schweinfurth in East Africa in the 19th century. He is commemorated with the species Homalium abdessammadii. (Hugh Glen)

Abelia: for Clarke Abel (1780-1826), British surgeon and naturalist. He was recommended by Sir Joseph Banks to accompany William Pitt Amherst as Chief Medical Officer on the frigate Alceste (originally the French frigate Minerve captured by the British in 1806) which was carrying him on his ambassadorial appointment to China 1816-1817, a mission that turned out to be Britain's second unsuccessful attempt to establish better commercial relations with that country and which failed due to Lord Amherst's refusal to perform the kowtow to the Emperor. After he was refused permission to enter Peking, the Alceste cruised along the coasts of Korea and the Ryukyu Islands but was wrecked on a submerged rock at the entrance of the Gaspar Straits in the Java Sea. Amherst, Abel, and part of the crew managed to make it to Batavia in the ship's boats. While Abel was serving in the British Embassy at Canton, he collected specimens and seeds of the plant now known as Abelia chinensis, and of many other plants, and visited the famous nursery gardens at Fa Tee (Fa Ti) on the southern bank of the Pearl River in Canton. Unfortunately all of his specimens were lost in the shipwreck and a subsequent pirate attack, however he had given a small collection to George Staunton at Canton, and these materials were returned to him. This was the last visit to China by a Western naturalist for almost 30 years. On the outbound voyage he was at the Cape of Good Hope from 18 April to 5 May 1816 studying the geology of the Cape Peninsula as far as Hout Bay, and on the return was at the Cape from 25 May to 11 June 1817 during which time he extended his observations. He was the first Westerner to report the presence on the island of Sumatra of orangutans, which today are considered a separate species from the Bornean orangutan and which are named Pongo abelii. He also met Napoleon when they stopped at St. Helena. He kept a documented record of his travels, later published as his Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (1818). When Lord Amhert was appointed as Governor-General of India in 1823, Abel became his surgeon-in-hief, and he died in India. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Geological Society. (Wikipedia)

abelii: for Ludwig Abel (1913-2001), Austrian immigrant who wrote an article for The Journal of the Mountain Club of South Africa on the discovery of the 635th species of Erica. Erica abelii was published by Ted Oliver in 1984. Ludwig Abel was a member of the East Cape Mountain Club and a hiker, sent the first collection to Dr. Oliver,  worked in the wool industry in Port Elizabeth. (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

Acharia/acharii: for Erik Acharius (1757-1819), Swedish botanist who pioneered the taxonomy of lichens and is known as the "father of lichenology". He was one of the last students of Linnaeus and continued the work that Linnaeus began, publishing many works on lichens. He was also director of the Vadstena Hospital (which he had founded). The genus Acharia was named for him plus several species. It is not directly stated, but he is mentioned frequently in the work in which the species is first described (in 1824) so it is likely that he is the person that this epithet honors. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Graphina acharii, which has the common name Achar's graphina lichen. The genus Acharia in the Achariaceae was published in 1794 by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. (Wikipedia)

Achillea: after Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, hero of The Iliad, who supposedly learned the healing properties of plants of this genus from Chiron the Centaur and used them to staunch the wounds of his soldiers at the siege of Troy. The genus Achillea in the Asteraceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeaus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

achtenii: for Lode Théodoor (Marie) Achten (1883-1933), plant collector in the Belgian Congo, about whom I have no information. He is commemorated in Scleria achtenii. (JSTOR)

acockii/acocksianum/acocksii: for John Phillip Harrison Acocks (1911-1979), South African botanist, author of Veld Types of South Africa (1975) and Key Grasses of South Africa (1990), pasture ecologist who graduated from the University of Cape Town, did much work in the area of botanical surveys and compiled a collection of some 28,000 botanical specimens, and is especially known for his development of treating different areas as vegetation regions or veld types. He is commemorated in Erica acockii, Elegia acockii, Restio acocki, Cliffortia acockii, and others. He previously spelled his name Acock. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Wikipedia; Gunn & Codd)

adamesii: for Peter Adames (1913-1997), plant collector in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. He is commemorated with Anaptychia adamesii. The HUH Index of Botanists lists and JSTOR both list an F. Adames who also collected in Sierra Leone and may be a relative of Peter Adames. (David Hollombe, pers. com; JSTOR)

adamsonii: for Robert Stephen Adamson (1885-1965). "English botanist from Manchester who was a lecturer in botany at Manchester University (1912-1922) before sailing to Australia (1922), then moving to South Africa where he was appointed Professor of Botany at Cape Town University (1923-1950). Adamson published on the vegetation of South Africa and wrote a flora of the Cape area, eventually retiring to Scotland in 1955." His Vegetation of South Africa (1938) was a major contribution to South African plant geography. He was honored with the names of Wahlenbergia adamsonii and Trachyandra adamsonii. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

adolfi-friderici/adolfi-friedericii: for Duke Adolf Friedrich Albrecht Heinrich of Mecklenburg (1873-1969), German explorer in Africa, colonial politician and first president of the National Olympic Committee of Germany (1949–1951), last governor of Togoland in German West Africa, vice-president of the German Colonial Society for South-West Africa. He led two scientific expeditions 1907-1908 and 1910-1911 and is commemorated with Strychnos adolfi-friderici and Rubus adolfi-friedericii. (Confirmation from David Hollombe)

adolphii: for Adolf Ferdinand Stolz (1871-1917), German missionary and merchant, plant collector in Angola and Malawi who specialized in orchids, commemorated with Nervilia adolphii. (JSTOR)

Adonis: after Adonis, in Greek mythology a beautiful young man who was beloved of Persephone and Aphrodite. One story is that Artemis was angry at Aphrodite for causing the death of either Hippolytus, one of her favorites, or Ares, her paramour, and sent a boar which gored Adonis to death. He died in her arms and she sprinkled his blood with nectar, producing an anenome flower from each drop. The genus Adonis in the Ranunculaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

adriaanii: for Johannes Jacobus Adriaan van der Walt (1938-2003), South African botanist and professor of botany at Stellenbosch University, co-author with Pieter Johannes Vorster of Pelargoniums of Southern Africa, commemorated with Pelargonium adriaanii. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

aellenii: for Dr. Paul Aellen (1896-1973), Swiss botanist who worked intensively on Chenopodiaceae and Amaranthaceae. He was also honored by the former genus Aellenia published by Oskar Eberhard Ulbrish in 1934. The taxon in southern Africa which bears this specific epithet is Salsola aellenii.

Aeollanthus: after Aiolos, Greek god of the winds. The genus Aeollanthus in the Lamiaceae was published in 1825 by German botanist and physician Curt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel. (Elsa Pooley)

Aerisilvaea: for Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw (1902–1985), English botanist and classicist, son of a grammer school teacher, switched from classics at Cambridge University to the natural sciences, obtaining his degree in 1924. He joined Kew Gardens and became an expert in tropical Asian botany and entomology and then Acting Principal Scientific Officer in 1948. He was the author of Euphorbiaceae of Borneo and Euphorbiaceae of New Guinea. Some special projects were a Glossary of Russian Botanical Terms with P.A. Dattan of Kew, the family Euphorbiaceae, and Index Kewensis. He also assisted in the preparation of the 7th edition of A Dictionary of the Flowering Plants and Ferns by John Christopher Willis. He felt dissatisfied and left Kew in 1952 to devote himself to Christian activities for the next six years, then returned to Kew to work on the Willis dictionary, to which he devoted the next six years. In connection with his work on the Euphorbiaceae of Siam, Borneo, New Guinea, Sumatra, Malaysia and the Philippines, he visited the Leyden Herbarium four times. He had a life-long interest in entomology and contributes notes to various entomological journals. The epithet also includes the root silvaea from Latin silva for a wood or forest. The genus Aerisilvaea in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1990 by British botanist Alan Radcliffe-Smith. (Wikipedia; Biographical Notes: Australian National Herbarium; JSTOR; Kew Bulletin Vol. 42, No. 1, 1987)

Afrotysonia: 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 Afrotysonia in the Boraginaceae was published in 1982 by German botanist Stephan Rauschert. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

Afzelia: for Adam Afzelius of Uppsala (1750-1837), Swedish botanist and pupil of Linnaeus who lived in Somalia. Afzelius was born at Larv in Westrogothia. He was appointed teacher of oriental languages at Uppsala University in 1777, and in 1785 Demonstrator of Botany. From 1792 he spent some years on the west coast of Africa, and in 1797-1798 acted as Secretary of the Swedish embassy in London. Returning to Sweden, he again took up his position as botanical demonstrator at Uppsala, and was in 1802 elected president of the "Zoophytolithic Society" (later called the Linnean Institute). In 1812, he became professor of materia medica at the university. He died in Uppsala. In addition to various botanical writings, he published the autobiography of Carl Linnaeus in 1823. His brother, Johan Afzelius, was professor of chemistry at Uppsala; and another brother, Pehr von Afzelius (the "von" was added when he was ennobled), who became professor of medicine at Uppsala in 1801, was distinguished as a medical  teacher  and  practitioner. The genus Afzelia in the Fabaceae was published in 1798 by British botanist James Edward Smith. (Wikipedia)

agardhiana: for Carl Adolph Agardh (1785-1859), Swedish clergyman and botanist who specialized in algae, professor of botany and practical economy at Lund University, and author of among other things Species algarum. He was in the Swedish parliament and elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, was Rector Magnificus (the highest academic official) of Lund University, and Bishop of Karlstad. His son was Jacob Georg Agardh (1813-1901), who established the Lund Botanical Garden and was the author of Species, genera et ordines algarum, and like his father a botanist specializing in marine algae, professor of botany at Lund University, and member of parliament. I thought originally that the son was the honoree but he would have been only 12 when the taxon was published in 1825. The taxon in southern Africa which had this name was Aspalathus agardhiana which has now been synonymized to Aspalathus albens. (Wikipedia)

agnewiae: for Mrs. Shirley Agnew (1933- ), plant collector in Kenya, wife of British botanist Andrew David Quentin Agnew (1929- ). She is commemorated with Metzgeria agnewiae which she collected on the summit of the Aberdare Mts in Kenya in 1965. (David Hollombe, pers. com; New Zealand Journal of Botany, Vol. 42, 2004)

aitoni/Aitonia/aitoniana/aitonii/aitonis: either for (1) William Aiton (1731-1793), Scottish botanist who brought out Hortus Kewensis, a catalog of the plants cultivated at Kew Gardens, or (2) his son William Townsend Aiton (1766-1849) who succeeded his father at Kew and brought out a second and enlarged edition of the Hortus. The genus Aitonia in the Meliaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg for William Aiton in 1776, and there are taxa named Sessuria aitonii, Mesembryanthemum aitonis, Ipomoea aitonii, and others that have been lost to synonymy. The only one I can say for sure that was named for William Aiton (although most probably were) is Mesembryanthemum aitonis, which was published by Nicholaus Joseph von Jacquin in 1777 when Aiton the younger was only 11. I can't find any taxa that were definitely named for the son. (Wikipedia)

albersii: for Professor Focke Albers (1940- ), German botanist in Münster, commemorated with Pelargonium albersii. The taxon was published iin 2008 by German botanist Matthias Becker.

Alberta: for Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280), sometimes called Albert Graf von Bollstädt, also called Teutonicus, Coloniensis Albert, Albert the Great, St. Albert, the German Albert, and Albert of Lauingen. He was born Albert de Groot, and later the surname Magnus ("the Great"), which was the Latin equivalent of his family name, was applied to him by Roger Bacon and other contemporaries. He was a famous German cleric, philosopher and theologian who wrote De vegetabilus, a botanical work in seven volumes. He studied Aristotelian philosophy and was a scholar of enormous learning who was interested in all branches of natural science. He believed in the transmutation of base metals into gold but was unsuccessful in his attempts to accomplish that. He was the first to produce arsenic in a free form, recognized that the Milky Way was composed of stars, experimented with photosensitive chemicals like silver nitrate, and studied the combinations of metals. He was a prolific author and wrote many treatises on subjects such as logic, theology, botany, music, geography, astronomy, astrology, mineralogy, chemistry, zoology, physiology and phrenology. St. Thomas Aquinas was one of his favorite pupils. From 1260 to 1262 he was Bishop of Regensburg. He joined the Dominican Order in 1223 and taught at Hildesheim, Freiburg, Regensburg, Strasbourg, and Cologne before the University of Paris made him Doctor of Theology in 1245. He was beatified in 1622 and canonized in 1932. The genus Alberta in the Rubiaceae was published in 1838 by German botanist Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer. (PlantzAfrica; Columbia Encyclopedia; Wikipedia)

Albertisia: for Count Luigi Maria d'Albertis (1841-1901), an Italian zoologist-ethnographer and explorer who was the first person to chart the Fly River in Papua New Guinea, a feat that he wrote about in his two-volume work New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw, published in 1880. He made several trips to New Guinea and was a controversial figure because of his collecting techniques and some of his actions, such as firing rockets loaded with dynamite to keep the natives at bay, keeping a python on board his boat to protect his stores, and beating one of his Chinese crew to death. He died of mouth cancer after a lifetime of smoking. The genus Albertisia in the Menispermaceae was published in 1877 by Italian naturalist Odoardo Beccari. (Wikipedia; Australian Dictionary of Biography)

albertyniae: for the late Mrs. Joan Albertyn (fl. 1900's) of the farms Kleinheuwel and Eliaskraal, Bredasdorp, did much plant collecting in that area, commemorated with Erica albertyniae. (David Hollombe, pers. comm., Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

Albizia: for Filippo (di Luca) degli Albizzi (1724-1789), Italian nobleman and naturalist who introduced Albizia julibrissin into Europe from Constantinople around 1749. The genus Albizia in the Fabaceae was published in 1772 by Italian botanist Antonio Durazzini. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; PlantZAfrica)

Alchornea: for Stanesby Alchorne (1727-1800), British botanist, antiquarian, plant collector and demonstrator then head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, the second oldest botanical garden in England. It was originally established in 1673 as the Apothecaries' Garden (i.e. for medicinal plants) and the word 'Physic' here relates to the science of healing. Later he became Assay-Master at the Royal Mint and amassed an important library of early printed books. The genus Alchornea in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1788 by Swedish botanist Olof Swartz. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

Alciope: after a nymph in Greek Alciopein the Asteraceae was published by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1836. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Aldrovanda: for Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), Italian botanist, pharmacologist, naturalist, plant collector, doctor of medicine, and Director of the Botanical Garden of Bologna, one of the first in Europe. He was considered by Linnaeus as the father of natural history studies. He had vast collections of botanical and zoological specimens, and was the author of several hundred books and essays. Between 1551 and 1554 he conducted some of the first botanizing expeditions to collect plants for a herbarium. He was arrested for heresy in 1549 but absolved of the charge a year later. The genus Aldrovanda in the Droseraceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in his Genera Plantarum in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

alexandri: for (1) Sir James Edward Alexander (1803-1885), Scottish soldier, explorer and naturalist, traveller, Surveyor-General of the Cape of the Good Hope, author of An Expedition into the Interior of Africa. He saw active military service at the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, the Maori War in 1862 in New Zealand, the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, and the 6th Cape Frontier War in 1835 in South Africa, which was one of a series of conflicts called the Xhosa Wars between the Xhosa peoples and European settlers. He explored Namaqualand and Damaraland (part of present-day Namibia) in 1836 and 1837, collecting natural history specimens, mapping the terrain, and compiling a dictionary of Herero words. In 1877, he was largely responsible for the preservation and transfer of the obelisk misnamed Cleopatra's Needle to England. He is commemorated with Catophractes alexandri (Wikipedia; Gunn & Codd; A Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists); (2) Richard Chandler Prior (born Alexander) (1809-1902), British physician and amateur botanist, author of Popular Names of British Plants (1863). He spent over a year in South Africa, travelling and collecting plants. Later he botanized in the United States, Canada and Jamaica. He is commemorated with the taxa Aspalathus priorii, Anisodontea alexandri, Erica alexandri, Sterculea alexandri, Stachys alexandri, other taxa with the specific epithet priorii, and the genus Prioria, published in 1864 by August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach, not in southern Africa. In researching the question of why the epithet is spelled alexandri (as opposed to alexanderi), I found that according to the most current International Code of Nomenclature Chapter III ("Nomenclature of Taxa According to their Rank") Section 4 ("Names of Species"), Article 23A.1 states: "Names of persons and also of countries and localities used in specific epithets should take the form of nouns in the genitive..." and in Chapter IX ("Orthography and Gender of Names"), Article 60C.1 states: "When personal names are given Latin terminations in order to form specific and infraspecific epithets, formation of those epithets is as follows: (a) If the personal name ends with a vowel or –er, substantival epithets are formed by adding the genitive inflection appropriate to the sex and number of the person(s) honoured;" and the epithet alexandri derived from the name Alexander is given as an example. There are other taxa however that do not appear in southern Africa with the epithet alexanderi that honor other botanists or collectors with Alexander in their names, so clearly the above rule has not been applied consistently. (Gunn & Codd; International Code of Nomenclature Melbourne Code 2011) "

alfredii: for Alfred Bolus (1871-1952), nephew of Harry Bolus who did some plant collecting in the Southwest Cape as a young man, commemorated with the name Erica alfredii. (Gunn & Codd)

aliceae: for Alice Marguerite Pegler (1861-1929), teacher, painter and East Cape collector around the area of Kentani where she lived. She corresponded with the leading botanists of South Africa including MacOwan, Bolus, Pearson, Schönland, Pole Evans, Kolbe and others. She collected over 2,000 specimens, most of which were from an area with a radius of 8 km from the village of Kentani, and kept extensive notes on the characteristics of the plants she observed as they changed month to month throughout the year. She had suffered from eye trouble all of her life and was an invalid for seven years before her death. She was also interested in collecting beetles, gall flies, spiders and scorpions, and late in life turned her attention to algae and fungi. The taxon in southern Africa that bears this name is Mystacidium aliceae. (Gunn & Codd)

Alinula: for Aline Marie Raynal-Roques (1937- ), plant collector, Professor of botany at the Natural History Museum of Paris and researcher there in the Laboratory of Phanerogams. She was a botanical explorer and an investigator of plant pests and food crops in the Sahel region of Africa. She was the author of Agenda Botanique (2010), De la graine à la plante (2002), La Botanique Redécouverte (1994), and co-author of La génie des végétaux (2006) and a number of other works. The genus Alinula was published by her husband, French botanist Jean Raynal, in 1977.

allanii: for Alexander Y. Allan, plant collector in Kenya around 1910, missionary to the Kikuyu. He is commemorated with Metzgeria allanii, but that name has now been synonymized to M. leptoneura. (David Hollombe, pers. com)

allardii: for Harry Ardell Allard (1880-1963), American naturalist whose 40-year career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture was distinguished by his co-discovery with Dr. Wightman Wells Garner (1875–1956) of photoperiodism (the means by which a plant detects seasonal night and day length), his fundamental work on tobacco mosaic and plant breeding, his collections of lichens and flowering plants, and his pioneer observations on the stridulation of insects (the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts). The taxon in southern Africa that bears this specific epithet is Heterodermia allardii. (Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation)

allenae: for a Miss Allen who collected Albuca allenae at Zanzibar. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Allenia: for Robert Allen Dyer (1900-1987), South African botanist, assistant to Professor Schönland in the Division of Botany, Curator of the Albany Museum herbarium, Director of the Botanical Research Institute in Pretoria 1944-1963. He was largely responsible for initiating the Botanical Survey Section, founding the Pretoria National Botanic Garden, and beginning the Flora of Southern Africa. He edited the Flowering Plants of Africa, has written extensively on South African flora especially taxonomy, and has received numerous medals and awards from professional organizations. This genus Allenia in the Malvaceae was published in 1944 by South African botanist and taxonomist Edwin Percy Phillips. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

allenii: for Charles Ernest Frank Allen (1876-1939), plant collector in Australia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, collected Acalypha allenii in Zimbabwe in 1886, and Hibiscus allenii, also in Zimbabwe. He was a gardener at Kew until 1904 when he went to Rhodesia and Mozambique. He became the Curator of the Botanical Gardens, Darwin, Australia, in 1913, and Superintendent of Agriculture, Northern Territories, in 1919. (Harvard University Herbarium; JSTOR; Kew Bull. 1913, 417; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

allisonii: for Martinus Stuart (" Tutsie") Allison (1869-1901), plant collector mostly in the Drakensberg area, died in action during the Anglo-Boer War, commemorated with the former taxa Eulophia allisonii (now E. calanthoides) and Disperis allisonii (now D. cooperi), and also a species called Brachycorythis allisonii which has also disappeared due to synonymy. He grew up on his father's farm called "Rosenstein" near Oliviershoek and about 70 plants collected by him in that vicinity are in the Kew herbarium collection. He was a member of the Geological Society of South Africa and wrote a paper entitled "On the Origin and Formation of Pans," in which he ascribed the formation of pans to animal trampling near water holes. (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR)

Almbornia/almbornii: for Dr. Ove Almborn (1914-1992), Swedish botanist and lichenologist, senior lecturer in the Department of Systematic Botany at the University of Lund and curator of the Herbarium and Botanical Museum, where the lichen herbarium is among the largest and best curated collections in the world, very interested in botanical literature and had one of the best collections of lichenological literature in the world. He was the author of Distribution and Ecology of Some South Scandinavian Lichens published in 1948, and made an extensive tour of Cape Province, Natal, Transvaal and Mozambique in 1953 during which he collected many lichen specimens. He is commemorated with the lichen taxa Xanthoparmelia almbornii, Micarea almbornii, Caloplaca almbornii and Diploschistes almbornii. The genus Almbornia in the Parmeliaceae was published in 1981 by American botanist and lichenologist Theodore Lee Esslinger. (Gunn & Codd)

Alonsoa: for Cenón (or Zenón) Alonso Acosta Zorilla y Dávila (1756-1812), a Spanish government official. The genus Alonsoa in the Scrophulariaceae was published by Spanish botanists Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavon in "Systema Vegtabilium Florae Peruvianae et Chilensis," 1798. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

alpini/Alpinia: for Prospero Alpino (1553-1617), Italian physician and botanist. He was also known as Prospero Alpinus, Prospero Alpinio and Prosper Alpin. He studied medicine, took a doctor's degree at Padua in 1578, and then performed as a physician in a small town for a time. His interests were more focused on botany however, and he went to Egypt as physician to the Venetian Consul in Cairo. He seems to be one of the first to perceive the sexual differences of plants that formed the basis for the Linnean taxonomic system. He was the author of De Plantis Aegyptii Liber (1592) and his work De Medecina Egyptiorum introduced the coffee plant, the banana and the baobab tree to European readers. He is commemorated with Secamone alpini. The genus Alpinia in the Zingiberaceae was first published by Swedish botanist Linnaeus in 1753. (Elsa Pooley; Wikipedia)

Alstonia: for Scottish botanist Charles Alston (1685-1760), physician, chemist and Professor of Botany and Materia Medica at Edinburgh University. He was superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh and in 1715 through the influence of the Duchess of Hamilton was appointed a King's botanist and regius professor of botany. In 1718 he travelled to Leyden to study under the Dutch botanist, humanist and physician Herman Boerhaave. He matriculated from Leyden in 1718. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of the Physicians of Edinburgh and the author ofseveral works including Index Plantarum praecipue officinalium and Index medicamentorum simplicium. He was a follower of Tournefort's natural classification system which denied the existence of sexuality in plants and as such opposed the system of Linnaeus. Much of his later researches concentrated on the medicinal virtues of lime water. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

alstonii: for (1) Capt. Edward Garwood Alston (1861/1862-1934), farm manager and botanical collector in the Northern Cape who sent plants to Peter MacOwan and Selmar Schönland. He is commemorated with Trichocaulon alstonii, Adromischus alstonii, Hoodia alstonii, Cephalophyllum alstonii, and Crassula alstonii (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd); (2) Arthur Hugh Garfit Alston (1902-1958), British botanist, worked as assistant curator at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the colonial Department of Agriculture in Ceylon. He also was Director of the botanical garden of Peradeniya in Ceylon from 1925 to 1930. In addition to Ceylon, he botanized in Indonesia and Central America. He was a member of the Linnean Society of London, author of Ferns and Fern-Allies of West Central Africa, co-author of A Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon, and was Editor of the British Fern Gazette. He is commemorated with Isoetes alstonii. (Flora of Zimbabwe)

Alstroemeria: for Baron Clas Alströmer (Alstroemer, originally Alstrom, the name Clas possibly shortened from Claudius or Klaudius) (1736-1794), Swedish naturalist, industrialist and student of Carl Linnaeus at Uppsala University. The genus Alstroemeria in the Alstroemeriaceae was named by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1762 after havng first been described by the French botanist Louis Feuillée. Alströmer was particularly interested in sheep and travelled to Spain to acquire information about breeding sheep and other subjects. He published a "Discourse on the Breeding of Fine-woolied Sheep" in 1770. It was there that he first saw at the house of the Swedish Consul in Cadiz a beautiful flower of a native Peruvian plant called Lily of the Incas, and acquired some seeds, which he immediately sent to his friend and mentor Linnaeus, who grew seedlings and nursed them carefully through the winter in his bedchamber. During the period 1760-1764 Alströmer also visited France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and England, collecting many seeds. Many sources say incorrectly that his trip to Spain was in 1753. He was Chancellor of Gothenburg, and established a botanical garden and natural history museum there managed by another student of Linnaeus, the noted botanist Anders Dahl. He was sufficiently wealthy to fund the botanical excursions of many of Linnaeus' students, including Adam Afzelius, Anders Tidström and even Linnaeus' son. His father Jonas (original name Jonas Toresson, changed to Alstrom, and then to Alströmer when he was knighted in 1751), who was in many ways more famous than his son, was an agriculturist and industrialist credited with importing flocks of Merino sheep from England and Spain and goats from Angora, introducing various kinds of dyeing plants, making improvements in the manufacture of cutlery, tanning and ship-building, and greatly improving the cultivation of the potato and tobacco in Sweden, was the author of Nouvelliste oeconomique on sheep management in 1755, and was one of the founders of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, to which Clas was elected in 1768. (Encyclopaedia Brittanica; Wikipedia; JSTOR; The Universal Dictionary of Biography and Mythology by Joseph Thomas; The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge by Longman Brown)

altensteinii: for Baron von Stein zum Altenstein (1770-1840), a Prussian statesman at the court of King William Fredrick III. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Althenia: for Jean Althen (1709-1774), an Armenian/Persian agronomist who developed in France the cultivation of madder, and author of Mémoire sur la culture de la garance. Although the plant had been present in the region before his arrival, it was Althen who developed its cultivation, turning it into an industry. In 1754 he arrived in Avignon where he started experimenting with the cultivation of madder. Associated with a local landlord, Clauseau Aïné, he produced a crop of 2500 kg (5500 lbs) in 1769. Poor business decisions led to financial problems, and he died in poverty in 1774. A French commune, Althen-des-Paluds, is named after him, as well as statues and streets in several cities of the south of France. The genus Althenia in the Zannichelliaceae was published by Félix Petit in 1829. (Western Australian plant names and their meanings: a glossary by F.A. Sharr; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Alvesia: for Bento António Alves (or possibly António Bento Alves), a respected 19th century Portuguese horticulturist from Lisbon who was a "loyal companion and constant friend" of Austrian botanist Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch, who published the genus Alvesia in the Lamiaceae in his honor in 1869.

Amandinea: for Madame Amandine Manière (1937- ), a friend of the original author, with no further details. The complete botanical name for this taxon is Amandinea M. Choisy ex Scheid. & H. Mayrhofer. The use of 'ex' denotes the fact that an initial description did not satisfy the rules for valid publication, but that the same name (with relevant attribution) was subsequently validly published by a second author or authors (or by the same author in a subsequent publication). In botany the author of the earlier name precedes the later. So in this case, the original publication was by French mycologist and lichenologist Maurice Gustave Benoit Pautre-dit-Choisy, but the valid publication was in 1993 by Swiss lichenologist and botanist Christoph Scheidegger and Austrian lichenologist Helmut Mayrhofer. (Christoph Scheidegger, pers. comm.; original publication by Choisy)

Ammannia: for Paul Ammann (1634-1691), German physician, botanist and professor at the University of Leipzig, and director of the medical garden there. He authored Supellex Botanica in 1675 which was an enumeration of the medical plants in the garden and others in the vicinity. He also produced Medecina Critica (1670), Paraenesis ad Docentes occupata circa Institutionum Medicarum Emendationem (1673), Irenicum Numae Pompilii cum Hippocrate (1689), and Character Naturalis Plantarum (1676). The genera Ammannia in the Lythraceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

ammonsiana: for Nellie Perrell Ammons (1889-1988), American bryologist, assistant professor of botany at West Virginia University, author of Shrubs of West Virginia and co-author with Earl L. Core of Woody plants in winter: a manual of common trees and shrubs in winter in the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada (1958). The taxon in southern Africa with this epithet is Syntrichia ammonsiana. (Mosses of Eastern North America by Howard Crum and Lewis Anderson)

Amperea: for Andre-Marie Ampère (1775-1836), French physicist, natural philospher and mathematician, and considered one of the primary founders of the science of electromagnetism, after whom is named the ampere. Despite lacking any formal qualifications, he became a professor of mathematics at the École de Polytechnique. He also taught courses in philosphy and astronomy at the University of Paris, and was elected chair of experimental physics at the College de France in 1814. He was the author of the 1826 work Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l’experience (Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena) and coined the term 'electromagnetics.' He asked that an inscription be placed on his gravestone, Tandem Felix (Happy at Last). His name is one of 72 prominent French scientists placed by Gustave Eiffel on plaques around the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The genus Amperea in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1824 by French botanist Adrien Henri Laurent de Jussieu. His father was guillotined during the French Revolution. (Wikipedia)

Amsinckia: for Wilhelm Amsinck (Guilhelmus Amsinckius) (1752-1831), German businessman and politician, first Burgomeister (Mayor) of Hamburg and President of the Senate, patron of botany and the Botanical Garden in Hamburg. The CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names describes him as a botanist, but I can't find any evidence for that claim. Members of the the Amsinck family were prominent merchants in multiple countries including the Netherlands, Hamburg, Portugal, England, France, Hanover, Holstein, Denmark, Suriname and India. Hugh Clarke adds the following: " He attended the Johanneum and Academic High school in Hamburg and studied in Leipzig and Goettingen (1771-1774) and obtained a licentiate qualifying to take a doctorate. In 1786, he became a town councilor (alderman) managing various public offices.... He took office during the French occupation of Hamburg and was particularly active in the negotiations with the French Republic. He made many improvements to Hamburg relating to land reclamation, educational improvement, lighthouse construction, and island requisition." The genus Amsinckia in the Boraginaceae was published in 1831 by German botanist Johann Georg Christian Lehmann. (Wikipedia; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Amsonia: two possibilities have been suggested for the derivation of this generic epithet. It was published in 1788 by British-born American botanist Thomas Walter, author of Flora Caroliniana. One possibility is that it was named for the 18th century Charles Amson, Virginia botanist, traveller and physician, and the other is that it commemorated a Dr. John Amson, Mayor of Williamsburg in 1750-1751. It is entirely possibly that these two names represent the same individual. Charles Amson is variously described as being a resident either of Virginia or South Carolina, and his name is the one most common given in this regard. (Southwest Colorado Wildflowers -Biographies of Naturalists)

Anderbergia: for Arne Alfred Anderberg (1954- ), Swedish botanist and taxonomist of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, professor at the University of Stockholm. He has been Head of Phanerogamic Botany at the Museum since 2001, and of botany since 2013. He was author of Parsimony analysis and cladistic reclassification of the Relhania generic group (1991), Taxonomy and phylogeny of the tribe Gnaphalieae (1991), and The circumscription of the Ericales, and their cladistic relationships to other families of higher dicotyledons (1992), and co-author with Kare Bremer of Asteraceae: Cladistics and Classification (1994), with Joachim Kadereit and Charles Jeffrey of the Asteraceae section of The Families and Genera of Flowering plants (2007), and with Vicki Funk, Alfonso Susanna, Tod Stuessy and Randall Bayer of Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography of the Compositae (2009). The genus Anderbergia in the Asteraceae was published in 1996 by Swedish botanist Rune Bertil Nordenstam.

andersoniae: for Ethel (West) Anderson (c.1870-1939). She is commemorated in Freesia andersoniae which she collected in South Africa in 1925. (David Hollombe, pers. com)

andersonianum: for Lewis Edward Anderson (1912- ), co-author with Howard Alvin Crum of The Mosses of Eastern North America, Department of Botany at Duke University from 1936 until his retirement in 1980, responsible for increasing the herbarium specimens from a few thousand specimens to approximately 230,000 specimens, resulting in the bryophyte herbarium being officially renamed the L.E. Anderson Bryophyte Herbarium. He is commemorated with Archidium andersonianum. (Duke Bryology Lab)

anderssonii: for Prof. Nils Johan Andersson (1821-1880), Swedish botanist commemorated with Frullania anderssonii, of which he collected specimens on Mauritius during the Eugenie expedition. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Andradia: for Alfredo Augusto Freire de Andrade (1859-1929), a Portuguese general, politician and colonial administrator, governor-general of Mozambique 1906-1910, author of Relatorios Sobre Moçambique. Other positions he held include lecturer of the School of the Army, Director General of the Colonies 1911-1913, Secretary General of the Ministry of Public Instruction, president of the Board of Public Instruction and Minister for Foreign Affairs. The genus Andradia in the Fabaceae was published in 1909 by Scots-born botanist Thomas Robertson Sim.

Andreaea: for Johann Gerhard Reinhard Andreä (1724-1793), apothecary and chemist of Hanover. He was appointed to the royal court of Hannover and his work on soils was performed with an eye to determining which would be best for certain kinds of agriculture. He apparently met and befriended Benjamin Franklin on his visit to Hannover. "He was born in Hannover, the son of a pharmacist. After training in a Frankfurt pharmacy, he studied in Leyden and England. Returning to Hannover, he took over his father's pharmacy. He did field work in Switzerland and became interested in chemistry and mineralogy, describing 300 types of soils. Besides natural history, he read great literature in various languages, especially loved the English poets, and was a fine pianist. Friedrich Ehrhart, with whom he worked, named this genus after him." (from the online Guide to the Bryophytes of Colorado by William A. Weber) The moss genus Andreaea was published by German botanist Johann Hedwig in 1801.

andreae/andreaeana/andreaeanum/andreaei: for Hans Karl C. Andreae (c.1884-1966), German-born South African analytical chemist, naturalist and plant collector who emigrated to South Africa for reasons of health. He was an assistant to Dr. Hermann Wilhelm Rudolf Marloth with whom he went on collecting trips. He also made a collection of beetles and was made honorary curator of Coleoptera at the South African Museum. He is commemorated with two Restio taxa Calopsis andreaeana, which he collected in 1923, and Chondropetalum andreaeanum, which he collected in 1921, and also for Erica andreaei and Cotula andreae. (Gunn & Codd; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

andrewsii/andrewsianum: for Henry Cranke Andrews (?-1835?), British botanist, botanical artist and engraver, author of The Botanist's Repository in ten volumes, which provided affordable, beautiful, and accurate images of plants to the growing number of British amateur gardeners. He also produced Coloured Engravings of Heaths (4 vols.), The Heathery (6 vols.) and A Monograph of the Genus Geranium (2 vols.) In these works he was not only the artist, but also the engraver, colorist and publisher. He is remembered in the formerly recognized species Pelargonium andrewsii (now. P. longifolium) and Argyrolobium andrewsianum (now A. tomentosum). (Wikipedia)

angelica: for Mrs. Robert Catherwood Wallace (née Angelique Roussouw) (1874-c. 1950) whose husband was a chief engineer for the South African Railways and Harbours 1921-1928, commemorated with Aloe angelica. ("What's in a Name: Epithets in Aloe," Bradleya 28/2010)

angelicae: for Angelika Aurelie Selma Rusch (née Jobst) (1874-1938), wife of Ernst Julius Rusch (1867-1957) and a good friend of German botanist and explorer Moritz Kurt Dinter. She is commemorated with the succulent species Conophytum angelicae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

annae: for Anna Dieterlen (née Busch) (1859–1945). "She was a missionary teacher and plant collector, born in France, and sent to Lesotho in 1877 to teach at the school at Thaba Bosin, where she met and married Rev. Herman Dieterlen in 1879. She spent time at the Hermon Mission Station, the Leribe Mission Station and Botosabela Leper Settlement in Likohoele, retiring to Strasbourg, Alsace in 1919. While in Leribe she became interested in the local vegetation, began a herbarium and collected in the region of 2,000 specimens (including Euryops annae). Most of her plants were collected on the Leribe plateau near the Free State border with some from further inland. She also had a good knowledge of Sesotho and added many vernacular names and information on ritual, medicinal and economic uses. E.P. Phillips visited the area in 1913, adding some of his own collections, and paid tribute to her ‘untiring zeal and energy in contributing to our knowledge of the Leribe flora' in his paper on the flora of the Leribe Plateau published in the Annals of the South African Museum in 1917." She is commemorated in Euryops annae, Cymbopogon dieterleniae, and the former taxa Lotononis dieterleniae (now L. lotononoides). There are also Lithops annae and Oxalis annae, but I don't know whether they are named for the same person or not. (PlantzAfrica; Gunn & Codd)

annae-ameliae: for Miss Anna Amelia Obermeyer (later to become Mrs. Amelia Mauve) (1907-2001), a South African botanist at the National Herbarium, Pretoria. She was the Curator of the Transvaal Museum Herbarium. She has published many contributions to South African flora in Bothalia, Flora of Southern Africa, Flowering Plants of Africa and Kirkia. She was honored with the names Hemizygia obermeyerae, Blepharis obermeyerae, Syncolostemon obermeyerae, and Ornithogalum annae-ameliae. (Gunn & Codd)

Annona: after Annona, in Roman mythology the goddess of the harvest, the personification of plenty (often depicted on coins and/or with a cornucopia), the name deriving from the Latin annona ("food, wheat, yearly produce," from annus, " year."), the name of a wheat allotment given to the people of Rome, when necessary, by the government to stave off famine. This allotment, (started by Gaius Gracchus in 123 BCE), 6.5 bushels of corn at a reduced price was given to up to 100,000-300,000 Roman householders and was in effect, with some eligibility variations, until the end of the Roman Empire. Some authorities believe Annona is a corruption of the native S. American name Anona used by the Taino peoples, for fruit of species in this genus. The genus Annona in the Annonaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia) 

Ansellia/anselliana: for John Ansell (?-1847), British plant collector, gardener and assistant botanist on Capt. Allen's Niger expedition in 1841 consisting of the Albert commanded by Capt. H. Dundas Trotter, the Wilberforce commanded by Capt. William Allen, and the Soudan commanded by Capt. Bird Allen. Of the 145 Europeans who took part in the expedition, 53 ultimately perished mostly of fever. Ansell was on the Wilberforce and found the plant on which the genus was based on the island of Fernando Po. He was a member of the Botanical Society of London. The genus Ansellia in the Orchidaceae was published by British botanist John Lindley in 1844. He was also commemorated with the taxon Justicia anselliana. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists)

Antonia: for Anton Victor (1779-1835), Archduke of Austria and Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, and Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia 1816-1818. Although elected as Prince-bishop of Münster and Archbishop and Prince-elector of Cologne, due to the French occupation of those cities he never assumed his powers, and those territories were secularized in the reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire, thus technically his predecessors were the last holders of those offices. The genus Antonia in the Loganiaceae was published in 1829 by Austrian botanist, entomologist, geologist, and physician Johann Baptist Emanuel Pohl and in the original publication, Plantarum Brasiliae Icones et Descriptiones hactenus ineditae, he is described as a "high botany lover and promoter." (Biodiversity Heritage Library; Wikipedia)

antonii: for Anthony Vincent Hall (1936- ), British-born botanist, assistant curator of the Bolus Herbarium, research assistant in hydrobiology at Rhodes University, senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, founder and Chairman of the Coordinating Council for Nature Conservation in the Cape, Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of South Africa. He is commemorated in the taxon Lampranthus antonii. (Gunn & Codd)

Antunesia/antunesii: for Père José Maria Antunes (1856-1928), plant collector who accompanied the German plant collector Eugène Dekindt (1865-1905) in Angola 1899-1902. He also collected in South Africa. The genus Antunesia in the Asteraceae was published in 1893 by German botanist Karl August Otto Hoffmann. He was also commemorated with Xylopia antunesii, Pleiotaxis antunesii, and Albizia antunesiana. (JSTOR)

Aongstroemia: for Johan Ångström (Aongstroem) (1813-1879), Swedish bryologist, pterodologist and physician, older brother of world famous physicist and astronomer Anders Jonas Åongström whose name is recognized most perhaps because of the unit of wavelength, the angstrom, which is one-millionth of a meter. His younger brother, Carl Arendt Åongström, was a professor of mechanics, and his nephew, Knut Johan Ångström, was a physicist who invented an apparatus for obtaining a photographic representation of the infrared spectrum. This moss genus in the Dicranaceae was published in 1846 by German bryologist Philipp Bruch and German-French botanist Wilhelm Philipp Schimper. There is also a genus in the Dicranaceae Aongstroemiopsis which was so named not in honor of Johan Ångström but rather to indicate that it bears a resemblance to Aongstroemia.

Araujia: for Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo (1754-1817), Portuguese statesman, amateur botanist and patron of botany, 1st count of Barca. During the early part of his life, he was interested in philosophy, mathematics and historical studies, and also studied German literature. He worked to establish the academy of sciences at Lisbon, then represented the Portuguese government in Holland, France, Prussia, and Russia. He was first minister to John VI (1767-1826), King of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, whom he followed to Brazil in 1807. There he became minister of Foreign Affairs and War, and sought diligently to promote education and industry. He taught the Brazilians how to manufacture porcelain, had his own splendid botanical garden, and experimented with the acclimatization of the tea plant to Brazil. He was also the founder of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Although Wikipedia states that he was the author of two tragedies and a translation of Virgil's pastorals, I can find no independent confirmation of that. The genus Araujia in the Asclepiadaceae was published in 1818 by Portuguese botanist Felix de (Silva) Avellar Brotero. (Virtualology.com; Wikipedia)

arbuthnotiae: for Isobel Agnes Arbuthnot (1870-1963), Irish-born South African plant collector and herbarium who came to the Republic of South Africa in 1888 and was employed as a companion to the invalid wife of Harry Bolus and later to the wife of his son Herman. She was an assistant at the Bolus Herbarium (1918-1939) and then at the Compton Herbarium (1939-1945). She is commemorated in Lampranthus arbuthnotiae and Lachenalia arbuthnotiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

archbelliae: the JSTOR database has a record of Watsonia archbelliae (now synonymized to Watsonia pillansii) being collected in Natal by someone named Archbell in 1931. The person was a Mrs. J.E. (Josephine Emma?) Archbell (née Thompson) of Umkomaas, wife of Joseph William Archbell, and the collection was made at Underberg, Natal. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

archerae: for Mrs. Jacoba (Kowie) M.N. Archer (fl. 1966), South African plant enthusiast. She is commemorated with Lithops archerae. (Women and Cacti)

archeri: for Joseph Archer (1871-1954), English-born succulent plant collector, curator of Karoo Garden, Whitehill, originally a railway engineer then station master. The Karoo Garden was eventually moved to a site near Worcester. He is commemorated with Ruschia archeri, Drosanthemum archeri and Tanquana archeri, and the former taxa Crassula archeri (now C. pyramidalis) and Kleinia archeri (now Curio arcuarii). There are other taxa such as Helichrysum archeri and Sutera archeri but I don't know who they were named for. (Gunn & Codd)

ardernei: for Henry Matthew Arderne (1834-1914) or his father, Ralph Henry Arderne (1802-1885), who started a garden now called the 'Arderne gardens', in Claremont, Cape Town. The taxon in southern Africa with this name is the former Watsonia ardernei, now W. borbonica. (Gunn & Codd)

arechavaletae: for José Arechavaleta y Balpardo (1838-1912), Uruguayan pharmacist and botanist, referred to as the founder of modern biology in Uruguay, author of Las Gramineas Uruguayas and Flora Uruguaya. He is commemorated in the former taxon Rhynchospora arechavaletae, now a synonym of Rhyncospora holoschoenoides. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Arethusa: after a mythological wood nymph named Arethusa, who was changed into a stream by Artemis. She was a Nereid (daughter of Nereus), and the story is that she bathed in a stream without knowing that it was the river god Alpheus. He fell in love with her and pursued her, but she wished to remain chaste and fled. She sought help from Artemis who first hid her in a cloud and then transformed her into an underground stream that flowed to the island of Ortygia, where she emerged as a fountain. The genus Arethusa in the Orchidaceae was published first by Dutch botanist Johan Frederik Gronovius in 1743 and then by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

armiana: for Anthony R. Mitchell (1938- ), British botanist, explorer and horticulturist in SA for many years, derived from his initials ARM, commemorated in Othonna armiana and Portulacaria armiana. (Au Cactus Francophone)

armitageana: for Rev. Edward Armitage (1822-1906), English clergyman and amateur botanist, Fellow of the Linnean Society, visited Natal in 1853 and did some plant collecting in South Africa. (Gunn & Codd)

armstrongiae: for a 'Miss Armstrong,' long unidentified further but likely based on recent research to be Olivia Wolfenden Armstrong, born about 1845. She collected with her father who was listed as a Dr. William Armstrong. The family left England sometime around or after 1856. She married James Thomas Ball in 1872 and there is a record that an Olivia Wolfenden Ball was listed as a member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1922. According to Gunn & Codd, about 300 specimens collected by 'Dr. and Miss Armstrong' were sent to Kew. She collected lichens in the Karkloof area of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, and was apparently also interested in ferns. The bulk of Miss Armstrong’s specimens, including several holotypes, which Nylander did not keep in Helsinki, are housed at the herbarium of the National Botanic Garden, Glasnevin, in Ireland A number of her lichen specimens was sent to Finnish lichenologist W.illiam Nylander. She died in Durban in 1934. (Information from a short article in Bothalia Vol. 49 No. 1, 2019, entitled "Determining the Type Locality and Collector of Nylander's South African Lichens" written by Ian D. Madeiros.

armstrongii: for William Armstrong (fl. 1886-1901), succulent plant collector in the Humansdorp area of the Republic of South Africa, commemorated in Haworthia armstrongii, Gasteria nitida var. armstrongii, and the former species Freesia armstrongii (now Freesia corymbosa). This Armstrong is listed in Gunn & Codd as a separate individual from the William Armstrong in the preceding entry, so is likely a different person.

arnelliana: for Sigfrid Wilhelm Arnell (1895-1970), Swedish botanist, plant name author and collector of mosses and lichens. He is commemorated with Lejeunea arnelliana. (Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria)

arnotii: for David Arnot (1821-1894), South African diamond prospector and plant collector, son of a Scottish settler who came to the Cape in 1817. He sent living specimens of Aloes, Euphorbias, Stapelias, Crassulas and Cotyledons to W.J. Hooker at Kew. He is commemorated with Brachystelma arnotii and Talinum arnotii. (Flora of Zimbabwe; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

Arrowsmithia: for John Arrowsmith (1790-1873), cartographer, nephew of Aaron Arrowsmith, one of the most significant map publishers of the 19th century. He began working for his uncle in 1810, and in 1834 published the London Atlas of Universal Geography, the best such maps then in existence. In 1838 he took over the business begun by his uncle and carried on by his cousins Aaron, Jr. and Samuel after their father's death, and produced superb maps of Australia, America, Africa and India among many others. He was honored in 1863 by the Royal Geographical Society which he had helped to found. The genus Arrowsmithia in the Asteraceae was published in 1838 by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. (Alice Notten, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

Artemisia: after the Greek goddess of chastity, childbirth and the hunt, moon goddess and patron of women and young girls Artemis (= Roman Diana), daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo who so benefitted from plants of this family that she gave them her own name. This was also the old Latin name given to the mugwort or wormwoods by Pliny. An alternative possibility for the derivation of this name is that it comes from the historical Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor (Turkey), sister and wife of King Mausolus, who ruled after his death from 352 to 350 B.C.E. and built during her short reign one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, which she unfortunately did not live to see the completion of. According to Intermountaini Flora, she was a "noted botanist, medical researcher, and scholar." This is one of the many genera which Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published in his Species Plantarum in 1753 and is in the family Asteraceae.

arthurolfago: for Dr. Arthur Tischer (1895-2000), German Mesemb specialist and founding member of the International Organization for Succulent Plant Study, and Dr. Rolf Rawé (fl. 1970's, 1980's), nurseryman and German Mesemb enthusiast in South Africa, both important specialists of the genus Conophytum. The Latin ending 'ago' from 'agere', to perform, achieve. They are commemorated with Conophytum arthurolfago. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

aschersonii/aschersoniana: for Professor Paul Friedrich August Ascherson (1834-1913), German botanist and plant collector, son of physician and mycologist Ferdinand Moritz Ascherson (1798-1879). He began by studying medicine but soon became more interested in botany and after getting a doctorate became an assistant at the Botanical Garden at Berlin and also began working at the Royal Herbarium in 1865. Later he bacame a professor of botany at the University of Berlin, and conducted expeditions to Libya and elsewhere in Africa. He was the author of Flora der Provinz Brandenburg and co-author with Paul Graebner of Synopsis der mitteleuropaïschen Flora. He is commemorated with Zaluzianskya aschersoniana, Pseudalthenia aschersoniana and Convolvulus aschersonii. (CRC World Dictionary of Grasses; Wikipedia)

Asclepias: after the Greek God of medicine. The genus Asclepias in the Asclepiadaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

ashtonii: for Hugh Ashton (1878-1936), plant collector, commemorated with Delosperma ashtonii which he collected in Lesotho in 1922. He was the father of anthropologist Edmund Hugh Ashton (1911-1997), Bechuanaland Assistant Colonial Administrator of Kanye District, and author of The Basuto: A Social Study of Traditional and Modern Lesotho. (Elsa Pooley; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Assonia: for Claudio Ignacio Jordán de Asso y del Rio (Ignatius de Asso), aka Melchor de Azagra (1742-1814), Spanish scholar, recognized as an expert in law, languages, economics, history and science (geology, botany, zoology), who wrote on the plants of Arragon and was one of the first Spanish botanists to use the binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus. He authored among other things Synopsis stirpium indigenarum Aragoniæ (1779), Mantissa stirpium indigenarum Aragoniæ (1781) and Enumeralio stirpium in Aragoniæ noviter detectarum (1784). He held the chairs of Chemistry and Botany at Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa. He also wrote on agriculture and the natural sciences. He was a diplomat (consul at Dunkirk, Amsterdam and Bordeaux) and wrote an important work on economics called the History of Political Economy of Aragon (1798). The publication of this generic name by Antonio José Cavanilles in 1786 is now considered an invalid publication.

Astridia: for Astrid Elise Wilberg (1887-1960), wife of the German botanist Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes (1881-1960). The genus Astridia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1926 by German botanist Moritz Kurt Dinter who was a colleague of Gustav Schwantes. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

astridiae: probably for Mrs. Gustav Schwantes (née Astrid Elise Wilberg)? The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is the former Mesembryanthemum astridiae (which like the genus Astridia above was published by the German botanist Moritz Kurt Dinter, a close colleague of Schwantes), now synonymized to Titanopsis hugo-schlecteri.

atherstonei: for William Guybon Atherstone (1814-1898), British-born botanist and medical practitioner who became one of the pioneers of South African geology. Along with Peter MacOwan and H.G. Galpin, he identified a 21-carat crystal as the first diamond discovered in Africa. He came to South Africa with his parents in 1820 and was an assistant surgeon during the Sixth Frontier War 1834-1835. He later studied medicine and received his M.D. at Heidelberg in 1839. He traveled extensively in the eastern Cape, Namaqualand and the Transvaal, collecting minerals, fossils, plant specimens and seeds, and sending material to William Jackson Hooker at Kew. In addition to geology he was also widely known in the field of paleontology. He was largely responsible for the foundation of the Grahamstown Botanical Garden which was originally on his property and also the Albany Natural History Society which became the Albany Museum. He later became a member of the Cape Parliament. He had two brothers and five sisters including Caroline Atherstone (c. 1826-?) who married Henry Hutton (see Huttonea). He is commemorated with the taxa Erica atherstonei, Selago atherstonei and Ipomoea atherstonei, and was also honored by the genus Atherstonea, published in 1862 by German-born South African botanist Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe, which does not appear in southern Africa. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; Gunn & Codd)

Atropa: after Atropos, one of the three Fates of Greek mythology, the one who cut the thread or web of life. Alternately described as the daughters of Zeus and Themis, or as the daughters of Nyx (Night), she and her sisters Clotho and Lachesis determined the fates of every individual, Clotho spinning the thread of life, Lachesis determining its length, and Atropos cutting the thread. The genus Atropa in the Solanaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeaus in 1753. The pharmacologically active ingredients of Atropa include atropine and scopolamine. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

aubertii: for Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars (1758-1831), an eminent French botanist who during the French Revolution was imprisoned for two years and then after the revolution was exiled to Madagascar and nearby islands where he became interested in botany and started collecting plants there and on La Réunion and Mauritius. He named many genera and species, and had many species named for him, particularly orchids. He was the author of 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. He visited the Cape in 1793 and met with Francis Masson. When he returned to France his collection of more than 2,000 plants went mostly to the Muséum de Paris. He is remembered in the moss taxa Elaphoglossum aubertii, Bryum aubertii, and Isotachis aubertii. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

aucampiae: for Miss Juanita Aucamp (1905-?) who collected plants on her father's farm near Postmasburg. She is commemorated with Lithops aucampiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Audouinia: for Jean Victoire Audouin (1797-1841), French naturalist, entomologist and ornithologist, student of medicine and assistant to Pierre André Latreille (1762-1833) as Professor of Entomology at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. He eventually became Latreille's successor. He was the author of Histoire des insectes nuisibles à la vigne (1842), completed after his death by Henri Milne-Edwards and Émile Blanchard, and co-author with Bory de Saint-Vincent and Adolphe Theodore Brongniart of Dictionaire Classique d'Histoire Naturelle (1822). He was one of the founders in 1832 of the Société Entomologique de France, and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The genus Adouinia in the Bruniaceae was published in 1828 by German botanist and ornithologist Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach. Additionally, the fungal species Microsporum audouinii and the Audouin's gull (Larus audouinii) were named to honor him. (Wikipedia)

Augea/augei: for Johann Andreas Auge (1711-1805), German gardener, naturalist, and botanical collector who died in the Cape Province. He worked at the Botanic Garden at Leyden which was under the direction of Herman Boerhaave, where he saw his first Cape plants. He arrived at the Cape in 1747 and went to work as a gardener for the governor. Subsequently the next governor, Ryk Tulbagh, promoted him to Superintendent of the garden. He was a participant in a land expedition from the Cape Colony to Namibia from July 1761 to April 1762. The expedition consisted of its leader Hendrik Hop, Surveyor Carel Frederik Brink, Johann Auge, Surgeon Carel Christoffel Rijkvoet, scout Jacobus Coetzee and twelve other Cape burghers, as well as 68 Basters [descendants of liaisons between the Cape Colony Dutch and indigenous African women. They largely live in Namibia and are similar to coloured or Griqua people in South Africa. The name Baster is derived from the Dutch word for ‘mixed race’ or ‘crossbreed'.] They crossed the Oranje River on Sep. 29, 1761, visited Warmbad, travelled northwards up to the Xamob (present-day Löwen) River, and turned back on Dec. 9, 1761. On Feb. 9, 1762, they crossed the Oranje River on their way back. He acted as a guide to the Swedish botanist Carl Thunberg in 1772. From about 1781 on he was completely blind, and sometime in the late 1790s a band of Xhosa warriors attacked his farm and he lost all his possessions including his botanical books and dried plant specimens. The Swedish botanist Michael Grubb (af Grubbens) (1728-1808) purchased a large collection of specimens from him and presented it to Professor Peter Jonas Bergius, who made use of it in his only major work Descriptiones plantarum which he dedicated to Grubb, speaking of him in glowing terms and naming the genus Grubbia in his honor. It was only later when Peter Carl Thunberg published his Travels at the Cape of Good Hope that the truth came out. The genus Augea in the Zygophyllaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg in 1794. Auge died in 1805 according to Gunn & Codd, Zoological Exploration of Southern Africa, the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names and the website Biographies of Namibian Personalities, but in 1796 according to the Linnean Society, JSTOR and the Harvard University Herbaria Database of Botanists. (Gunn & Codd)

aurioliae: for Auriol Ursula Batten (1918-2015), a botany teacher and botanical artist who has contributed many illustrations in publications. Auriol Batten graduated with a B.Sc in Botany at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. She also studied art at the Durban Technical College. She settled in East London after her marriage and started painting wild flowers. She is the co-author with Hertha Bokelmann of Wild Flowers of the Eastern Cape Province (1966) and with M. Courtenay Latimer of Wild Flowers of the Tsitsikama (1967). She is commemorated with Lachenalia aurioliae, Haworthia batteniae, Albuca batteniana, Polycarena batteniana and Diascia batteniana. (Gunn & Codd)

axthelmiana: for Mr. Axthelm (fl. 1923), commemorated with Ruschia axthelmiana. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

aylae: for Ayla Edwards, the daughter of Trevor J. Edwards (fl. 1989) who was author of Streptocarpus aylae.

Azanza: for Miguel José de Azanza (1746-1826), Duke of Santa Fe, Spanish politician and diplomat, and Viceroy of New Spain, a territory which consisted of Mexico, Spanish Central America, Spain's Caribbean colonies, and parts of the Gulf Coast of North America, primarily Florida. His diplomatic career included postings as Secretary of the Spanish embassy in Saint Petersburg and Chargé d'affaires in Berlin. He also served as Minister of War from 1793-1796 and Minister of the Treasury. Hugh Clarke adds that during the time he was Viceroy of New Spain, "the Spanish botanist Martin Sessé y Lacasta and the Mexican naturalist José Mariano Mociño, supported by Spain, were conducting an  ambitious survey of the natural history of the colonies of New Spain. They named a plant Azanza insignis (unpublished), possibly recorded later as De Candolle's Hibiscus Azanzae." There seems little doubt that they named this taxa for the Viceroy. In 1807 Napoleon invaded Spain and replaced the King, Charles IV, with his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, and Azanza submitted to him and was made Duke of Santa Fe. His arrival in Madrid sparked the Spanish resistance to Napoleon, and Azanza's actions made him unpopular. When the French were defeated, Azanza was forced into exile, sentenced to death in abstentia, and died in poverty in France. The genus Azanza in the Malvaceae was published in 1824. (Wikipedia; Hugh Clarke)

Baikiaea/baikieana: for William Balfour Baikie (1825-1864), Scottish doctor and Royal Navy surgeon, plant collector, explorer and philologist, naturalist (and then commander) on the Niger expedition of 1854. He also led a second expedition to the Niger in 1857 and established a settlement there. He was the author of Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwora and Binue (1856) and Observations on the Hausa and Fuifuide (i.e. Fula) Languages (1861). He translated the Bible into some of the languages of Central Africa. He died on his way back to England at the young age of 39 in Sierra Leone. The genus Baikiaea in the Fabaceae was published in 1865 by British botanist George Bentham. Baikie was also honored by the former species Garcinia baikieana, which is now G. livingstonei. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

baileyana/baileyi: for Frederick Manson Bailey (1827-1915), British-born Australian botanist and horticulturist, colonial botanist of Queensland, acting curator of the Queensland Museum 1880-1882 and prolific author of many major works on the flora of Queensland such as Handbook to the Ferns of Queensland, An Illustrated Monograph of the Grasses of Queensland, The Fern World of Australia, The Queensland Flora in six volumes, and Comprehensive Catalogue of Queensland Plants, Both Indigenous and Naturalised. He was a founding member of the Royal Society of Queensland and its President in 1890. He was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and had his name attached to many species of plants. His son, John Frederick Bailey, became Director of first the Brisbane and then the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. He is commemorated with Acacia baileyana and the lichen species Eumitria baileyi. (Australian Dictionary of Biography; Wikipedia)

Baillonella: for Henri Ernest Baillon (1827-1895), French botanist and physician, a professor of natural history at the Faculté de Médecine, Paris, and author of numerous botanical works such as the Dictionnaire de botanique and The Natural History of Plants. He also authored Histoire des plantes (1866−1895) in 13 volumes and Histoire naturelle des plantes of Madagascar in 3 volumes, and was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1867. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society in London. The genus Baillonella in the Sapotaceae was published in 1890 by French botanist Jean Baptiste Louis Pierre. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bainesii: for John Thomas Baines (1820-1875), well known English traveller, painter, and explorer of British colonial southern Africa and Australia. As a youth he was an apprentice coachbuilder but rejected this profession to be an artist. In 1842 at the age of 22 he went to South Africa where he worked as a painter for a cabinet-maker in Cape Town, and later as a marine and portrait painter, and also became South Africa’s first official war artist for the British Army during which time he recorded scenes of the Eighth Frontier War (1850-1853). From 1848 to 1853 he was based in the Eastern Cape and from there made several journeys, going beyond the Orange River in 1848, beyond the Kei River and over the Winterberg in 1849, and then attempting to reach the Okavango Swamps in 1850. In 1853 he returned to England where he published his first work Scenery and Events in South Africa. In 1855 he left England for Australia as official artist and storekeeper for Augustus Charles Gregory’s 1855-1857 Northern Australia expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society to explore Victoria River District in the northwest and to evaluate northern Australia for its suitability for colonial settlement. In 1857 he returned to England and was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society receiving its gold medal, and the next year he was chosen as artist to David Livingstone's expedition to the Zambezi, an expedition during which he quarreled with Livingstone's brother Charles who accused him of stealing some of the expedition's sugar supplies. Although others knew the charge was unjust, he was dismissed and put on a ship bound for Cape Town. He was forced to leave most of his possessions behind including almost all of his sketches and paintings, which Livingstone used without crediting Baines in his official narrative of the expedition. After recovering from malaria in 1861 he joined cattle and ivory trader James Chapman in an expedition to establish some trading stations across southern Africa. They travelled from what is now Namibia and reached Victoria Falls the following year, which he was one of the first white men to see. It was here that he created some of his best illustrations. After returning to England in 1864 and publishing a book called Explorations in South-West Africa and an album of prints called Victoria Falls, Zambezi River, he was back in South Africa in 1867 and remained in southern Africa until his death in 1875, part of the time prospecting for gold. He wrote about these activities in The Gold Regions of south eastern Africa (1877). Baines is today best known for his detailed paintings and sketches which give a unique insight into colonial life in southern Africa and Australia. Mount Baines and the Baines River in Australia were named for him, and there is a Thomas Baines Nature Preserve in the Eastern Cape. He is commemorated with species names in Indigofera, Lotononis, Babiana, Lapeirousia, Aloe, Vernonia and several others. (Gunn & Codd; South African History Online; Wikipedia)

bainii: for Thomas John Charles Bain (1830-1893), famous Scottish pioneer and road engineer, collected plants including four new species of Stapelias, son of Andrew Geddes Bain, also a road engineer and the "father of South African geology." Thomas Bain built 24 major mountain roads and passes in the second half of the 1800s. He is commemorated with Hoodia bainii. (Wikipedia)

Baissea: for Nicholas Sarrabat (1698-1739), French scientist, mathematician and professor of mathematics at Marseilles, Jesuit father who conducted experiments on having living plants suck up colored fluids to study their circulation. He also conducted experiments on magnetism and wind patterns, discovered the Comet of 1729 without the aid of a telescope, and went on an archeological expedition to the islands of Milos and Malta. The Academie Royale des Belles-lettres, Sciences et Arts de Bordeaux awarded him several prizes for his work, but they had a rule that any single person could not win the same prize more than three times, so when he submitted his experiment on the system of circulation in plants, he did so under the pseudonym De la Baisse, and this was the name used when French-Swiss botanist Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle published the genus in 1844. He died at the young age of 41. (Wikipedia)

bakeri/bakerianum/bakerianus: for John Gilbert Baker (1834-1920), British botanist and plant collector, Fellow of the Linnean and Royal Societies, worked at the library at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1866-1899, and was keeper of the herbarium there, 1890-1899, author of many publications including Flora of Mauritius and the Seychelles (1877) and Handbook of the Irideae (1892). He had several genera named after him including Bakerella (Loranthaceae), Bakerantha (Bromeliaceae), Bakeria (Bromeliaceae and Araliaceae), Bakeriella (Sapotaceae), Neobakeria (Liliaceae) and Bakerisideroxylon (Sapotaceae). His son, Edmund Gilbert Baker, was also a botanist. John Gilbert Baker was also commemorated at least with the species Dipcadi bakerianum and Tritonia bakeri and possibly a number of others. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

balansae: for Benedict Balansa (1825-1892), French botanist and explorer who collected extensively in Tonkin from 1888 until his death for the National Museum of Natural History in France in Paris. He also collected beginning in his 20's in places like New Caledonia, Algeria, Asia Minor and Paraguay. He died of dysentery. The 'ae' ending of the specific epithet usually connotes being named after a woman, however names ending in 'a' are an exception. (The Cycads by Loran Whitelock; Conifers of the World by James Eckenwalder)

balenii: for Jan C. van Balen (1894-1956), Dutch-born South African horticulturist and plant collector, emigrated to England and worked at Kew then went to SA in 1919 as Foreman Gardener in the Cape Town Municipality. He became Superintendent of Government Gardens in 1926, responsible for all government gardens in South Africa, South-West Africa and Lourenço Marques (now Maputo, largest city of Mozambique). In 1937 he became Assistant Director of the Parks Department in Johannesburg, and Director in 1940. He was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and is commemorated in Aloe vanbalenii. (Gunn & Codd)

balfourianum: for Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour (1853-1922), Scottish botanist, author of Botany of Socotra. His father was the Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh Dr. John Hutton Balfour (1808-1884). Like his father, Sir Isaac was Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where he completely transformed the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. He was one of the first scientists to reach the remote island group of Socotra and collected around 500 plants there in 1880. He also made a formal description of the species Dracaena cinnabari, the so-called dragon's blood tree in that same year. Previously (1874) he accompanied the transit of Venus expedition to Rodriguez Island as botanist and geologist. He was a professor of botany at Glasgow University and the University of Oxford. His particular interest was Sino-Himalayan plants of which he was an authority. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Sphagnum balfourianum which was collected on Mauritius. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.,; Moss Flora of Mauritius by Jan-Peter Frahm et. al.)

Ballya: for Peter René Oscar Bally (1895-1980), Swiss botanist, taxonomist and plant collector in Europe, India, Ethiopia, Ghana, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) who died in Nairobi. He was also head of the herbarium of Coryndon National Museum, Nairobi, Kenya, 1938–1958, and was the author of East African Succulents. He discovered Cephalartos bubalinus. He also published The Genus Monadenium: A Monographic Study (1961). He married Friederike Victoria von Klarwill (née Friederike Victoria Gessner) and gave her the nickname Joy, which she adopted as her first name and retained when she later remarried as Joy Adamson. When he returned to Switzerland, he was employed by the Geneva Botanical Garden. The genus Ballya in the Commelinaceae was published in 1964 by British botanist John Patrick Micklethwait Brenan. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR; Hunt Institute Archives)

banksia/banksiana/banksii: for Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1829), well-known English naturalist, explorer, and plant collector; a wealthy patron of the natural sciences. After his father died he inherited a large estate and became the local squire and magistrate. He attended Chelsea Physic Garden and the British Museum and established acquaintances with scientific men of the age, becoming an advisor to King George III. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1866 and to Newfoundland and Labrador with Constantine John Phipps, his Eton schoolmate. He was a member of Captain James Cook's first voyage of discovery on the Endeavor to South America, Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. He had become great friends with the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander and in 1772 went with him to Scotland and Iceland. In 1778 he became President of the Royal Society, a position he was to hold for 41 years. He was in Cape Town in 1771 and was so impressed with the Cape flora that the following year he sent a gardener from Kew named Francis Masson to collect botanical specimens. He had an incredible influence on the course of British exploration and was responsible for sending botanists and explorers to many parts of the world. Included in these famous voyages was that of George Vancouver to the Northeastern Pacific and William Bligh to the South Pacific. His greatest influence however arguably was on the British colonization of Australia. During this time both Kew Gardens and the British Museum were the beneficiaries of specimens sent back at his behest from all over the world. He is commemoratednot only in the Australian genus Banksia, but also in species names including the South African ones Erica banksii and Wahlenbergia banksiana. His name is also on many geographic features. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

Barbacenia: the genus Barbacenia in the Velloziaceae was published in 1788 by Italian naturalist Domingo (Domenico) Vandelli and it is uncertain for whom the name was given, but it may have been for Luis António Furtado de Castro do Rio de Mendonça e Faro, Viscount of Barbacena (1754-1830), who was a Governor of the state of Minas Gerais in Bazil. He apparently came under the influence of Vandelli while a student of law at the University of Coimbra. He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. Some members of this genus were introduced into Europe from Minas Gerais. (Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants by Elizabeth Twining)

Barbarea: for Saint Barbara, patron of artillerymen, miners, and anyone else whose work involves cannons or explosives. She was an early Christian martyr of perhaps the 3rd century or later, and according to legend, was beheaded by her own father, a wealthy heathen named Dioscorus, for expressing a belief in Christ. The genus Barbarea in the Brassicaceae was published by Scottish botanist William Townsend Aiton in 1812. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

barberae/Barberetta: for Mary Elizabeth Barber (née Bowker) (1818-1899), British writer, painter and naturalist, wife of Frederick William Barber and sister of naturalist Col. James Henry Bowker, and a plant collector in the former Transkei. She became enthused originally about botany upon the publication in 1838 of The Genera of South African Plants by Colonial Treasurer and amateur botanist William Henry Harvey and began a corresppondence with him that lasted until his death. She sent specimens of an aloe and its flowers to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where it was named by Dyer (1874) in her honor. Subsequently it was also found but not recognized as the same plant in the Tugela River Valley (KwaZulu-Natal) by Thomas Baines in 1873. It is often called Baine's aloe (Aloe bainesii) but according to the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature, her name takes precedence. She is commemorated in Brachystelma barberae, Tetradenia barberae, Aloe barberae, Diascia barberae, Ceropegia sororia and possibly others. The genus Barberetta in the Haemodoraceae was published by Harvey in 1868. See also bowkerae and Bowkeria. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

barbeyi: for William Barbey (1842-1914), a Swiss philanthropist and botanist, author of Epilobium (1885) and Florae Sardoae Compendium (1884). He was married to Caroline Barbey-Boissier (1847-1918), daughter of botanist Pierre Edmond Boissier. He is commemorated with Cotyledon barbeyi. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

barbosae: for Luis Agosto Grandvaux Barbosa (1914-1983), (Portuguese?) botanist and plant collector in Angola and Mozambique. He is commemorated with Cyphostemma barbosae, Hibiscus barbosae and Ochna barbosae. (Sappi What's In A Name: The Meanings of the Botanical Names of Trees)

barkerae/barkeriae: for Miss Winsome Fanny Barker (1907-1994), South African botanist at the National Botanic Gardens, commemorated in Drosanthemum barkerae, Geissorhiza barkerae, Romulea barkae, Moraea barkerae, Haemanthus barkerae, Gethyllis barkerae, Drimia barkerae and others. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

barklyi: for Sir Henry Barkly (1815-1898), British politician, patron of the sciences, and Governor of the Cape Colony from 1870 to 1877. Before he was the Governor there, he was successively Governor of British Guiana, Jamaica, Victoria, Australia, and Mauritius. He is commemorated in the taxa Mesembryanthemum barklyi, Lapeirousia barklyi, Pelargonium barklyi, Ceropegia barklyi, Stapelia barkleyi, Tavaresia barklyi, Hoodia barklyi, Crassula barklyi and the Australian genus Barklya. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Barleria: for Jacques Barrelier (1606-1673), French Dominican monk, biologist and botanist, physician and traveller. Some of his work was published posthumously by Antoine de Jussieu, Director of the Jardin des Plantes. He spent more than 20 years in Rome and established a botanical garden there at the Saint-Xyste convent. He made in excess of 300 copper plate engravings of botanical illustrations that were to be used in a book, and they were fortunately saved from the fire which later destroyed all his notes. He travelled extensively throughout France, Spain and Italy. He was the author of Plantae per Galliam, Hispaniam et Italiam observata. The genus Barleria in the Acanthaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

barnabassii: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Crotalaria barnabassii, published in 1914 by British botanist Edmund Gilbert Baker, with no data on its derivation.

Barnardiella: for Thomas Theodore Barnard (1898-1983), English anthropologist, horticulturist, plant collector, grower of gladioli, and Fellow of the Linnean Society. He was professor of social anthropology at Cape Town University, expert on the Iridaceae, recipient of the Bolus Medal of the Botanical Society, and co-author with Gwendoline Joyce Lewis and Anna Amelia Obermeyer of A Revision of the South African Species of Gladiolus. He was regarded as an authority on the botanical literature of the Linnaean period. The genus Barnardiella in the Iridaceae was published in 1977 by South African botanist Peter Goldblatt. (Gunn & Codd; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

barnardii: for (1) Dr. Keppel Harcourt Barnard (1887-1964), British marine biologist, for 18 years Director of the South African Museum, secretary of the Mountain Club of South Africa, Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the Royal Society of South Africa, commemorated with Oryzidium barnardii and Ruschia barnardii. (JSTOR); (2) Thomas Theodore Barnard (1898-1983), see Barnardiella above, commemorated with Moraea barnardii. (JSTOR) (3): for W.G. Barnard (fl. 1934-1939) who collected Hibiscus barnardii and Euphorbia barnardii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

barnesiae: for Phyllis Edwina Barnes (1907-?), born at Cape Town, South African student, married John Rowland Roderick in 1932, author on Heliophila, commemorated with Agathosma barnesiae. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

barnesii: for James Martindale Barnes (1814-1890) who collected mosses and edited William James Linton's The Ferns of the English Lake Country (1878). He is commemorated with Bryum barnesii. (Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists)

baronii: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Pohlia baronii, published in 1961 by Roelof J. van der Wijk and Willem Daniel Margadant, with no information on its derivation.

barrelieri: for Jacques Barrelier (1606-1673), French Dominican monk, biologist and botanist, physician and traveller. Some of his work was published posthumously by Antoine de Jussieu, Director of the Jardin des Plantes. He spent more than 20 years in Rome and established a botanical garden there at the Saint-Xyste convent. He made in excess of 300 copper plate engravings of botanical illustrations that were to be used in a book, and they were fortunately saved from the fire which later destroyed all his notes. He travelled extensively throughout France, Spain and Italy. Oddly the PlantzAfrica website entry for Barleria repens gives his name as Rev. James Barrelier MD of Paris which would be his name translated into English. He was the author of Plantae per Galliam, Hispaniam et Italiam observata. He is remembered in the name of the species Eragrostis barrelieri. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

barrettii: for Gerald Edwin Hamilton Barrett-Hamilton (1871-1914), British zoologist and marine biologist, born in India, served in the Anglo-Boer War (1901), applied unsuccessfully to be a part of Robert Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition. He worked at the Natural History Museum in London and was the co-author with M.A.C. Hinton of A History of British Mammals. He died of pneumonia at South Georgia Island. (Gunn & Codd)

Barringtonia: for Daines Barrington (1727-1800), English lawyer and jurist, botanist and naturalist, author and antiquarian, friend of Sir Joseph Banks, Fellow of the Royal Society. He authored Observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Charta to 21st James I (1766), Tracts on the Probability of reaching the North Pole (1775), and other works. He was interested in birds and published papers on Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Birds and Essay on the Language of Birds. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries 1768 and a member of the Royal Society. The genus Barringtonia in the Lecydithaceae was published in 1775 by German naturalists Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Johann Georg Adam Forster. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

barrosiana: for Manuel Barros (1880-1973), Argentinian botanist and cyperologist who specialized in the taxonomy of the families of grasses, rushes and sedges. He is commemorated in Rhynchospora barrosiana. (Wikipedia)

Barrowia: for Sir John Barrow (1764-1848), English statesman who was at the Cape from 1797 to 1804. He was superintending clerk of an iron foundry at Liverpool, taught mathematics and was part of the first British embassy to China where he travelled extensively. He accompanied Lord Macartney (with whom he had been in China) to the newly-aquired Cape Colony on a mission to establish the form of its government. He decided to settle in the Cape but when the colony was returned to the Batavian Republic according to the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, he returned to England where he was appointed Second Secretary to the Admiralty, a position he held for 40 years. He was a major promoter of Arctic voyages of exploration, including those of John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross, and John Franklin. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and also a founding member of the Raleigh Club which later became the Royal Geographical Society. He was the author of Travels in China (1804), Travels into the Interior of South Africa (1801-1804), and The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty (1831). Other literary works of his were lives of John Macaulay, Lord Anson, Lord Howe and Peter the Great. Barrow Strait, Barrow Sound and Barrow Point in the Arctic and Cape Barrow in the Antarctic were named in his honor. The genus Barrowia in the Asclepiadaceae was published in 1844 by French botanist and agronomist Joseph Decaisne. (Wikipedia)

barteri: for Charles Barter (1829/30-1859), British gardener, trained at Kew Gardens, foreman of the Regent's Park gardens of the Royal Botanic Society, London, was natural history collector on the second Niger expedition of William Balfour Baikie (1857-1859). The ship he was on sank, and it was a year before the survivors were rescued, but in the meantime Barter had died of dysentery in northern Nigeria. He was also commemorated with the genus Barteria (not in southern Africa) which was published in 1861 by Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch. He was not however, as the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says, the author of The Dorp and the Veld: or, Six Months in Natal (1852). That Charles Barter was born in 1820 and was a magistrate in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, and Editor of the Natal Guardian. He died in 1904. Both of the species that honor the previous Charles Barter, Tacazzea barteri and Drimia barteri, have been lost to synonymy. (Wikipedia; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

barthii: for Heinrich Barth (1821-1865), German explorer, philologist and scholar of Africa, fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic, professor of geography at Berlin University, author of Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa in 5 vols. (1857-1858) and Collection of Vocabularies of Central African Languages (1862). He is commemorated in Oryza barthii.

Bartholina: for Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680), Danish anatomist, physician, physiologist, mathematician, theologian and professor of anatomy at Copenhagen. He was one of the original discoverers of the lymphatic system in humans following Harvey’s work on the circulation of blood. Twelve members of his family became professors at the University of Copenhagen. He revised and illustrated a seminal work by his father Caspar Bartholin in which the work of two contemporary anatomists Gasparo Aselli and William Harvey was recognized and which became the standard reference on anatomy. He also became the physician to King Christian V of Denmark. His library with many of his manuscripts was burned in 1670. His son, Thomas Bartholin the Younger (1659-1690), became a professor of history at the University of Copenhagen and was later appointed royal antiquarian and secretary to the Royal Archives. The genus Bartholina in the Orchidaceae was published in 1813 by Scottish botanist Robert Brown. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

bartlingiana: for Friedrich Gottlieb Theophil Bartling (1798-1875), German botanist, lecturer and then professor at Göttingen and director of the botanical garden there, author of Ordines Naturales Plantarum (1830), Index Seminum horti academici Göttingensis (1837), and Der botanische Garten zu Göttingen im Jahre (1837). The genus Bartlingia in the Fabaceae published in 1827 by Adolphe Théodore de Brongniart and the genus Bartlingia in the Rubiaceae published in 1824 by Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach were named for F.G.T. Bartling. There was also a genus Bartlingia in the Anthericaceae published by George Bentham in 1878, and my supposition is that it was named for the same person. The former species Euremia bartlingiana about which I make the same supposition has been synonymized to Erica totta. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Bartramia: for John Bartram (1699-1777), the noted American botanist called by Linnaeus the greatest natural botanist in the world. He founded the 12 acre Bartram Botanical Gardens near Philadenphia, said to be the first in America, and he was one of the co-founders, along with Benjamin Franklin, of the American Philosophical Society in 1742. He was particularly noted for sending seeds of American trees and plants to Europe. He was made Royal Botanist by George III in 1765, a position which he held until his death. His son William was a naturalist. The genus Bartramia in the Scrophulariaceae which was published in 1796 by British botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury was named for John Bartram, but is now not considered to have been a valid publication according to Tropicos. Although the name has been used a number of times, apparently the only valid publication of it was by German botanist Johann Hedwig in 1801, and it is my so far unconfirmed supposition that it was named for John Bartram as well. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bartramiaceus: for Edwin Bunting Bartram (1878-1964), American botanist and bryologist born in Philadelphia, great great great great grandson of John Bartram, member of the Torrey Botanical Club, New England Botanical Club, Sullivan Moss Society, and the Academy of Natural Science, and was President of the Philadelphia Botanical Club. He described many new species and authored a number of books. He was a high school drop-out and worked for the Insulated Wire Company of Philadelphia, starting as an office boy and rising to company manager before retiring at 39. He had for a long time been fascinated with gardening and botany, and with bryology in particular. He published many papers on flowering plants and made many botanical trips with the highly regarded American botanist Merritt Lyndon Fernald. He was the author of Honduran Mosses Collected by Paul C. Standley, Mosses of Dominica, British West Indies, and mosses of the Ecuadorian Andes Collected by P.R.Bell, Costa Rican mosses Collected by Paul C. Standley in 1924-1926, Mosses of the Phillippines, wrote numerous articles, and published papers about the mosses of Western Australia and Queensland in 1951 and 1952. He is commemorated in genus Bryobartramia and Campylopus bartram-iaceus. (Harvard University Library Online)

Bartschia: orthographic variant of Bartsia.

Bartsia: for Johann Bartsch (Johannes Bartsius) (1709-1738), German or Prussian botanist and physician who
was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He graduated in medicine at the University of Leyden, and assisted Carl Linnaeus with his Flora Lapponica, published in 1737, which was an account of the five months Linnaeus spent in Lapland in 1732 collecting plants and other specimens. At the suggestion of Linnaeus, Bartsch was sent by Hermann Boerhaave to take up the post of medical officer of the Dutch East India Company in Suriname (Dutch Guiana) where he died only six months after arriving at the young age of 29. He was the author of Thesis de Calore Corporis Humani hygraulico. The genus Bartsia in the Orobanchaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

barwickii: for Mr. A. F. Barwick (fl. 1964), plant collector in South Africa, commemorated with Drosanthemum barwickii which he collected near Swellendam. (JSTOR)

Bassia: for Ferdinando Bassi (1710-1774), Italian botanist and naturalist, Prefect of the Bologna Botanical Garden, author of Ambrosina, novum plantae genus. As a young man he studied the natural sciences and became an assistant to botanist Giuseppi Monti who facilitated his contacts with Italian and other European naturalists. The other major professional association he had was with the Netherlands Academy of Sciences. There are two Bassia genera, one in the Sapotaceae published by German botanist Johann Gerhard Koenig in 1771 (not considered valid by Tropicos) and one in the Chenopodiaceae published by Italian physician and botanist Carlo Allioni in 1766, both of whom honor Ferdinando Bassi. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Basteria: for Job Baster (Hiob Baster) (1711-1775), Dutch physician and biologist, zoologist, professor of botany and chemistry at Leyden University, author of the multi-volume Natuurlyke Uitspanningen behelzende eenige waarnemingen over sommige zee-planten en zee-insecten (Natural accounts about some observations of some marine plants and insects). He was trained in scientific methods by professors like Hermann Boerhaave. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1738, wrote papers on medicine, horticulture and marine biology. The journal "Basteria" of the Dutch Malacological Society is named after him. He sent specimens to Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. The genus Basteria in the Asteraceae was published in 1766 by Dutch naturalist Maarten Houttuyn. (Wikipedia)

batesiana: for (1) John Thomas Bates (1884-1966), a trolley bus conductor in London and a keen collector of South African succulents, commemorated in Gasteria batesiana. (PlantzAfrica); (2) George Latimer Bates (1863-1940), an American ornithologist and botanist who visited West Africa and lived in the south east Cameroon, sending natural history specimens to the Natural History Museum in London, commemorated in Haworthia batesiana. He was the author of Handbook on the Birds of West Africa. (Jardim de Plantas Suculentas do Parque Escola website)

batesii: JSTOR specimen records show Conophytum batesii being collected by a G.L. Bates, presumably the same as the above (2).

bathii: for George Bath (1874-1919), born in North Cray, Kent, England, plant collector in South Africa, and the first forester in the Cedarberg, commemorated with Agathosma bathii which he collected in 1918, died at Cape Town. He founded Algeria Forestry Station in 1904 and named it that because the area reminded him of the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.).

batteniae/batteniana: for Auriol Ursula Batten (1918-2015), a botany teacher and botanical artist who has contributed many illustrations in publications. Auriol Batten graduated with a B.Sc in Botany at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. She also studied art at the Durban Technical College. She settled in East London after her marriage and started painting wild flowers. She is the co-author with Hertha Bokelmann of Wild Flowers of the Eastern Cape Province (1966) and with M. Courtenay Latimer of Wild Flowers of the Tsitsikama (1967). She is commemorated with Haworthia batteniae, Albuca batteniana, Polycarena batteniana, Diascia batteniana and Lachenalia aurioliae. (Gunn & Codd)

battiscombei: for Edward Battiscombe (1874-1971), plant collector in Kenya and Tanzania, one-time Conservator of Forests for the British East African Protectorate (1906-1925), Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, author of Trees and Shrubs of Kenya Colony (1936) and A Descriptive Catalogue of some of the common trees and woody plants of Kenya Colony (1926). He is commemorated by Chionanthus battiscombei. (JSTOR)

baudertii: for Eugen Theodor Baudert (1876-1953), commemorated in Streptocarpus baudertii, of which Baudert collected the type specimen in 1921 at Mvenyane near Cedarville in the Eastern Cape. He was a lecturer at the theological seminar in Mvenyane and head of the Herrnhuter mission seminar from 1904-1931.(JSTOR; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

baueri: for Francis Bauer (1758-1810), who was botanical artist to King George III. He is remembered in the taxon Erica baueri. (PlantzAfrica)

Bauhinia: for Gaspard (or Caspar) Bauhin (1560-1624) and his older brother Johann (or Jean) Bauhin (1541-1613), Swiss botanists and herbalists. The brothers were the sons of French physician Jean Bauhin, and both studied medicine and anatomy like their father. Gaspard was the author of Pinax theatri botanici (1596), a work which introduced the concept of binomial nomenclature and described and classified some 6,000 species of plants. It was Linnaeus who 200 years later popularized and more fully utilized this classification system, and is often given credit for it. His most important contribution is in his description of genera and species. He introduced many generic names which were later adopted by Linnaeus. He also developed a much improved nomenclature of anatomy. Gaspard was first a professor of Greek at the University of Basel, and then later of anatomy and botany. He was consilarius (advisor?) in the Faculty of Medicine, dean of the faculty nine times and rector of the university four times. His principal work on anatomy was the Theatrum Anatomicum infinitis locis auctum (1592) which became a very popular text. He also became chief medical officer for the city of Basel and was appointed professor of practical medicine. One of his sons, Jean Gaspard, from the last of his three marriages, succeeded his father as professor botany and anatomy, and later as professor of practical medicine. He also published the only volume of his father's Theatrum Botanicum that was ever published. Johann was interested in botany from an early age and was educated at Basel and in France, Italy and Germany. He studied with the naturalist Guillaume Rondelet at Montpellier, and visited the noted botanist, Leonhard Fuchs. In 1566 he was appointed as a professor of rhetoric at Basel, and in 1570 became physician to Duke Frederick I of Württemberg at Montbéliard, a position he held until his death, devoting himself mainly to botany. He is known chiefly for his monumental Historia plantarum universalis which was produced with the help of his son-in-law Jean Henri Cherler and was literally a compilation of everything that was known about botany. This massive work contained descriptions of over 5,000 species of plants, but was not completed at the time of his death. It was finally edited and published by Dominique Chabree and Franz Ludwig von Graffenried thirty-seven years after his death. He also established botanical gardens in Montéliard and Stuttgart. The genus Bauhinia in the Fabaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeaus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

baukeana: for Hermann Bauke (1852-1879), German botanist, commemorated in a former taxon named Indigofera baukeana, now synonymized to Indigofera schimperi var. baukeana. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

baumii: for Hugo Baum (1866-1950), German horticulturist, botanist and plant collector, commemorated in Ammocharis baumii, Aloe baumii and Holostylon baumii. (JSTOR)

baurianum/baurii: for Rev. Leopold Richard Baur (1825-1889), who was a German-born pharmacist, missionary and botanist. He was introduced to the flora of the Cape by Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher. For some years his interest in missionary work superceded his work on botany, but he later took up collecting again and was associated for many years with Peter MacOwan. Among the plants many of which he discovered or that commemorate his name are the current or former species Geranium baurianum, Disa baurii, Ranunculus baurii, Selago baurii, Kniphofia baurii, Gnidia baurii, Senecio baurii, Hesperantha baurii, Albuca baurii, Erica baurii, Moraea baurii, Watsonia baurii and Eriocaulon baurii. (Elsa Pooley; Gunn & Codd)

baxteri: for Mr. W.D. Baxter (fl. 1914), plant collector in South Africa, commemorated with Machairophyllum baxteri. This is probably William Duncan Baxter (1868-1960), Mayor of Cape Town, President and honorary treasurer of the Botanical Society of South Africa. He was a business man, politician, and communal worker, and was the third son of David William and Jane Baxter. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, and emigrated to South Africa in 1886, where he joined his uncle's drapery business, William Duncan and Co., in Cape Town. He became president of the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce and president of the Association of Chambers of Commerce in South Africa. He was responsible for setting up the Cape Peninsula Publicity Association in 1908, and was for many years on the governing body of the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; RootsWeb; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

bayeri/bayeriana: for Martin Bruce Bayer (1935- ), agricultural entomologist, gardener, plant collector and Curator of the Karoo Botanic Gardens in Worcester, mainly interested in Haworthias. Species that commemorate him include Euphorbia bayeri, Asparagus bayeri, Haworthia bayeri, Huernia bayeri, Tylecodon bayeri, Quaqua bayeriana, Anacampseros bayeriana, Namaquanula bruce-bayeri, Albuca bruce-bayeri and Ornithogalum brucebayeri. (Gunn & Codd)

baylissiana/baylissii: for Lt. Col. Roy Douglas Abbot Bayliss (1909- ), British military officer and businessman from London who moved to Africa in 1947. He began plant collecting in southern and central Africa during the 1950s after meeting Peter Raine Oscar Bally, a specialist in succulents at the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi, and eventually became an official collector for the Botanical Research Institute in South Africa" (JSTOR). He emigrated to Africa in 1947, lived in Kenya, Zambia and the Republic of South Africa, collected for the Botanical Research Institute in Pretoria settled in South Africa in 1960 and undertook a number of plant collecting expeditions with Leslie Charlies Leach. He was a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Botanical Society of South Africa. He is commemorated with species names in the genera Tromotriche, Stapelia, Lampranthus, Gasteria, Sphalmanthus, Psilocaulon and Cephalophyllum. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

Baynesia: named after the Baynes Mountains in Northwest Namibia, which were named in turn for Maudsley Baynes (1881-1971), British explorer who first investigated the area in 1911. The genus Baynesia in the Asclepiadaceae was published in 2000 by South African botanist Peter Vincent Bruyns.

Bazzania: for Matteo Bazzani (1674–1749), Italian physician, naturalist and professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna and the Academy of Sciences. Bazzani studied and taught medicine at Bologna, where most of his research was on bone growth. He published a paper with Giuseppe Pozzi entitled De Ambigue prolatis in judicium criminationibus consultationes physico-medicae nonnullae (1742) which discusses the legal and forensic aspects of four different cases of infanticide. He was a patron of Italian botanist Pier Antonio Micheli (1679-1737) and made a notable oration to honor the awarding of a doctoral degree in philosophy to physicist Laura Bassi, only the second such to be awarded. Bassi was the first woman to join the faculty of a European university. The genus Bazzania in the Lepidoziaceae was published in 1821 by British botanist and mycologist Samuel Frederick Gray.

beanii/beaniana: this is a good example of the difficulties of determining the derivations of some of these more obscure names. I first encountered a plant collector mentioned in Gunn & Codd named Patricia Anne Bean (1930- ), member of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa, who had definitely been a plant collector in South Africa, so that seemed like a possibility. However, the taxon which has this name (the former Haworthia beanii which has now been synonymized to H. viscosa), was originally published in 1944 by Gerald Graham Smith. Since Patricia Anne Bean was only 14 then, she would seem to be an unlikely candidate for this honor. I next dug up a William Jackson Bean (1863-1947), British botanist, curator of Kew Gardens 1922-1929, author of the first two volumes of Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, and one online source I found did say the commemoration was for him. There are other Beans listed on the Harvard University Herbarium index of botanists, but as far as I could tell none of them ever collected in South Africa, not that that is something that in itself would necessarily exclude them from consideration. Finally, David Hollombe sent me a reference in Dutch from the Journal of South African Botany which stated that Smith had named the species for a Guy Bean and that the type specimen was found on the farm Ferndale north of Patensie in the Eastern Cape. I am now seeking additional information about him. There is also a taxon Selago beaniana and according to JSTOR records that one was collected in Namaqualand in 1983 by P.A. Bean, and is presumably named for her.

beattiana: possibly for John Carruthers Beattie (1866-1946), Professor of Applied Mathematics and Experimental Physics at the University of Cape Town, and first principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1918-1937, traversed the heart of the African continent in the course of a magnetic survey, and studied such subjects as the influence of X-rays, ultraviolet light, and the rays from uranium on the electrical conductivity of gases, and the leakage of electricity from charged bodies at moderate temperatures. He was knighted in 1920. This has not been verified and it is by no means certain that the epithet is even commemorative of a person, although I can find no reference to a town named Beatty or Beattie in South Africa or Namibia, where this taxon was supposedly collected. The taxon in southern Africa that used to bear this name was Polanisia beattiana, published in 1912 by South African botanist Edith Layard Stephens and now synonymized to Cleome paxii.

Beaumontia: for Mrs. Diana Beaumont (née Wordworth) (1765-1831) of Bretton Hall, Yorkshire, described in the Curtis Botanical Magazine Volume 7 (New Series) in 1833 as "an ardent lover and munificent patroness of Horticulture who oversaw the work done in Bretton Hall Garden for three decades". She amassed a large mineral collection and was an obsessive gardener, with her husband building two conservatories and a large bell-shaped glass house 70 feet high and 100 feet in diameter to house her exotic plants. Unfortunately, the conservatories and glass house were destroyed by her son, Thomas Wentworth, when she died. " She also had a menagerie there which is now gone, although the landscape park she created is now part of the campus of the University of Leeds. The genus Beaumontia in the Apocynaceae was published in 1824 by Danish botanist and surgeon Nathaniel Wallich. (Hugh Clarke; San Marcos Growers)

beccarii: for Odoardo Beccari (1843-1920), Italian explorer, botanist and naturalist, best known for discovering the titan arum, the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. He met Charles Darwin, William and Joseph Hooker, and James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak, during a period of time he spent at Kew Gardens. He was briefly the Director of the Botanic Garden of Florence and founded the Nuovo Giornale Botanico Italiano (New Italian Botanic Journal). He is the author of Malesia, raccolta d’osservazioni lese e papuano in 3 vols., Nelle Foreste di Borneo, Asiatic Palms, Palme del Madagascar descritte ed illustrate, and Nova Guinea, Selebes e Molucche. He had several species of plants and animals named after him including Halophila beccarii (Beccari's seagrass), Mormopterus beccarii (Beccari's free-tailed bat), Cyrtophora beccarii (Beccari's tent spider), Gallicolumba beccarii (Beccari's ground dove), Otus beccarii (Papuan scops owl), Crocidura beccarii (Beccari's shrew) and the taxon in southern Africa, Erpodium beccarii. He also had a genus named after him, Beccarianthhus, in the Melastomataceae.(Wikipedia; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

beckeri: for Hermann Franz Becker (1838-1917), German-born medical practitioner who came to SA in 1870, Fellow of the Linnean Society, plant collector and also collected insects, shells and algae. The flora in southern Africa that has this specific epithet is the former Cotyledon beckeri, now synonymized to Cotyledon velutina. (Gunn & Codd)

Beckeropsis: epithets that end in '-opsis' are usually so named to indicate a resemblance to another genus. In this case it would be to the genus Beckera, and it is unclear to me whether this was the intention of the author or whether he intended it to honor Johannes Becker (1769-1833), German botanist. Becker was one of the founding members of the Senckenberg Nature Research Society in 1817 and the society’s first curator for botany, also author of the Flora der Gegund um Frankfurt am Main. The core of the Herbarium Senckenbergianum was composed of his personal collection. He was at that time Sitfsbotanikus (a title I have been unable to learn the meaning of) at the botanical garden and enriched the herbarium with many specimens from plants cultivated there. The genus Beckeropsis in the Poaceae was published by Italian botanists Antonio Bey Figari and Giuseppe De Notaris. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

beetzii: for a Dr. Paul Friedrich Werner Beetz (c.1887-1954/1955), German geologist for the Diamond Company in present-day Namibia, commemorated with the taxon Stoeberia beetzii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

begleyi: for Hubert Vivian Begley (1887-1947) of Somerset West, plant collector, member of the Mountain Club of South Africa and the South African Biological Society, collected Disa begleyi in South Africa on the Hottentots-Holland Mts. (Gunn & Codd; JSTOR)

Begonia: for Michel Bégon (1638-1710), French patron of botany, Governor-intendent of Saint-Domingue (Santo Domingo). He was a dedicated plant collecter and met Charles Plumier (who named the Begonia after him) in the Antilles. He entered naval administration around the age of 40 and first became treasurer of the marine du Levant at Toulon, then commissaire général de la marine at Brest and Le Havre, then intendant (Governor) of the îles du Vent (Windward Islands), and then intendant des galères at Marseille. His son, Michel Bégon de la Picardière (1667-1747) was Governor-intendent of New France (Canada) from 1712 to 1726. His other son, Claude-Michel Bégon de la Cour (1683-1748) served in the French military in Canada and became the Town Major of Quebec City and later the Governor of the city of Trois-Rivières (1742-1748). The genus Begonia in the Begoniaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

beguinotii: for Dr. Augusto Béguinot (1875-1940), Italian botanist. The taxon in southern Africa that has this specific epithet is the former Albuca beguinotii now synonymized to A. abyssinica. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Behnia: for Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Behn (1808-1878), German anatomist and zoologist, professor at the University of Kiel, director of the zoological museum at Kiel, friend and companion of Danish botanist Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen (1814-1887). He received his doctorate from the University of Kiel in 1832 and later became Director of the Institute of Anatomy and was appointed to the Zoological Museum. In 1869 he was elected to the presidency of the Leopoldina-Carolina Akademie der Naturforscher, one of the oldest scientific academies on Germany. This is almost certainly the correct derivation because Didrichsen was the one who published the name Behnia in the Philesiaceae in 1854. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Nature, Vol. 18, edited by Sir Norman Lockyer)

behrensiana: possibly for Johannes August Behrens (1864-1940), German botanist. The taxon in southern Africa that has this specific epithet is Strychnos behrensiana.

beiliana: for Ludwig Heinrich Beil (?-1852), German musician and teacher in Cape Town who collected in the Eastern and Western Cape during the period 1820's to 1840's. He was acquainted with Christian Friedrich Ecklon, Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher and Johann Franz Drège. The taxa in southern Africa which at one time bore this epithet have all been lost to synonymy: Polygala beiliana to Muraltia trinervia, Lichtensteinia beiliana to L. obscura, and Muraltia beiliana to M. muraltioides. He also had a genus named for him, Beilia, published in 1827 by Christian Friedrich Ecklon, but that has now become part of Watsonia. (Gunn & Codd)

Beilschmiedia: for Carl (Karl) Traugott Beilschmied (1793-1848), German botanist, bryologist, apothecary, and author of books on plant phytogeography. Hugh Clarke adds: "He studied pharmacy at the University of Bonn (1820-22), running his own business from 1826 onwards. He combined his work with field botany and editing the German version of Wikstrom’s botanical annual bibliographies. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1837. His major work was Pflanzengeographie, nach Alexander van Homboldt's Werke ueber die geographische Vertheilung der Gewächse (Plant geography, according to Alexander von Humboldt's work on the geographical distribution of plants) written in 1831 in which he discusses plant geographic distribution over different climatic zones and different altitudes." The genus Reilschmiedia in the Lauraceae was published in 1830 by German botanist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

belangeri/belangerianus: for Charles Paulus Bélanger (1805-1881), French botanist, mycologist, bryologist explorer and traveller who collected widely in Asia, Africa and the West Indies, established a botanic garden at Pondicherry, India at the behest of the French government, also was Director of the Zoological Gardens in Martinique and collected plants at the Cape in 1829. He was a member of the Botanical Society of France, and was the author of Voyage aux Indes Orientales, par le nord de l'Europe, les provinces du Caucase, In Géorgie, l'Arménie et la Perse pendant les années 1825-29. He is commemorated with Notoscyphus belangerianus and Pogonatum belangeri. (Gunn & Codd)

belchii/belckii: for Waldemar (Valdermar) Belck (1862-1932), German engineer and excavator of Iron Age cemetaries in Azerbaijan, and plant collector in Germany and South Africa, author of Beitrage Zur Alten Geographie Und Geschichte Vorderasiens, Volume 1 (1901) and Geschicte Des Montanismus: Seine Enstehungsursachen, Ziel Und Wesen (1883). He was sent to South-West Africa by the Bremen firm Dyes & Albrecht and joined the expedition of August Lüderitz from Angra Pequena (now Lüderitz) to Otjimbingwe in Damaraland in 1884-1885. Part of his collection is preserved in the Botanisches Museum in Berlin. He published a map of the region between Lüderitz and Bethanien in the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung in 1885 He also made an anthropological study of the Khoi, providing dimensions and statistics of skeletons in the Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft (1885). His later scientific activities revolved around the geography and archaeology of the Near and Middle East. He published on the cuneiform writings of Armenia in 1892, and undertook a research journey to that country six years later to study its archaeology. In 1901 he published a two volume work on the ancient geography of the Near East. Later he was a factory director and historian in Frankfurt. He is commemorated in the former species names Acrotome belckii, Crotalaria belckii, and Crinum belckianum. (Gunn & Codd)

Bellardia: for Carlo Antonio Lodovico Bellardi (1741-1826), Italian physician, botanist, bryologist and mycologist who collected in the Piedmont region. He was a pupil of Carlo Ludovico Allioni (1728-1804) at the Botanical Garden of Turin and Professor of Botany at the University of Turin. He was the author of Stirpe nova vel minus note Pedemontii descriptae et iconibus illustratae (1808). His herbarium was damaged and a number of specimens lost when it was in the possession of French agriculturist M. Bonafous, Director of the Turin Agricultural Institute. There are several genera named Bellardia. The one in southern Africa (which is the only validly published one) is the one in the Orobanchaceae, which was published by Italian botanist Carlo Allioni in 1785. The other two genera are/were in the Asteraceae published in 1835 by Italian botanist Luigi Colla and in the Rubiaceae published in 1791 by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber. His name is also on the genus Bellardiochloa in the Poaceae. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; JSTOR)

bellendenii: for John Bellenden Ker, originally John Gawler (1764-1842), a British botanist, traveler, and expert on the Iridaceae. He was the author of Recensio Plantarum (1801), Select Orchideae (c.1816), and Select Orchideae (c.1816), and was the first editor of Edward's Botanical Register from 1815 to 1824. He also described new plants for Curtis's Botanical Magazine. He is commemorated with the genus Bellendena, not in southern Africa, and with Moraea bellendenii and Ixia bellendenii, published in 1929 and 1936 respectively. (Dictionary of National Biography; David Hollombe, pers. comm.).

Belmontia: the genus Belmontia in the Gentianaceae was published in 1838 by Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer. Hugh Clarke says that the epithet was named after some member of the Belmonte family, whose garden supplied plants to Albertus Seba (1665-1736) (See Sebaea). (Biodiversity Heritage Library; Commentariorum de plantis Africae Australioris)

benjaminiana: probably for Ludwig Benjamin (1825-1848), German botanist and physician who contributed to Flora brasiliensis. The taxon that has this name is Utricularia benjaminiana, published in 1860 by British botanist Daniel Oliver. He was also honored by the genus name Benjaminia, published in 1847 by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, which genus does not appear in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

benthamiana/benthamii: for George Bentham (1800-1884), British botanist, nephew of Jeremy Bentham, a student of mathematics and languages such as French, German, Russian, Swedish and Hebrew. He was the author of Catalogue des plantes indigènes des Pyrénées et du Bas Languedoc (1826), Labiatarum genera et species (1836), Flora Hongkongensis (1861), Flora Australiensis in 7 vols. (1863-1878), Genera Plantarum with Joseph Dalton Hooker (1862-1883) and Handbook of the British flora (1853-1858). He was also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He is commemorated at least with Erica benthamii and probably a number of other taxa with these specific epithets, Erica benthamiana, Lotononis benthamiana, Manulea benthamiana, Zaluzianskya benthamiana, Euphorbia benthamii and Tragia benthamii, however I have not been able to determine for sure if all or some of them commemorate George Bentham or some other Bentham. George is the only one listed in the Harvard University Herbarium list of botanists. (Gledhill; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

Bequaertiodendron/bequaertii: for Joseph Charles Corneille Bequaert (1886-1982), Belgian-born American botanist who worked in the Belgian Congo, research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, taught entomology at Harvard Medical School, curator of insects at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, president of the U.S. Malacological Union. Currently Rumex bequaertii is the only southern African taxon to utilize this name, as several other taxa such as Cassia bequaertii, Campylopus bequaertii and Hebenstretia bequaertii have disappeared due to taxonomic changes. He is also honored by the genus Bequaertiodendron in the Sapotaceae, published in 1919 by Belgian botanist Émile Auguste Joseph De Wildeman, and by the genus Bequaertia, published in 1956 by Rudolf Wilczek, which is not in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Berardia: this genus in the Bruniaceae, listed on the Plants of Southern Africa Database as Berardia Sond., actually published by Adolphe Théodore (de) Brongniart in 1826, is an illegitimate genus because it was previously published as Berardia Villars in 1779 for a group of thistles from the western Alps. Étienne Bérard (1764-1839), French chemist, was a professor of chemistry, the manager of a chemical factory in Montpellier, and treasurer of the Ecole de Pharmacie de Montpellier 1813-1839. He was the father of naturalist, physicist and chemist Jacques Étienne Bérard.

Berchemia: for M. Berchem, French botanist, or Berthout van Berchem, Dutch botanist. It's possible that both of these names refer to the same person. Again, the excellent sleuthing of Hugh Clarke has unearthed the true attribution here, which is to "Jacob Peter Berthout van Berchem (1763-1832), also called Jacob-Pierre von Berchem [or Jacob Pierre Berthoud van Berchem], born in Holland, died in France [explaining the references to him as both a Dutch botanist and a French botanist]. An excellent naturalist, he published various notes on the fauna and flora of Switzerland. He was secretary of the Society of Physical Sciences in Lausanne and he wrote several works on mineralogy including Principes de minéralogie (1795) with Henry Struve. He also wrote one of the earliest Swiss guidebooks describing various routes that might be followed in the area neighbourhood of Chamonix and Mont Blanc. He was one of the contributing authors, T. Pennant, Sprungli, Wyttenbach, Van Berchem, and Studer, responsible for the 3-volume work Travels in Switzerland (1789) edited by Pulteney." The genus Berchemia in the Rhamnaceae was published in 1825 by French botanist Noel Martin Joseph de Necker. (PlantzAfrica; The European Journals of William Maclure; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Bergera: this is an old genus name which has been recognized as being synonymous with Trichomanes in the Hymenophyllaceae. The genus Bergera was published in 1857 by German botanist Johann Wilhelm Schaffner, but is now considered to be an invalid name. According to Lotte Burkhart, this 1857 genus Bergera honored "Ernst Friedrich Berger (1814-1853), a German landowner and botanist, who founded and led a plant exchange club in Sickershausen near Kitzingen, of which the author Johann Wilhelm Heinrich Schaffner was also a 'zealous' member.' She also points out that an earlier genus name, also considered invalid, Bergera, published in 1771 by Johann Gerhard Koenig was in honor of Christian Johann Berger (1724 - 1789), a professor of botany at Kiel. (The Gardener's Dictionary by Philip Miller; A General System of Gardening and Botany by George Don; Hugh Clarke, pers. comm., David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

The name was given in honor of Christian Johann Berger, once professor of botany, at Kiel. (The Gardener's Dictionary by Philip Miller; A General System of Gardening and Botany by George Don; Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.)

Bergeranthus/bergeri/bergeriana/bergerianum/bergerianus: for Alwin Berger (1871-1931), German botanist and horticulturist, authority on Cactaceae and Superintendent of the Hanbury Garden in La Mortola, Italy. He worked at the botanical gardens of Dresden and Frankfurt. He was also director of the department of botany of the natural history museum in Stuttgart, and was the author of Die Agaven published in 1915 which described 274 species of agaves. The genus Bergeranthus in the Aizoaceae was published in 1926 by German botanist Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes. Alwin Berger was also honored with the generic names Bergerocactus and Bergerocereus, neither of which appear in southern Africa. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

berghiae: for Mrs. J. Bergh (fl. 1937), commemorated with Lampranthus berghiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Bergia/bergiana/bergianum/bergii: for Peter Jonas Bergius (1730-1790), Swedish physician and botanist, plant collector, pupil of Linnaeus, and was appointed professor of natural history and pharmacy at the Collegium Medicum in Stockholm in 1761. With his brother, historian and antiquarian Bengt Bergius, he created a botanic garden which today is run by the Bergius Foundation as a research institute and has over 9000 species from all over the world. He introduced the rhubarb to Sweden, and authored Descriptiones plantarum ex Bona Spei Capita (1767), a book on the plants of the Cape. P.J. Bergius's name is commemorated on many plant taxa such as Ornithogalum bergii, Erica bergiana, Euphorbia bergii, Thelypteris bergiana, and the genus Bergia in the Elatinaceae which was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1771. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names).

bergiana/bergianum/bergii: for Carl (Karl) Heinrich Bergius (1790-1818), Prussian botanist, naturalist, cavalryman and pharmacist from Küstrin. He served in the Napoleonic Wars and was awarded the Iron Cross, and is notable for his natural history collecting in southern Africa. His name is commemorated on the plant taxa Diascia bergiana, Ficinia bergiana, Cheilanthes bergiana, and Ophioglossum bergianum, and on the greater crested tern, Thalasseus bergii. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis at a young age in isolation and poverty in Cape Town. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

Berkheya: for Jan (Johannes) Le Francq van Berkhey (1729-1812), Dutch botanist, biologist, lecturer in natural history at the University of Leyden 1773-1795, poet, and physician, author of works like Expositio characteristica structurae florum qui dicuntuv compositi. He was also the author of the multi-volume The Natural History of the Netherlands and A Natural History of Cattle in Holland in 6 volumes. He apparently had a fairly wretched life and had many enemies mostly due to political issue. The asteroid 27657 was named Berkhey in his honor by the astronomer Tom Gehrels, an American of Dutch descent. The genus Berkheya in the Asteraceae was published in 1788 by Swiss botanist Jacob Friedrich Ehrhart. (PlantzAfrica; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Berlinia: for Andreas Berlin (1746–73) Swedish botanist in West Africa, and one of the so-called apostles of Linnaeus, an illustrious group that included Anders Sparrman, Daniel Solander, Johan Peter Falck, Pehr Forsskål, Carl Fredrik Adler, Pehr Löfling, Adam Afzelius and Carl Peter Thunberg. He travelled to London with a letter of introduction from Linnaeus to find a botanical expedition he could join. In 1773 he travelled with British naturalist Henry Smeathman on an expedition to Bance (now Bunce) Island off the coast of Sierra Leone to explore the central parts of Africa, but before reaching the mainland he died of a stomach illness. Before his death he sent to Linnaeus one of the three specimens from which the genus was defined. The genus Berlinia in the Fabaceae was published in 1849 by Joseph Dalton Hooker. (Gledhill; Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

Bernhardia: for Johann Jakob Bernhardi (1774-1850), German botanist, physician and horticulturist, professor of botany and director of a botanical garden, important author on the flora of Germany, assembled a herbarium of 60,000 plants from North and South America, Asia and Africa which was purchased for $600 after his death by George Englemann for the Botanical Garden of Missouri (now the Missouri Botanical Garden) and formed the nucleus of its herbarium collection. The genus is often listed, even by IPNI, as Bernhardia Bernh., which would indicate that he named it for himself, but in reality he was just validating German botanist Carl Ludwig von Willdenow's naming of it for him, and it should properly be recorded as Bernhardia Willd. ex Bernh. It was published in 1801.

berriei: for Geoffrey K. Berrie (1928-1997), authority on liverworts. A graduate of the University of Manchester, he did his PhD at London, and spent his entire career researching liverworts, mostly in the tropics. He collected in Nigeria, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Lesotho. He is commemorated with Riccia berriei, now synonymized to R. congoana. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Berrisfordia: for Francis (‘Frank’) Berrisford (1898-1973). I thank Hugh Clarke for tracking down his descendents and providing the following information: "An accountant, mountain climber and keen naturalist,  and member of the Mountain Club of South Africa for many years. Among others, he climbed with the prolific plant collector, Elizabeth (‘Elsie’) Esterhuysen, (1912-2006) and also with Dr Keppel Barnard (1887-1964), Director of the South African Museum, who had a particular interest in Colophon Stag beetles (Family Lucanidae) which are endemic to high altitude mountainous areas of the Western Cape in South Africa. Barnard asked Berrisford to collect anything that seemed unusual at the top of high peaks and was responsible for forwarding the plant specimen discovered by Berrisford to South African botanist, Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus." The genus Berrisfordia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1929 by South African botanist Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus, but Martin Schwantes transferred the only species, B. khamiesbergensis, to Conophytum, thus eliminating Berrisfordia as a currently valid genus.

berteronianus: for Carlo Luigi Guiseppe Bertero (1789-1831), Italian botanist, naval physician, pharmacist and traveller, drowned at sea somewhere between Tahiti and Chile when the ship that was to bring him to Valparaiso disappeared. He is commemorated with Tragus berteronianus. The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature Division II Chapter VII Section I Article 60.7 Ex. 14 explains that letters can be added to the personal name to create the specific epithet, a practice no longer recommended, and that's how, for instance, the name berteronianus can derive from Bertero just as chamissonis can derive from Chamisso. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bertlingii: for Friedrich Bertling (c.1889-?, fl. 1913), plant collector in Angola, sailed in 1912 from Germany for Swakopmund, German South-West Africa (Namibia) at the age of 23, later joined the army and was captured by the British, commemorated with Melinis bertlingii. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Bertya: for Léonce Auguste Marie Comte  de Lambertye (1810-1877), French botanist, horticulturist, author of Catalog Raisonne des plantes vasculaires qui croissent spntanement dans le departement de la Marne (1846), popularized viticulture and fruit tree pruning. The genus Bertya in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1845 by French botanist Jules Émile Planchon.

Berzelia: for Count Jacob J. Berzelius (1779-1848), a renowned Swedish chemist who was the founder of chemical symbols and was also a professor of medicine. From 1818 to 1848 he was secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is credited during that period with revitalizing the institution. Berzelius and some of the students working in his laboratory identified a number of chemical elements such as Silicon, Lithium, Selenium and others, and established a system of atomic weights. His work also had a major influence on biology, differentiating between organic and inorganic compounds, and coining the term 'protein.' The genus Berzelia in the Bruniaceae was published by German botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in 1825. (PlantzAfrica; Wikipedia)

Beschorneria: for Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Beschorner (1806-1873), German physician, psychiatrist and amateur botanist. He was a medical student at the University of Bonn and the University of Wroclaw, and in 1830 became a Doctor of Medicine. He worked as second-in-charge of a pschiatric institution in Lubiaz, Poland until 1835. In 1838, he was the first Director of the Psychiatry Department in Owińska, Poland. German botanist Carl Sigismund Kunth named a succulent after him, but no details could be found about Beschorner's 'vivid interest in botany'. The genus Beschorneria in the Agavaceae was published in 1850 by Kunth.

beswickii: for a Mr. Beswick (fl. 1922), grower of succulent plants in Queenstown, Eastern Cape. This is possibly Frederick George Beswick (1866-1955). The taxon in southern Africa that has this specific epithet is Khadia beswickii in the Mesembryanthemaceae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Anthony Bryan Beswick, pers. comm.)

beukmanii: for Mr. C. Beukman (fl. 1935), amateur botanist and schoolteacher of Bonnie Vale in the Western Cape, field collector and grower of succulents. The species that was named for Mr. Beukman, Luckhoffia beukmanii, is now considered to be hybrid of a Hoodia species and something else, possibly a Stapelia or a Caralluma. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

beverlyana: for Alan Craig Beverly (1951- ), American botanist and horticulturist from Texas who collected in Lesotho, introduced Aloe polyphylla to the nursery industry by opening a nursery specialising in the species in Santa Cruz. He is commemorated with Jamesbrittenia beverlyana. (JSTOR; Gunn & Codd)

Bewsia/bewsii: for John William Bews (1884-1938), Scottish ecologist, professor of botany at Natal University College in South Africa, Fellow of the Linnean Society, and author of The World's Grasses, Human Ecology, Plant Forms and their Evolution in South Africa, An Introduction to the Flora of Natal and Zululand, The Grasses and Grasslands of South Africa and Studies in the Ecological Evolution of the Angiosperms. The genus Bewsia in the Poaceae was published in 1941 by South African botanist Antonie Petrus Gerhardy Goossens. He is also commemorated by the moss species Gymnostomum bewsii, and there is a Lophocolea bewsii which is likely named for him as well. (Gunn & Codd; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

beyrichianum: this is another good example of how the detective work for some of these name derivations goes. I started out with the assumption that the name commemorated either (1) Karl (Carl?) Beyrich (1834-?), Canadian gardener, or (2) Heinrich Karl Beyrich (1796-1834), German botanist who travelled extensively in Italy and made a botanical excursion to Brazil for the Prussian government to collect plants for Pfaueninsel and the Neu-Schönberger Botanical Garden, died while travelling through North America in what is today Oklahoma. But the Lexikon deutschsprachiger Bryologen, Vol. 2, by Jan-Peter Frahm and Jens Eggers, lists both a C. Beyrich and a Heinrich Karl Beyrich, and it specifically gives Sphagnum beyrichianum as having been collected in the Pondoland area of South Africa by C. Beyrich and that is confirmed by two other primary sources. (Sphagnum beyrichianum is now a synonym of Sphagnum pycnocladulum.) There is also a JSTOR record of Satyrium beyrichianum (now a synonym of Satyrium neglectum) having been collected also in Pondoland (northeastern East Cape) by Beyrich with no initial and no date. The Harvard University Herbarium list of botanists includes a Conrad Beyrich who collected in Pondoland around 1887. One source I found indicates that he was a German engineer who travelled through Pondoland in 1888 "with fellow German, Frans Ewald Bachmann, visiting localities from the Mtamvuna River south to Port St Johns," and this trip with Bachmann is mentioned in Gunn & Codd. He and Bachmann were both representatives of the Berlinische Pondo Gesellschaft (Berlin Pondo Society?). David Hollombe has located information that a 'Conrad Beyrich,' businessman, age 30, left Hamburg for England en route to Africa on Dec. 4, 1886, which would make his birth year about 1856. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

bigelovii: for Dr. John Milton Bigelow (1804-1878), American surgeon and professor of botany at Detroit Medical College, who collected in the western part of the United States under Amiel Weeks Whipple in the Pacific Railroad Survey of 1853-1854. This was a survey of western lands to determine the best route for a transcontinental railroad, and was provided with equipment by the Smithsonian Institute for collecting purposes. Whipple's route followed the 35th parallel from Ft. Smith, Arkansas, to the Mojave Desert in southwestern California and finally to Los Angeles. He published a treatise on grasses and a book entitled A list of the medicinal plants of Ohio, surveyed the U.S-Mexican border on an expedition also led by Whipple and which included the botanists C.C. Parry, Charles Wright, and George Thurber, and made botanical collecting trips to northern California. He was meteorologist on the Great Lakes Survey under the Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1860 or 1861, and in 1868 was appointed surgeon to the Marine Hospital in Detroit. He was also co-author with Asa Hor of Florula Lancastriensis (1841). The taxon with the name bigelovii in southern Africa is Plantago bigelovii which was collected by J.M. Bigelow in Benicia, California, in 1854. (JSTOR)

Bignonia: for Abbé Jean-Paul Bignon (1662-1743), French ecclesiastic, statesman and scholar, writer and preacher, member of the Académie française and the Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and librarian to King Louis XV at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France from 1718 to 1741. This library which contained some 70,000 manuscripts and books when he took over as Director was at the time the leading library in Europe, and one of Bignon's innovations was to open the library to the public, albeit for only a brief period each week, and he began a major catalogue of the collection which was completed ten years after his death. His protégé, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, named the genus Bignonia after him in 1694. Bignon also contributed to the Médailles du règne de Louis le Grand, Sacre de Louis XV, and Journal des Savants, and was the author of Life of Francis Levesque , priest of the Oratory (1684). He was the inheritor of a great tradition of Bignons being librarians who administered the royal library beginning with his grandfather Jérôme Bignon I (1589-1656). When in his 80th year Jean-Paul began to feel unwell, his position at the Royal Library was transferred to his nephew Armand-Jérôme Bignon who occupied that post until he resigned in 1770, turning it over to his son, Jérôme-Frédéric. The genus Bignonia in the Bignoniaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1754. (World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services; Digital Handbook of Library Science)

Bijlia/bijliae/bijliana: for Mrs. Deborah Susanna Malan (Mrs. William van der Bijl) (1872-1942), South African naturalist, field collector and nurserywoman in the Western Cape, founder and first President of the South African Succulent Society, very interested in Karoo plants, sent many specimens to N.E. Brown at Kew Gardens. Her husband was credited for his paleontological work by none other than the great scientist Dr. Robert Broom. They had a farm in Prince Albert District named Abrahamskraal where they entertained famous botanists, geologists and paleontologists, and where Mrs. van der Bijl had a vyggie garden. She also corresponded with Harry Bolus. The genus Bijlia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1992 by South African botanist Heidrun Elsbeth Klara Osterwald Hartmann. She is also commemorated with Ruschia bijliae, Stapelia bijliae, Machairophyllum bijliae and Sphalmanthus bijliae.(Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Prince Albert Tourism)

Bilderdykia: probably for Willem Bilderdyk (Bilderdijk) (1756-1831), Dutch poet. Belgian botanist Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier did not explain the derivation of the name when he published the genus in 1827. In addition to his poetry, he wrote on subjects such as geology, natural history, architecture and linguistics. Hugh Clarke adds: "He studied at Leyden, obtained his doctorate in law in 1782, practiced as an advocate at the Hague. From 1795-1806 he was forced into exile because of his strong monarchical and political beliefs, living in German and London. On his return, Louis Napoleon made him his librarian, later president of the Royal Institute (1809-1811), a job he lost on Napoleon’s abdication. He endured great poverty and ended his career as history tutor at Leyden. He published 300,000 lines of poetry, books on geology, national history, literary perspectives, architecture and 30 volumes on linguistics." He was familiar with 25-30 languages, both modern and ancient, and has a museum dedicated to him in the Netherlands. His connection to botany was in his editing of Charles François Brisseau-Mirbel's Exposition et defense de ma théorie de I'organisation vegetale (The Hague, 1808) and his defense of Mirbel's theory against the attacks of some German botanists. (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.; Scientiarum Historia)

billardieri: for Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834), French naturalist who first described the flora of Australia in his work Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. He made numerous collecting trips to Britain, the French Alps, the Mediterranean and the Near East. He was the author of Icones plantarum Syriae rariorum which described species he collected on his visits to Cypress, Syria, Lebanon, Crete, Corsica and Sardinia. When he went as naturalist on an expedition to search for the lost ships of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, he visited Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and the East Indies. During this voyage war had broken out between France and Great Britain, and his entire collection of zoological, botanical and geological specimens were siezed by the British, but thanks to the close ties with Sir Joseph Banks he had established during his two years in Britain, the matter was later resolved and the collection returned to him. He wrote about this voyage in Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse. He was honored with the names of several geographical points and several animal species such as the red-legged skink (Ctenotus labillardieri). The botanical taxon in southern Africa with this specific name is Dicranoloma billardieri in the Dicranaceae family of mosses, published first by Swiss bryologist Samuel Élisée von Bridel (1761-1828) and revised by French bryologist Jean Édouard Gabriel Narcisse Paris (1827-1911). He is also commemorated with the Australian endemic genus Billardiera. (Wikipedia)

Bischofia: for Gottlieb Wilhelm Theophilus Guilielmus Bischoff (1797 - 1854), German botanist, physicist, lexographer, professor of botany both at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Erlangen, and Director of the Botanical Gardens at Heidelberg (1847-1854). He was the author of A Handbook of Botanical Terminology, Textbook of General Botany, A Dictionary of Descriptive Botany and Contributions to the Flora of Germany and Switzerland. He was also honored with the genus Bischofioxylon which does not appear in Southern Africa. The genus Bischofia in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1827 by German-Dutch botanist Carl Ludwig von Blume. (JSTOR)

bitteri: for Friedrich August Georg Bitter (1873-1927), German botanist and lichenologist, director of the botanical aardens in Bremen, professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in Göttingen, did much systematic work on several groups including Rosaceae (Acaena, Polylepis) and Solanaceae (especially Solanum). The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Hypogymnia bitteri in the lichen family Parmeliaceae, first described by Norwegian botanist Bernt Arne Lynge (1884-1942) and then revised by Finnish lichenologist and professor of cryptogamic taxonomy Teuvo Tapio Ahti (1934- ).

blackbeardiae/blackbeardiana: for Gladys Ivy Blackbeard (1891-1975), South African horticulturalist and naturalist. With her two sisters Miss May and Miss Maud, Miss Gladys lived and created a private nature reserve outside of Grahamstown, which as a result of their home being in a black township came to an end due to the application of apartheid laws which forced them to sell and move to a "white" area.. She was particularly interested in the genus Clivia for which she was one of the first to cultivate in South Africa, and she created many hybrid versions. She also supplied plants to the Albany Museum Herbarium. The taxon Huernia blackbeardiae (now synonymized to H. zebrina) and Haworthia blackbeardiana are on the POSA checklist, and it is my assumption (unconfirmed as yet) that they are named for her. (Gunn & Codd)

blackburniae: collected by an H. Blackburn in 1936 and named presumably for his wife, Mrs. H. Blackburn. Her husband was the station master at Calitzdorp, Western Cape. There are two taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet, Haworthia blackburniae and Gibbaeum blackburniae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

Blackiella: for John McConnell Black (1855-1937), Scottish botanist and linguist who was fluent in six languages, emigrated to Australia in 1877, and published papers on aboriginal languages. He was the author and illustrator of The Naturalised Flora of South Australia and Flora of South Australia which described 2,430 species. He was President of the Royal Society of South Australia, was made an Associate honoris causa of the Linnean Society, London (1930), and was awarded an M.B.E (1945) and other honors. The genus Blackiella in the Chenopodiaceae was published in 1938 by Swiss botanist Paul Aellen. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Blackwellia: orthographic variant of Blakwellia.

blackwellii: for F.E. Blackwell who collected living plants in Tembuland, Eastern Cape, in 1919, from which the type of Gladiolus blackwellii was grown. This former taxon, published in 1921 by South African botanist Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus, is now synonymized to Gladiolus oppositiflorus. Specimen is at Kew. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

bladhii: for Pehr (Peter) Johann Bladh (1746-1816) (listed by Flora of Australia as Peter K. Bladh), Finnish botanist employed by the Swedish East India Company who collected in South Africa and the Far East, especially around the major ports of China and Hong Kong, comemorated with Bothriochloa bladhii whose type specimen was collected in China. He wrote on oceanography, meteorology and economics and was elected a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; Gunn & Codd; Flora of Australia Online)

Blaeria: for Patrick Blair (1666-1728), Scottish physician and botanist, who wrote medico-botanical books and was an agent for James Petiver (c. 1664–1718) while in Dundee and Edinburgh, promoting the London apothecary's publications on natural history. He practised medicine in Dundee, London and Boston. Hugh Clarke adds the following: "His three major publications were Osteographia Elephantina (1713) in which he describes his dissection of an elephant and anatomical findings, An Account of the Dissection of a Child (1717) in which he described a child who had pyloric stenosis [a narrowing of the opening from the stomach to the first part of the small intestine which often causes babies to vomit forcefully], and Practice of Physick, Anatomy, and Surgery (1718). In 1720, he gave a lecture on the sexual chacteristics and fertilization of the plant, which caught the attention of Linnaeus. He was elected a member of the Royal Society. During the Jacobite Rising of 1715, he was arrested, thrown into prison and sentenced to death. As a result of the intercession of Hans Sloane, Richard Mead and others, he was eventually pardoned." The genus Blaeria in the Ericaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. He is also honored by the genus Blairia in the Verbenaceae which does not appear in southern Africa. (Gledhill; Edinburgh University Press Archives of Natural History)

Blakwellia: for Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758), Scottish botanist, the first British female herbalist and among the first women to achieve fame as a botanical illustrator. She was artist and engraver for A Curious Herbal (1735) which contained illustrations of many odd-looking unfamiliar plants froom the New World. She undertook this job in order to raise funds to secure the release of her botanist husband Alexander Blackwell from debtor's prison. Unfortunately her husband's story did not have a happy ending for after leaving his family and relocating to Sweden, he became physician to the King, then was involved in a political conspiracy, and was arrested and hanged for treason. Sometimes you see the genus recorded as Blackwellia Gmel., published in 1825 by Johann Friedrich Gmelin, but the correct name according to Tropicos is Blakwellia Scop. which was published by the Tyrolean physician and naturalist Joannus Antonius Scopoli in Introductio ad Historiam Naturalem 326 (1777). Two species in southern Africa, Blackwellia rufescens and Blackwellia dentata, in the Salicaceae are now properly considered to be Homalium rufescens and Homalium dentatum. I have no idea why the name is spelled as it is, considering who it is named for. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Blainvillea: for Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777-1850), French biologist, zoologist, physician, paleobiologist, and professor of zoology, comparative anatomy and physiology. With the assistance of Georges Cuvier, he gained the chair of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris, and succeeded him as the chair of comparative anatomy, a position he held for eighteen years. He was admitted as a member of the French Academy of Sciences and was also elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was the author of Prodrome d'une nouvelle distribution du règne animal (1816), Ostéographie ou description iconographique comparée du squelette et du système dentaire des mammifères récents et fossiles (1839–64), Faune française (1821–30), Cours de physiologie générale et comparée (1833), Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie (1825-7), and Histoire des sciences de l'organisme (1845). The genus Blainvillea in the Asteraceae was published by French botanist and naturalist Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini in 1823. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

blancheana: for Mrs. Blanche Humphrey Smith (1873-1937), born Blanche Mary Scott-Murray, daughter of Charles Scott-Murray and wife of naval officer Humphrey Hugh Smith. She brought material to Mrs. Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus, Curator of the Bolus herbarium, who described a number of species from collections, commemorated with Erica blancheana.

blandfordii: for George Spencer-Churchill, Marquis of Blandford (1766-1840). He also had a genus Blandfordia named in his honor which was published by James Edward Smith in 1804, but that is not in southern Africa. The taxon in southern Africa with the above epithet is Erica blandfordii. (Gledhill; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

bleckiae: for Mary Bellerue-Bleck (1933-1999), American horticulturist and plant specialist, co-owner of Abbey Gardens Nursery in Santa Barbara, California, and curator of the succulent plant collection at the Johannesburg City Botanical Garden 1983-1990, collected in Mexico, Baja California, Canary Islands, Kenya, Namibia, Zimbabwe & South Africa. She is commemorated with Tylecodon bleckiae. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Women and Cacti)

Blighia: for William Bligh (1754-1817), British mariner and navigator, sailing master on Captain James Cook's 2nd voyage, captain of the Bounty and Governor of New South Wales. His reputation was such that even after the notorious mutiny that took place aboard the Bounty, he was appointed as Captain of at least nine naval vessels and eventually rose to the rank of commodore and vice admiral. Despite what may be perceived as his harsh command style, he was one of the world's great mariners, and his 47-day 3600-mile voyage in a small open boat to Timor after being set adrift was one of nautical history's great accomplishments. On his second voyage to Tahiti, he was able to successfully transport the breadfruit to the Caribbean that had been the object of the Bounty voyage. He suffered two further mutinies when the crew of his vessel, HMS Director, first rebelled during the famous Spithead Mutiny in 1797 and then again at the Royal Navy anchorage at Nore immediately after Spithead. These mutinies however were related to more widespread grievances amongst royal navy crews and were not caused by any specific actions of Bligh's. The popular view of him as a cruel tyrant has probably been greatly overblown as he was an intelligent, forward-thinking and caring master, and utilized physical punishments perhaps less than was typical for captains at the time. The mutiny on the Bounty took place at a time when he was a still a fairly young (33) lieutenant, was on a ship with no other officers and with a crew many of whom had been impressed and had tasted freedom during their five-month long stay in the paradise of Tahiti waiting for the breadfruit to mature. The genus Blighia in the Sapindaceae was published by German naturalist Karl Dietrich Eberhard Koenig in 1806. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Blindia: for Pastor Jean Jacques Blind of Münster, Germany (1806-1887), a plant collector who contributed greatly to the collection of European mosses from Alsace and the Vosges made by Jean Baptiste Mougeot (1776-1858) and held today at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle at Grenoble. The genus Blindia in the Seligeriaceae was published in 1846 by German bryologist Philipp Bruch and German-French botanist Wilhelm Philipp Schimper. (Flora of North America)

blommesteinii: for a G. van Blommestein near Elgin, who collected the taxon Gladiolus blommesteinii, published in 1924 by South African botanist Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Blotiella: for Marie-Laure Tardieu-Blot (1902-1998), French botanist and physician, pteridologist and plant collector, Deputy Director of the National Museum of Natural History, and author of floras of New Caledonia, Madagascar and the Comoros, Cambodia, Loas and Vietnam, and Cameroon. He was also the author of General Flora of Indo-China (1932-1950), and Pteridophytes of French intertropical Africa (1953).The genus Blotiella in the Dennstaedtiaceae was published in 1962 by American botanist Rolla Milton Tryon. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Blumea: for Karl Ludwig von Blume (Karel Lodewijk Blume) (1796-1862), German-Dutch botanist, physician, traveller, plant collector, Director of the Botanic Gardens at Bogor (Buitenzorg), Java, Superintendent of the Leyden Rijksherbarium. From 1823 to 1826 he was Deputy Director of Agriculture at the botanic garden in Bogor, and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1855. He spent his professional life mostly working in the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands. He was the author of Flora Javae nec non insularum adjacentium (1829), Rumphia, sive commentationes botanicae imprimis de plantis Indiae orientalis in 4 vols.(1835-1848), Museum botanicum Lugduno-Batavum (1849-1857), and Enumeratio plantarum Javae et insularum adjacentium (1827-1828), and the journal Blumea published by the National Herbarium of the Netherlands is named after him. This genus Blumea in the Asteraceae was published in 1833 by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

boastii: for Mr. Henry Walker Boast (1887-?), Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Pigg's Peak, Swaziland, plant collector in South Africa who collected Aloe boastii in 1934. The name was published by Cythna Lindenberg Letty. This taxon has now been synonymized to Aloe chortolirioides. One JSTOR record has him listed as H.E. Boast and another as just H. Boast. The Natal Agricultural Journal has several references to an H.W. Boast, Magistrate., and the Natal Departmental Reports have him being appointed Clerk to the Resident Magistrate, Klip River in 1878.

Bobartia: for Jacob Bobart (1599-1680), German botanist, the first Horti Praefectus (Superintendent, Head Gardener) of the Oxford Physic Garden, which was the first such garden in England. He was the author of Catalogus plantarum horti medici Oxoniensis, scil. Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus (1648), a catalogue of 1600 plants that were in the garden. His son, Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719), suceeded his father as Horti Praefectus and became acting Professor of Botany at Oxford. The genus Bobartia in the Iridaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Bobgunnia: for Charles Robert "Bob" Gunn (1927- ), American research botanist at the Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Director/Curator of the U.S. National Seed Herbarium 1965-1992, and an authority on the Fabaceae. He was the contributing editor of a newsletter called The Drifting Seed, and author of Seeds of Continental United States Legumes, World Guide to Tropical Drift Seeds and Plants, and the interactive online key Legume Fruit and Seeds. The genus Bobgunnia in the Fabaceae was published in 1997 by American botanists Joseph Harold Kirkbride and John H. Wiersema. (Flora of Zimbabwe)

boccon'ei: after Paolo Boccone (1633-1703), an Italian monk and physician. A non-native species in the southern African flora is Spergularia bocconei.

boddleyi: for Miss Elise Bodley (1921-1997), botanical illustrator of Succulents of South Africa by Ernst van Jaarsveld et. al. and Bulbous Plants of Southern Africa. She was also a co-author with van Jaarsveld and others of Cotyledon and Tylecodon (2004). Her name is sometimes given as Elize Boddley. She is commemorated with Tylecodon boddleyi. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

bodkinii: for Prof. Alfred Arthur Bodkin (1847-1930), a British-born plant collector in South Africa who worked with Harry Bolus and accompanied him on collecting trips. He was a distinguished mathematician and was from 1881 to 1902 Professor of Mathematics at Bishop's, Cape Town. He is commemorated in Nemesia bodkinii, Erica bodkinii, Disa bodkinii, Pachites bodkinii, Harveya bodkinii, Disperis bodkinii, Aspalathus bodkinii, Agathosma bodkinii and others. (Gunn & Codd)

Boeckeleria/boeckeleriana: for Johann Otto Boeckeler (1803-1899), German apothecary-botanist and algologist of Oldenburg, specialist in sedges, author of Die cyperaceen des Königlichen herbariums zu Berlin (1868) and contributor to Flora oder allgemaine Botanische Zeitung. The genus Boeckeleria in the Cyperaceae was published in 1888 by Belgian botanist Théophile Alexis Durand and he was also commemorated with Bulbostylis boeckeleriana. (Timber Press Dictionary of Plant Names)

Boeckhia: for Philipp August Böckh (Boeckh) (1785-1867), German classical scholar and antiquarian, member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. After switching from theology to philology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and graduating, he became Privatdozent in the University of Heidelberg and was shortly afterwards appointed professor extraordinarius. In 1811 he became a professor of rhetoric and classical literature at the University of Berlin, later Dean and Rector, remaining there until his death. He was a prolific writer about ancient Greece. The genus Boeckhia in the Restionaceae was published in 1841 by German botanist Karl Sigismund Kunth. (Wikipedia)

boedeckerianus: possibly for German botanist and plant collector Friedrich Boedeker (1867-1937), specialist on Mammillaria, Echinocactus and other cacti. What bothers me about this is that the taxon that has this specific epithet is Convulvus boedeckerianus which is not in the cactus family, and the difference in spelling between the epithet boedeckerianus and Boedeker, although the Harvard University Herbarium website lists Boedecker as a variant spelling of Boedeker. I have located a Czech website called Botanicky Slovnik that does specifically give Friedrich Boedecker as the honoree. (http://www.cact.cz/noviny/2005/03/slovnik_03.htm)

Boehmeria: for Georg(e) Rudolf Boehmer (1723-1803), German botanist and physician, professor of botany and anatomy at the University of Wittenberg. He also had part-time duties as city physician for Wittenberg and later at Kemberg. He authored many works systematically recording the history of botany including his 5-vol. Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis (Library of Natural History) (1785-1789), Lexicon of Things in Herbarium, Technical History of Plants, Systematic and Literary Handbook of Natural History, and Economics and related Sciences and Arts. The genus Boehmeria in the Urticaceae was published in 1760 by Dutch-born Austrian botanist Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

boehmianum/boehmii: for a Richard Böhm (Boehm) (1854-1884), German plant collector in Tanzania in 1882. He collected Corallocarpus boehmii (then Kedrostis boehmii) in Tanzania in 1887, and also Brachystegia boehmii. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses; HUH; CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Boerhavia: for Herman Boerhaave (1668-1739), Dutch physician, humanist and botanist, professor of botany and medicine, and one of the most influential clinicians and scientific educators of the 18th century. He is considered as the founder of the modern academic hospital. He published numerous works describing new species of plants. He was also skilled in chemistry. His work in additions and improvements greatly increased the fame of the University of Leyden, where the operating theatre in which he once worked as an anatomist is now at the center of a museum named after him; the Boerhaave Museum. In 1714 he was appointed Rector of the University and succeeded Govert Bidloo in the chair of practical medicine, then four years later he was appointed to the chair of chemistry as well. In 1728 he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences and in 1730 to the Royal Society in London. His fame was such that he was visited by such luminaries as Peter the Great, Linnaeus and Voltaire. He was the author of Het Nut der Mechanistische Methode in de Geneeskunde (1703), Institutiones medicae (1708), Elementa chemiae (1732), Index alter Plantarum (1720), and other works. The genus Boerhavia in the Nyctaginaceae was published in 1754 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

bogdanii: for Alexis V. Bogdan (fl. 1949-1953), plant collector in East Africa. He collected Sporobolus bogdanii in Kenya in 1951. That taxon is now a synonym of Sporobolus macranthelus. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

boissierianum: for Pierre Edmond Boissier (1810-1885), Swiss botanist, explorer and mathematician, father of Caroline Barbey-Boissier and father-in-law of William Barbey (sometimes recorded as William Barbey-Boissier). He collected extensively in Europe, North Africa and western Asia, and was the author of numerous works including Flora Orientalis sive enumeratio plantarum in Oriente a Graecia et Aegypto ad Indiae fines hucusque observatarum in 5 vols., Voyage Botanique dans le Midi de l’Espagne pendant l’annéee 1837, Elenchus plantarum novarum ... in itinere hispanico legit, Diagnoses plantarum orientalium novarum, and Icones Euphorbiarum. The species in southern Africa with this specific name is Thesium boissierianum. (JSTOR)

Boivinella/boivinii: for Louis Hyacinthe Boivin (1808-1852), French botanist, plant collector on the islands of the Indian Ocean and the coasts of Africa, the Canary Islands and Madagascar. He conducted his major expedition on behalf of the French National Museum of Natural History, and is commemorated in Lobelia boivinii, Momordica boivinii, Gonatopus boivinii and possibly Pellaea boivinii, as well as two genera Boivinella (first, in the Poaceae, validly published by French botanist Aimée Antoinette Camus in 1925, and second, in the Sapotaceae, published by French botanists André Aubréville and François Pellegrin in 1958, but no longer considered a valid publication). He is also commemorated with Neoboivinella, and with Bivinia which does not appear in southern Africa. See also Neoboivinella. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bojeri/Bojeria/bojeriana: for Wenceslas Bojer (1795/1797-1856), Czech-born naturalist, horticulturist and botanist, worked in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, studied and collected extensively the flora of Mauritius, Madagascar, the Comoro Islands and the east coast of Africa, author of Hortus mauritianus: ou enumeration des plantes, exotiques et indigènes, qui a l'Ile Maurice croissent, disposées d'après la méthode naturelle (1837) and Nouvelles espèces de plantes à Madagascar et îles Comores (1841). He was one of the founders of the Société royale des Arts et des Sciences de l'île Maurice, the first scientific association of Mauritius, was curator at the Museum Desjardins (1842) and Director of the Jardin des Pamplemousses (1848). He is commemorated in Agathisanthemum bojeri, Sebaea bojeri, Pluchea bojeri, Pristimera bojeri, Paederia bojeriana and others including the genus Bojeria in the Asteraceae, published by Augustin de Candolle in 1836. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque also named a genus Bojeria in the Zingiberaceae after him.

bolleana: for Carl August Bolle (1821-1909), German naturalist and collector, studied medicine and natural science, visited the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, author of Meiner zweiter Beitrage zur Vogelkunde der Canarischen Inseln (1857), a founding member and eventually Chairman of the German Ornithological Society. He is commemorated with Barbula bolleana. (Wikipedia)

boltonii: for Maj.Gen. Daniel Bolton (? – 1860), a soldier and naturalist in Grahamstown who collected floral specimens for Hooker at Kew Gardens. He is commemorated in Asplenium boltonii and Bonatea boltonii. (Gunn & Codd)

bolusae: either for (1) Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus (née Kensit) (1877-1970), the grand-niece of Harry Bolus, or (2) Ethel Bolus (1866-1890), the daughter of Harry Bolus. The type specimen of Hippia bolusae was collected by H. Bolus in South Africa in 1873, but whether this refers to Harry Bolus or Harriet Bolus is unclear to me.

Bolusafra/Bolusanthus/Bolusia/Bolusiella: for Harry Bolus (1834-1911), English-born South African botanist, businessman, and founder of the Cape Town Bolus Herbarium, Fellow of the Linnean Society, and member and president of the South African Philosophical Society (later the Royal Society of South Africa). He bequeathed his library, his extensive herbarium and most of his fortune to the South African College for which he also founded a chair of botany. He is commemorated in the genera Bolusia, Bolusafra, Neobolusia, Bolusanthus and Bolusiella, as well as in numerous specific names. While he was at Castle Gate School, Nottingham, headmaster George Herbert regularly corresponded with and received plant specimens from a William Kensit of Grahamstown, South Africa. Kensit requested that the headmaster send him one of his pupils as an assistant and Harry Bolus was chosen, arriving at Port Elizabeth in March, 1850. He spent two years at Grahamstown and then moved to P.E. Five years later, in 1857, he married Kensit's sister Sophia. He started his botanical collection in 1865 and began corresponding with Joseph Hooker at Kew, William Henry Harvey in Dublin and Peter MacOwan in Grahamstown. In 1875 with his brother Walter he founded a stockbroking firm and in 1876 he took a large number of specimens to Kew for identification. Unfortunately all his specimens and notes were lost when the ship returning to South Africa struck a reef north of Cape Town. He immediately began collecting new specimens from all over South Africa and founded the Harry Bolus Professorship at the Cape University. He was the author of A Sketch of the Flora of South Africa (1886) and Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanum Extra-tropicarum, published in three volumes, the last of which was edited after his death. He was also the author of The Orchids of the Cape Peninsula. The genus Bolusanthus in the Fabaceae was published in 1906 by German taxonomist and botanist Hermann August Theodor Harms, Bolusafra in the Fabaceae in the Fabaceae in 1891 by German botanist Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze, Bolusia in 1873 by British botanist George Bentham, Neobolusia in the Orchidaceae in 1895 by German botanist Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlechter, and Bolusiella in the Orchidaceae in 1918 also by Schlechter. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

Bolusanthemum: for Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus (née Kensit) (1877-1970), grand-niece and daughter-in-law of Harry Bolus who married his son Frank and worked as a curator for nearly 60 years in the Bolus Herbarium, author of Notes on Mesembryanthem and Some Allied Genera. The genus Bolusanthemum in the Aizoaceae was published in 1928 by German botanist Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

bolusiae: see Bolusanthemum above. Taxa with this epithet honoring Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus include Conophytum bolusiae, Ruschia bolusiae, Stomatium bolusiae, the former Massonia bolusiae (now Massonia echinata), Mesembryanthemum bolusiae (now Lampranthus recurvus) , Homeria bolusiae (now Moraea louisabolusiae), and probably Erica bolusiae and the former Lampranthus bolusiae (now L. dilutus).

bolusiana/bolusianum/bolusii: either for (1) Harry Bolus (1834-1911), (see Bolusanthus above) commemorated with Pleiospilos bolusii, Euphorbia bolusii, Haworthia bolusii, Ipomoea bolusiana, and many others; or (2) Hermann Harry Bolus (1862-1930), son of Harry Bolus. Most taxa honor Bolus Sr. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Wikipedia); (3) Alfred Bolus (1871-1952), nephew of Harry Bolus, commemorated with the former taxon Hemizygia bolusii, now Syncolostemon bolusii. (Gunn & Codd)

bonafouxii: the taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Ceropegia bonafouxii, published in 1903 by German botanist Karl Moritz Schumann, with no information as to its derivation.

Bonamia: for François Bonamy (1710-1786), French physician and botanist, author of Florae Nannetensis prodromus (Flora around Nantes). He founded the first society of agriculture in France and was President (Rector) and Dean of the Faculty of the Royal University of Nantes where he had taught as a botanist for over forty years. He established a garden of medicinal plants there and taught botany for free or next to nothing for those who visited the garden. He was also a member of the Royal Society of Medicine. The genus Bonamia in the Convolvulaceae was published by American botanist Asa Gray in 1862. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Bonatea: for Guiseppe Antonio Bonato (1753-1836), Italian botanist who was professor of botany at Padua and Praefectus of the Botanical Garden of Padua, author of Pisaura automorpha e Coreopsis formosa and Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Patavini. His personal herbarium, together with that of his predecessor Giovanni Marsili (1727-1795), formed the basis of the Padua Herbarium, which now contains in excess of a half million specimens. The genus Bonatea in the Orchidaceae was published in 1805 by German botanist and taxonomist Carl Ludwig von Willdenow. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bondiae: for Pauline Bond (later Mrs. Fairall) (1917-2010), South African botanist, herbarium assistant at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. While living in Australia with her husband Arthur Fairall, she inaugurated a working herbarium at Kings Park, Perth, and later, back in South Africa after his death, she was responsible for completing a revision of Oldenburgia. Finally she moved back to Perth and became the curator at Kings Park. She is commemorated in Thoracosperma bondiae and the former Erica bondiae. (JSTOR)

bondii: for Prof. William J. Bond (1948- ) of the Botany Department, University of Cape Town, co-author of Fire and Plants and over three dozen journal articles, collected Muraltia bondii in 1987. (JSTOR)

Bonnaya: for Charles François, Marquis de Bonnay (1750-1825), French military officer, magistrate, diplomat and statesman, twice President of the National Assembly, French ambassador in Copenhagen 1814-1816, Royal French Envoy to Prussia, author of La Prise des Annonciades (1790) and a translation of Tristram Shandy (1785). Many sources referred to online describe him as a German botanist, but I don't think this can be correct. The genus Bonnaya in the Scrophulariaceae was published in 1828 by German botanists Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link and Christoph Friedrich Otto. (Scrophulariaceae of the Western Himalayas by Francis Pennell)

bonplandi/bonplandianus: for Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (né Goujaud) (1773-1858), French explorer and botanist, surgeon on the French army, traveller and co-collector with Alexander von Humboldt for five years (1799-1804) from Mexico to the Amazon where he collected some 6,000 specimens of plants mostly unknown in Europe. Humboldt and Bonpland visited President Thomas Jefferson in 1804. He was in charge of the garden of the Empress Josephine from 1804 until her death in 1814. After emigrating to Argentina in 1816 and taking up a teaching position and starting a medical practice at Buenos Aires, he was arrested and detained for ten years by the dictator of Paraguay on charges of being a French spy. Later he moved to Brazil and then to Uruguay. He was the author of Plantes equinoxiales (1808-1816), Monographie des Melastomes (1806) and Description des plantes rares cultivées à Malmaison et à Navarre (1813). He was also Curator of the Natural History Museum in Corrientes Province of Argentina, to which he had moved back in 1853. He is perhaps one of the few botanists to have a lunar crater named after him. He is commemorated with Opegrapha bonplandi and Croton bonplandianus. (Wikipedia)

booysenii: according to the Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names, this epithet was named for a Mr. W.A. Booysen (fl. 1968), South African farmer in the Sutherland area of the Northern Cape, on whose farm (Voelfontein) the type specimen of Dorotheanthus booysenii was collected in 1968, however another source (Women and Cacti) says that Dorotheanthus 'booyseniae' (presumably the same taxon since booyseniae is not listed anywhere else) is named for a Mrs. Lisabel Irene Hall (née Booysen) (1919-2008), South African botanist, teacher, specialist in Bulbine, and wife of botanist Harry Hall with whom she collected. JSTOR records show that this taxon was collected by Harry Hall in 1968 and the name published in 1969 by Louisa Bolus. Something may be amiss here because it seems like too much of a coincidence that Harry Hall who had a botanist wife named Booysen collected this plant on the farm of a man named Booysen, but it could be, and the epithet could commemorate both people. Gunn & Codd say that a taxon named Dorotheanthus hallii was named for Hall, who collected it in 1954, and that name was published in 1958 also by Louisa Bolus.

Borbonia: for Gaston, Duke of Orleans (1608-1660), third son of Henri IV (Henri de Bourbon). "At this period, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., had established a botanical garden at his palace of Blois, which had acquired much celebrity from the works of Morison, and by drawings of the most remarkable plants. Gaston of Orleans, not satisfied with the mere collection of plants of every country in his garden at Blois, had them described by learned botanists, and the most remarkable species drawn on vellum, by the painter Robert, eminent for his skill in that branch of the art." The genus Borbonia in the Fabaceae was published in 1922 by American botanist Homer Doliver House. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

borcherdsii: for Dr. Walter Meent Borcherds (1866-1948), medical practitioner. The JSTOR list of collectors has a W. Borcherds (fl. 1890-1894), plant collector in South Africa, and there is a JSTOR record of Schwantesia borcherdsii being collected by a W.M. Borcherds in South Africa, no date given. A chapter entitled "The Megaliths of Africa - Lost City of the Kalahari" in a book somewhat dubiously named A Hitchhiker's Guide to Armageddon makes reference to a Dr. W.M. Borcherds having been told of a lost city by a group of Hottentots, and to "the famous 1948 Simon Kooper Hottentot map from Dr. W.M. Borcherds," and in a Manuscripts and Archives website from the University of Cape Town, there is mention of "application letters of Dr. W.M. Borcherds requesting the right to prospect for minerals." I also found reference to an article published in the British Medical Journal in 1928 by W.M. Borcherds entitled "Injection Treatment of Varicose Veins," but aside from these tantalizingly brief snippets of information, I cannot provide further details. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names).

borgeniana/borgenianum/borgenii: there are a number of JSTOR specimen records of Dicranella borgeniana and Pogonatum borgenii being collected in South Africa in 1867 and Brachymenium borgenianum being collected in 1869 in Madagascar, and the collector in each case is given as Borgen, ?. Also a Polytrichum borgenii collected in 1867 again by Borgen, ? in South Africa. But then there is a record in the HUH Index of Botanical Specimens of Fissidens borgenii being collected by a G. Borgen in 1867 in South Africa. Another taxon in southern Africa is Jungermannia borgenii. Rev. Martinius Borgen (1834-1915) was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary with the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS), one of the first in Madagascar, and is listed as a plant collector. He was born in Kongsberg, Norway, 30 November, 1834, ordained 1865, missionary to Madagascar 1867-1882, left Madagascar in 1885, Headmaster at the Norwegian School at Umpumulo, KwaZulu-Natal (1885-1891), at Inhlazatshe, Natal (1891-1899), then at Mahlabatini, Natal (1899-1901), returned to Norway in 1901, then retired to South Africa in 1910 where he died at Durban. The chronology given here is from a website entitled "List of Norwegian Missionaries working for the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa", and it also lists two children, a Thomas Conrad Hirsch Borgen, born at Madagascar 1872, and a Martin Fredrik Nikolai Borgen, born at Madagascar 1874. Martin Fredrik followed his father as a missionary in South Africa 1910-1948 and his older son was a teacher at the Norwegian Missionary Society Industrial School at Eshowe. JSTOR also has a record of Leptohymenium borgenii being collected by G. Borgen in Madagascar in 1879. The confusing thing about the JSTOR records is that in addition to Rev. Borgen, listed as M. Borgen, they list a G. Borgen (fl. 1867) collecting in Madagascar. I suspect that this might be the same person and just another discrepancy in the records, but there are also collection records for G. Borgen at HUH and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris. A communication with Laurence Dorr at the Smithsonian Institution, author of Plant Collectors in Madagascar and the Comoro Islands (1997), cements the idea that G. Borgen and Martinius Borgen were indeed the same person, but I still have not discovered what the G. stands for or whether it was just an error. Dr. Dorr states that "I surmise that ... "G. Borgen" is an error that was introduced by Joseph Lanjouw and Frans Antonie Stafleu." This would have been in their Index Herbariorum (1954), on which the Harvard University Herbaria index of botanists and the JSTOR database are based. The Tropicos database of collectors at the Missouri Botanical Garden lists only Rev. Martinius Borgen. (Laurence Dorr, pers. comm.)

borleae: for Mrs. Jeanne M. Borle (1880-?), wife of Swiss missionary who collected plant specimens in Botswana and Mozambique. She is commemorated in Acacia borleae which she collected in Mozambique in 1920. (Trees and Shrubs of Mpumalanga and Kruger National Park by Ernst Schmidt et. al.)

Boscia: for Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc d'Antic (1759-1828), French botanist, invertebrate zoologist, entomologist, horticulturist and professor of agriculture after whom the Bosc pear was named. Due to political unrest in France he went to the United States where he was to be commissioned as a consul. While waiting for his official commision, he spent time in South Carolina and explored the natural riches of eastern America, and much of what he discovered is included in the works of B.G.E. de Lacepede, P.A. Latreille and others.  In 1798 he was appointed consul-general in Wilmington, North Carolina. On his return to France, he was made inspector of the gardens at Versailles and the public nurseries. He was the son of Paul Bosc d’Antic, a medical doctor and chemist. His copious contributions to scientific literature include being an editor of the Nouveau Dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle appliquée aux arts, principalement à l'agriculture, à l'économie rurale et domestique and the Encyclopedic methodique, and he was also one of the editors of the Annales de l'agriculture francaise and the Théâtre d'agriculture. He was elected to membership in the Académie des sciences, and was one of the founders of the first Linnean society in the world, the Société linnéenne de Paris, which dissolved within a couple of years. In 1825, he succeeded André Thouin as chair of plant culture at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, but died three years later. The genus Boscia in the Capparaceae was first published by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1807. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; The American South: a historical bibliography, Volume 1, by Jessica S. Brown; Science and Polity in France: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years by Charles Coulston Gillispie)

bosmaniae: for Marie Bosman (fl. 1930-1932), assistant in cryptogamic section of national herbarium, Pretoria, collector of bryophytes. She is commemorated in Brunsvigia bosmaniae which she collected in 1932. (Gunn & Codd)

Bosqueia: perhaps as for Boscia, Louis Auguste Guillaume Bosc (1759-1828), but also perhaps not for a person at all. The name Bosqueia in the Moraceae was first used by French botanist Louis Marie Aubert du Petit Thouars, but published by French botanist Henri Ernest Baillon in 1863 possibly without knowing what its derivation was. This genus is now considered as a synonym of Trilepisium. The name may also derive from the Portuguese bosqueia for "woods."

bosscheana: for Mr. L. Van den Bossche (fl. 1910), Belgian horticulturist in whose garden flowered the first specimen of Faucaria bosscheana grown from seed. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

bossii: for Dr. Georg Boss (?-1972), German teacher who made a collection of plants and minerals from South- West Africa and Angola, commemorated in Blepharis bossii which he collected in Namibia in 1935. (JSTOR)

Bottaria: for Bartholomew Bottari (1732-1789), Italian naturalist. He was a member of the Chioggia School of naturalists founded by Giuseppe Valentino Vianelli which flourished between the last quarter of the 1700s and the first half of the 1800s, and studied various aspects of the lagoon and its marine life. Bottaria collected 1,200 specimens of plants, many of which on the coast of Chioggia. The fungus genus Bottaria in the Mycoporaceae was published in 1856 by Italian paleobotanist and lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo.

Bouchea: for Peter Carl (Karl) Bouché (1783-1856) and Peter Friedrich Bouché (1785-1856), German horticulturists and botanists at Berlin, members of the Bouché family of nurserymen, sons of Jean David Bouché (1747-1819), and brothers of Carl David Bouché (1782-?). Peter Carl was the father of Carl David Bouché (1809-1881) and Karl Emil Bouché (1822-1882). He was a founding member of the Society of Gardeners of the Royal Government of Prussia in 1822 and a student of Carl Willdenow with whom he went on collecting trips. He also corresponded with other contemporaries in the botanical field such as Karl Sigismund Kunth, Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendahl and Adelbert von Chamisso. In addition to being a botanist, Peter Friedrich Bouché was also an entomologist whose collection is in the German Entomological Institute. Both brothers apparently died in the same year. Peter Carl's son Carl David Bouché was Inspector (technical director) of the Royal Botanic Garden in Berlin from 1843 to 1881. Jean David Bouché installed glasshouses for members of the Prussian nobility. The genus was Bouchea in the Verbenaceae published by German botanist Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso in 1832. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

boucheri: for Charles Boucher (1944- ), South African botanical survey officer, plant collector, and lecturer in ecology at Stellenbosch University. He collected about 3000 specimens, mainly in the SW Cape area, and is commemorated with Albuca boucheri, Liparia boucheri and Erica boucheri. According to JSTOR, he was an associate of Ted Oliver's and did a lot of joint collecting with him. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Gunn & Codd; Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

Boussingaultia: for Jean-Baptiste Joseph Dieudonné Boussingault (1802-1887), French agricultural chemist and mining engineer, member of the French national assembly, professor of chemistry at Lyon, and then chair of agricultural and analytical chemistry at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris, a pioneer in the way in which chemistry, the adding of minerals to the soil, could improve agriculture and the rural economy. He spent time as a mining engineer and was for a time on the staff of Simón Bolivar, travelling extensively in the northern parts of South America. He wrote many papers on a variety of scientific subjects and was elected as a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He was the author of Agronomie, chimie agricole, et physiologie in 5 volumes and Etudes sur la transformation du fer en acier. The genus was published by Karl Sigismund Kunth in 1825, when Boussingault was only 23. Kunth was an assistant to Alexander von Humboldt in Paris from 1813 to 1819 and Humboldt apparently knew Boussingault even before he went to South America and had recommended him to Bolivar who wanted to start a facility to train engineers. The genus Boussingaultia in the Basellaceae was published in 1825 by German botanist Karl Sigismund Kunth. (Gledhill; Wikipedia)

bouteillei: for J. Bouteille (fl. 1946), lichenologist, commemorated in Fellhanera bouteillei. (HUH)

bovonei: for Ettore Bovone (1880-1922), Italian veterinarian and plant collector in Zaire. He is commemorated in Brachiaria bovonei. (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

bowdenii: for Athelstan Hall Cornish Bowden (1871-1942), an English traveller, who introduced the species Nerine bowdenii to Britain when he sent bulbs from South Africa to his mother in Newton Abbot, Devon, in 1902 (or 1903). He was a Government Land Surveyor in South Africa, and eventually rose to Surveyor General of the Cape Colony. The plant was originally found by Bowden in the mountains behind King William's Town. His father was born William Bowden and he became William Cornish-Bowden "by Deed Poll Jan. 11, 1873," and his mother was Elizabeth Anne Cornish, so his father must have hyphenated his name to incorporate the name of his wife. There is some confusion about his date of death with some sources recording 1940 and others 1942 on the same day of the year, Dec. 4, that he was born. He died at Somerset West. (Wikipedia; Gledhill; RootsWeb)

Bowiea/bowiea/bowieana/bowiei: for James Bowie (c. 1789-1869), British botanist and plant collector. He worked at Kew Gardens from 1810 to 1814 when he and Allan Cunningham were chosen by Joseph Banks to collect plants for Kew and sent to Brazil. In 1816 they were ordered to proceed to the Cape. He spent the next seven years there, then was recalled and dismissed. The Oxford Fictionary of National Biography says "In part this was due to ‘liberal Tory’ fiscal retrenchment, which in 1822 halved the sum which parliament had annually voted since 1814 for Kew's botanical collectors, but Bowie was also thought to have been dilatory in crown service. He certainly gave false locations for plants, perhaps to ensure that, when his poorly paid and dangerous post finished, his services would remain valuable." Bowie returned to South Africa in 1827 and published the first guide to the Cape flora in 1829. Again from the Oxford Dictionary: "He advised on gardens, notably Baron Ludwig's botanical collection [of which he was Superintendent], and hunted plants with such success that W. H. Harvey considered him to have enriched Europe's gardens with more succulents than any other individual. His feats were honoured in the genera Bowiea, named by Harvey, and Bowiesia, named by R. K. Greville, but he enjoyed few more tangible rewards, growing old in poverty, an alcoholic dependent on charity." The genus Bowiea in the Hyacinthaceae was published in 1867 by British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. It is likely that most if not all of the following taxa are commemorative of him: Lachenalia bowieana, Erica bowieana, Wiborgiella bowieana, Aloe bowiea, Aspalathus bowieana, Lebeckia bowieana, Cyclopia bowieana, Amphithalea bowiei, Coelidium bowiei, Oxalis bowiei and Aster bowiei. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

bowkerae: for Mary Elizabeth Bowker (1818-1899), noted botanist and entomologist as well as being a painter and author. She corresponded regularly with Joseph and William Hooker at Kew, and Charles Darwin. She was the sister of South African naturalist and soldier Col. James Henry Bowker (1822-1900), and wife of Frederick William Barber. She also worked with her older brother Thomas Holden Bowker to build up a collection of South African stone age implements. See also barberae/Barberetta. There are two taxa in southern Africa with this specific epithet and they are Wahlenbergia bowkerae and Polygala bowkerae. (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science; Gunn & Codd)

bowkeri/bowkeriana: for Colonel James Henry Bowker (1822-1900), brother of Mary Elizabeth Bowker, a farmer and soldier, but also a naturalist and an authority on butterflies, who collected specimens near Fort Bowker on the Mbashe River in the Eastern Cape. He is most likely commemorated with species names in the following genera: Ceropegia, Bauhinia, Chlorophytum, Lachenalia, Pelargonium, Clematis, Liparis, Pavetta and Pachystigma. At least one taxon with this specific epithet supposedly honors Mary, although since they worked so closely together it's difficult to say for sure which one was being honored. (Gunn & Codd)

Bowkeria: for the above-mentioned Colonel James Henry Bowker (1822-1900) and his artist sister Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Barber née Bowker (1818-1899). The genus Bowkeria in the Scrophulariaceae was published in 1859 by British botanist William Henry Harvey, longtime friend of the Bowker/Barbers. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

boylei: for F. Boyle (fl. 1892), botanist, commemorated with Aloe boylei which he collected in Natal in 1891 (Elsa Pooley; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Brackenridgea: for William Dunlop Brackenridge (1810-1893), Scottish-born American nurseryman, landscape architect and horticulturist who came to the United States in 1837. He was the naturalist and assistant botanist on the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 led by Commodore Charles Wilkes, and reportedly did all the collecting and serious botany work. For several years on the U.S. Ship Vincennes, he was responsible for collecting plants during its exploration of New South Wales, and the Oregon and California coasts. He also collected in the Philippines, Fiji and Tahiti, the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, New Zealand, Madeira and Hawaii. He named many plants in addition to having the genus Brackenridgea in the Ochnaceae named for him which was published by American botanist Asa Gray in 1854. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

bradlyana: the taxon in southern Africa that used to bear this specific epithet was Aloe bradlyana, published in 1804 by Dutch botanist Nicholaus Joseph von Jacquin, and now synonymized to Haworthia herbacea var. herbacea. It's possible that Jacquin misspelled the name and that it should have been bradleyana. The first edition of the journal Bradleya of the British Cactus and Succulent Society (1983) contains a dedication to Richard Bradley, F.R.S. The journal was named in his honor, and this may well be the person whose name was given originally to Aloe bradlyana. He was a British botanist, and was appointed as the first Professor of Botany at Cambridge University. He was the author of A General Treatise of Husbandry & Gardening. (Gideon Smith, pers. comm.; Wikipedia)

bragaei: for Antonio José Rodrigues Braga (1859-1913), explorer, naturalist and plant collector in Mozambique. He was possibly Portuguese. If this is the correct Braga (there are others listed by the Harvard University Herbarium database, but none of them seem to have collected in Africa), he is commemorated with Brachystegia bragaei which is now a synonym of B. spiciformis. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

Brasenia: most references indicate derivation obscure, some say it was taken from the plant's name in Guiana. Rafinesque in 1828 said, "from a German botanist, Brasen," with no further details. However, James S. Pringle in a 1995 article in Sida, Contributions to Botany ("Possible Eponomy of the Generic Name Brasenia") suggests that there is good circumstantial evidence that the name does honor Christoph Brasen (1738-1774), a Danish surgeon and leader of the 1771 missionary expedition that established the Moravian mission of Nain on the coast of Labrador the purpose of which was to convert the Inuit residents there to Christianity, and served as its first superintendent. He died in 1774 when on the return trip a storm struck the exploratory voyage he was undertaking to explore the northern Labrador coast and establish a second mission post. The genus Brasenia in the Cabombaceae was named in 1789 by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber who was a professor of natural history and director of the botanical garden at Erlangen, Bavaria. He was familiar with the Moravians and frequently received collected plant specimens from them. Brasen is known to have collected botanical specimens in Labrador and had developed a reputation for being 'knowledgeable in botany.' Although no direct provable link has been uncovered between Brasen and von Schreber, it is highly likely that upon hearing of the former's death, the suggestion was made that an honorific name be granted to some taxon on his behalf. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

brassii: either for (1) Leonard John Brass (1900-1971), Australian/American botanist, botanical collector and explorer, associate curator of the Archbold Expedition collections with the American Museum of Natural History, major collector of plant specimens for the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts, director of field operations for an expedition in 1949–50 to tropical Africa to find precursors for the manufacture of cortisone, advisor to an Arnold Arboretum study to search for medical plants in the western Pacific; or (2) a William Brass (d. 1783), a British plant collector sent to Ghana and Benin by Sir Joseph Banks in 1780. Of the two possibilities, the latter is the more likely since the type specimen of Capparis brassii was collected by a W. Brass in Ghana. (Wikipedia; Introduction à la flore d'Afrique by Jean-Pierre Lebrun)

Braunia: for Professor Alexander Karl (Carl) Heinrich Braun (1805-1877), German botanist from Bavaria, Director of the Berlin Botanical Garden, largely known for his research involving plant morphology, professor of botany at Freiburg and Giessen, and then at the University of Berlin, foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and author of Botanical and Physiological Memoirs (1853) and many other works. He made important contributions in the field of cell theory. The genus Braunia in the Hedwingiaceae was published in 1846 by German bryologist Philipp Bruch and German-French botanist Wilhelm Philipp Schimper. (Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, Vol. 15, edited by Berthold Seeman; Wikipedia)

braunii: for Alexander Karl (Carl) Heinrich Braun (1805-1877), prominent German botanist, professor of botany at Fribourg and the University of Berlin, later director of the botanical garden in Berlin, according to Trees and Shrubs of Mpumalanga and Kruger National Park. My only question about this is that there is a JSTOR specimen record of an isotype of Paropsia braunii being collected in Tanzania in 1906 by a K. Braun, and the JSTOR list of botanists does include a Karl Philipp Johann Georg Braun (1870-1930) who collected in Tanzania from 1905-1916, but of course this doesn't mean that it was named for him. There is also a former taxon Ophioglossum braunii, now synonymized to O. lancifolium. I can't decide which derivation is more likely, or since there are dozens of other Brauns who are plant collectors and plant name authors whether these two possibilities are even applicable, and for the time being this must remain in the uncertain category.

Braunsia/braunsii: for Dr. Hans Heinrich Justus Carl Ernst Brauns (1857-1929), German entomologist and physician of Willowmore, Republic of South Africa, spent two years in Cameroon for the German Medical Service then saw service aboard a German battleship, member of the Royal Society of South Africa. His name is on several species such as Stomatium braunsii, Chasmatophyllum braunsii, Euphorbia braunsii and Conophytum braunsii. The genus Braunsia in the Aizoaceae was published in 1928 by German botanist Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; List of World Diptera Taxonomists website; Dictionary of Entomology by George Gordh et. al.)

brayboniae: for a Mrs. H. Braybon who collected Mystacidium brayboniae near Louis Trichardt in the Soutpansberg area in 1946. (JSTOR)

Brayulinea: for Edwin Burton Uline (1867-1933) and William L. Bray (1865-1953), American botanists and students of the Amaranthaceae. Uline was a New York high school principal, author of Eine Monographie der Dioscoreaceen (1897). He apparently collected in Mexico. Bray was a forest ecologist who began his career as a high school teacher in Iowa and Missouri. He got his Ph.D. in 1898 at the University of Chicago and rose through the academic ranks over a ten year period at the University of Texas, then moved to Syracuse University where he became head of the botany department and Dean of the graduate school. He also worked for a year under Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler at the Royal Botanical Garden in Berlin (1896-1897). He was a co-founder of the Ecological Society of America, and the author of Forest Resources of Texas (1904) and The Development of the Vegetation of New York State (1915). The genus Brayulinea in the Amaranthaceae was published in 1903 by American botanist John Kunkel Small. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Chrono-Biographical Sketches)

brazzae/brazzaeana: for Jacques de Brazza (1859-1887/8), French or Belgian explorer and plant collector in Gabon and the Congo. He was certainly commemorated with Andropogon brazzae, and probably with Digitaria brazzae and Paropsia brazzaeana. The 'ae' ending usually indicates that the name honors a woman, but names that end in 'a' are an exception and they merely take an additional 'e.' (Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

breachiae: for a certain W. Breach, who collected Nerine breachiae in South Africa in 1933, with no further information. (JSTOR).

brebissonii: for Louis Alphonse de Brebisson (1798-1872), French botanist and photographer, mainly interested in lichens and fungi, one of the first botanists to recognize microscopic algae, author of Flora of Normandy, Mosses of Normandy, and many other works. He is commemorated with Leptogium brebissonii.

bredae: for Philip Albert Brand van Breda (1922- ), officer in charge of the Veld Reserve in Worcester, Western Cape, plant collector in South Africa. He is commemorated with the former Caralluma bredae which is now a synonym of Orbea miscellae, and Conophytum vanbredai, now C. globosum. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

brehmeanum/brehmii: for Joachem Brehm (1789-1860), a pharmacist and plant collector with a medical interest in plants. He arrived at the Cape in 1816 and settled in Uitenhage, and is commemorated in Geissorhiza brehmii, the former taxon Chlorophytum brehmeanum (now synonymized to C. triflorum), and also for the genus Brehmia which does not appear in southern Africa. (Gunn & Codd)

brehmeri: for Wilhelm Georg Baptist Alexander von Brehmer (1883-1958), German botanist sent to East Africa by Adolf Engler before World War I, later pharmacologist and cancer researcher. The species was published by Thomas Lammers in 1998 in honor of Brehmer's revision of the African Wahlenbergia. (Thomas Lammers, pers. comm.)

brehmiana: the taxon in southern Africa that used to bear this specific epithet was Oxalis brehmiana, published in 1834 by botanical collectors Christian Friedrich Ecklon and Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher, and now synonymized to Oxalis bifurca. The derivation may be the same as for brehmeanum.

bremekampii: for Professor Cornelis Eliza Bertus Bremekamp (1888-1984), Dutch botanist who lived and worked in Indonesia and South Africa, while at the University of Transvaal collected there and in Rhodesia and Mozambique. His major work was a revision of the South African species of Pavetta. He is commemorated with the genera Bremekampia and Batopedina, neither of which are in southern Africa, and in species Barleria bremekampii and Toddaliopsis bremekampii. (JSTOR; Wikipedia)

bremeri: for Kåre Bremer (1948- ), Swedish botanist, President/Vice-Chancellor of Stockholm University, Head Curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Curator of African botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Dean of Biology and Director of the Department of Systematic Botany at Uppsala University, author of numerous scholarly journals, and possibly his wife Birgitta Bremer as well since they are both listed as collectors of Athanasia bremeri in the Driehoek Valley of the Cederberg in 1996. (GBIF)

Breonadia: for Jean Nicholas Bréon (1785-1864), French botanist and plant collector in Mauritius. He was the first director of the Jardin du Roy on Reunion Island, now the Jardin de l'Etat, and author of Catalogue des plantes cultivées au Jardin botanique et de naturalisation de île Bourbon (1822). The genus Breonadia in the Rubiaceae was published by British botanist Colin Ernest Ridsdale in 1975. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

breueri: for Ingo Breuer (1980- ), Czech Haworthia specialist, commemorated with Haworthia breueri. (Arid Lands Greenhouses)

Breutelia/breutelianum/breutelianus/breutelii: for Rev. Johann Christian Breutel (1788-1875), a bishop of the Moravian church and collector of mostly mosses from the West Indies and South Africa. The genus Breutelia in the Batramiaceae was published by German bryologist Philipp Bruch and German-French botanist Wilhelm Philipp Schimper, and Breutel is also commemorated in Aspicilia breuteliana and some other species that have been lost to synonymy. (Gunn & Codd)

Breweria: for Samuel Brewer (1670-1743), amateur British botanist and bryologist, came from a family of affluent textile merchants and was involved in wool manufacture, botanized in northern Wales with Johann Jakob Dillen (Dillenius). The genus Breweria in the Convolvulaceae was published by British botanist Robert Brown in 1810. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

breyeri: for Herman Gottfried Breijer (Breyer) (1864-1923), Dutch plant collector, had a doctorate in mathematics and physics from University of Amsterdam, was lecturer in physcial science at the State Gymnasium in Pretoria, and after the Boer War was appointed to the staff of the Normal College in Pretoria. In 1905 he became professor of mathematics at the South African School of Mines and Technology in Johannesburg, then became Director of the Transvaal Museum in 1913, a position he held until his retirement in 1921. His son, J.W.F. Breijer, was a policeman who also made a collection of plants. Breijer is commemorated in Thesium breyeri, Pavetta breyeri, Blepharis breyeri and former species in Warburgia, Disa, Barleria and Cleome. (Gunn & Codd)

breynianus: for Jakob (Jacob) Breyne (1637-1697), German botanist and businessman, author of Exoticarum minus aliarumque Cognitarum plantarum centuria prima, a treatise to 102 plant species mainly from the Cape area, and Prodromi fasciculi rariorum plantarum. He was honored along with his son Johann Philipp Breyne with genus Breynia (not in southern Africa) published by Johann Reinhold Forster and Johann Georg Adam Forster in 1775, and by former species Gladiolus breynianus (now Gladiolus maculatus). (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

Brianhuntleya: for Professor Brian Huntley (1944- ), professor of botany at the University of Cape Town and head of South Africa's National Botanical Institute (later the South African National Biodiversity Institute). He worked at the Transvaal Department of Nature Conservation and was coordinator of the savannah ecosystem project for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The genus Brianhuntleya in the Aizoaceae was published in 2003 by South African botanists Pascale Chesselet and Ian Oliver and American horticulturist and plant collector Steven A. Hammer.

Bridelia: for Samuel Elisée von Bridel (1761-1828), Swiss botanist, bryologist, poet and librarian, author of Bryologia universa. He studied at the University of Lausanne and later went to Gotha (Thuringia, Germany), where he taught the sovereign’s children, princes August and Friedrich von Sachsen-Gotha. He was one of the foremost bryological leaders of his time, and also published the 2-volume work entitled Muscologia recentiorum. Most of his moss herbarium was acquired by the Botanical Museum of Berlin and fortunately escaped destruction during an air raid in World War II. The genus Bridelia in the Euphorbiaceae was published in 1805 by German botanist Carl Ludwig von Willdenow. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

brierleyae: for Mrs. E.M. Brierley (fl. 1931-1932) who collected Lotononis brierleyae in the Orange Free State. (JSTOR)

Brigantiaea: for Francesco Briganti (1802–1865), Italian lichenologist and plant collector, son of  Vincenzo Briganti (1766-1836), professor at the University of Naples.  Vincenzo's  most important work was Historia fungorum Regni Neapolitani picturis ad naturam ductis illustrata (1848) which was published by Francesco who continued the work of his father and who was also a professor of materia medica at the University of Naples. The lichenized fungi genus Brigantiaea in the Brigantiaeaceae was published by Italian botanist Victore Benedetto Antonio Trevisan de Saint-Léon in 1853. (Flora of Australia, Volume 57, 2009)

Brillantaisia: for M. Louis-Marie Brillantais-Marion, 19th century French timber merchant, shipbuilder, and founder with Captain Jean-François Landolphe of a company which had exclusive trading priviledges in Benin granted by King Louis XVI. He apparently provided services which helped to facilitate the researches of the French botanist and entomologist Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot, Baron de Beauvois, who collected in Benin and neighboring Nigeria. The genus Brillantaisia in the Acanthaceae was published in 1818 by Palisot de Beauvois. (Botanary; The Names of Plants by Gledhill; Wikipedia; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

britteniae: for (1) Lilian Louisa Britten (1886-1952), South African botanist at Rhodes University, cousin of Grace Violet Britten, widely regarded in her time as South Africa's top authority on the Eastern Cape flora. She worked as schoolteacher before continuing her botanical studies at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London, returning to Rhodes University in 1918.  She concentrated her research on the genus Streptocarpus, and retired in 1941. She was a co-founder of the Nature Reserve Society, formed in 1932 to preserve the flora of Mountain Drive in Grahamstown. Commemorated with species in Cineraria, Delosperma, Faucaria, Ruschia, Moraea, Homeria, Corpuscularia and Ornithogalum (Pers. comm. from Alice Notten at Kirstenbosch); (2) Grace Violet Britten (1904-1987), a South African botanist and plant collector with an interest in indigenous flora, especially succulents.  She worked as a botanical assistant at the Albany Museum Herbarium (1921-1984), was highly regarded for her knowledge of Eastern Cape flora, was an expert on the genus Haworthia. She is commemorated with Leipoldtia britteniae and Haworthia britteniae. She was a cousin of Lilian Louisa Britten. (Pers. comm. from Alice Notten at Kirstenbosch; Women and Cacti)

britteniana: for James Britten (1846-1924), junior assistant at the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Keeper of the Department of Botany at the British Museum, and editor of the Journal of Botany, a position he held for 45 years. He also was the editor of William Turner's The Names of Herbes and compiled a dictionary of English and Irish botanists. Much of his life was devoted to the Catholic Church, being honorary secretary and then Vice-President of the Catholic Truth Society and writing much of the Society's literature including such tracts as "Protestant Fictions" and "Why I Left the Church of England," and being appointed as a Knight of St. Gregory by Pope Leo XIII. He was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society, co-author with Robert Holland of A Dictionary of English Plant Names, and is commemorated with Gethylis britteniana. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; London Times Obituary)

broadleyana: for Mrs Eliza Broadley (1790’s-early 1800’s) of Lincolnshire, a great admirer and liberal encourager of botanical science. The taxon was published by British botanist Henry Charles Andrews. (Ted Oliver, pers. comm.)

bromfieldii: for Mr. H. Bromfield (fl. 1933). He is commemorated in Lithops bromfieldii. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; JSTOR)

bronkhorstii: possibly for a Johan Bronkhorst, about whom I have no information other than that he is an avid Haworthia enthusiast who may be commemorated with Haworthia bronkhorstii.

broomii: for Robert Broom (1866-1951), well known South African anthropologist. He was a physician and paleontologist, also a Professor of Geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch. In 1934 Broom joined the staff of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, and made a succession of spectacular finds including fragments from six hominids in Sterkfontien, later classified as an adult australopithecine. His most famous discovery was an Australopithecus robustus. He was also keeper of vertebrate paleontology at the South African Museum, Cape Town. He was honored with the names of Rhinephyllum broomii and Nananthus broomii, both of which he collected. (EMuseum@Minnesota State University; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

Brothera: for Viktor Ferdinand Brotherus (1849-1929), a Finnish bryologist. He had a personal herbarium of 120,000 specimens which was purchased by the University of Helsinki Herbarium. The Finnish Bryological Society publishes a journal named Bryobrothera in his honor. The moss genus Brothera in the Dicranaceae was published in 1900 by German bryologist Johann Karl August Müller. (Wikipedia; Flora of North America, Vol. 27)

brounae: for Alfred Forbes Broun (1858-1953), Director of Woods and Forests in the Sudan and former colonial officer in Ceylon, author of Flora of the Sudan and Sylviculture in the Tropics, and his wife Emily Hilda Mahala Broun (née Howard) (1864-1927). The taxon which used to bear their name, Sphaeranthus brounae, is now considered a synonym of S. flexuosus. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; JSTOR)

Broussonetia: Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761-1807) French physician, naturalist and politician, member of the Royal Society in London, secretary of the Agricultural Society of Paris, French consulate in Morocco, commisioner of French government trade relations in Tenerife, and Chair of botany at Montpellier with responsibility for the city's botanical garden. The genus Broussonetia in the Moraceae was published in 1799 by French botanist Charles Louis L'Heritier de Brutelle. (Hugh Clarke)

Browallia: Johannes Browallius (1707–1755), Finnish and Swedish Lutherian theologian, physicist and botanist, Professor of Physics (1737-1746) at the Åbo Akademi (now the University of Helsinki), then Professor of Theology (1746–49) and Bishop of Turku (Åbo), (a diocese of the Church of Sweden). He became friends with and defended the botanical theories of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus but fell out with him for personal reasons. He advised Linnaeus to study abroad and marry a 'rich girl' although he was engaged to Sarah Elizabeth Morea, and while he was abroad Linnaeus received word that Browallius had taken advantage of the situation, courting her and almost persuading her that her fiancee would not return. Linnaeus and Sara Lisa were married in 1739. The genus Browallia in the Solanaceae was published in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus. (Hugh Clarke; Wikipedia)

Brownanthus/browniana: for Nicholas Edward Brown (1849-1934), British botanist, artist, systematist and geographer at Kew Herbarium, an expert on African plants, particularly succulents, with an honorary doctorate from Witwatersrand University (1932), who never visited Africa. His papers appeared mainly in the Kew Bulletin and in Flora Capensis. In 1921 he was awarded the prestigious Captain Scott Memorial Medal by the South African Biological Society to recognize his work on South African flora. He was the author of Mesembryanthemum and some new genera separated from it and Mesembryanthema. He also contributed greatly to the taxonomy of the Asclepiadaceae and Lamiaceae. The genus Brownanthus in the Aizoaceae was published in his honor in 1927 by German botanist Martin Heinrich Gustav Schwantes. He was also honored by the genus name Nebrownia (not in southern Africa) and species names such as Indigofera nebrowniana, Acacia nebrownii, Gibbaeum nebrownii, Dierama nebrownii, Caralluma nebrownii, and Cliffortia browniana. See also following entry. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Wikipedia)

Brownleea: for Rev. John Brownlee (1791-1871), British botanist who was a gardener, theologian, Xhosa linguist and missionary in South Africa. He arrived in Cape Town in 1817 and established a mission station on the site that would become King William's Town. He was a well-thought of botanist and had an extensive garden of local plants. The genus Brownleea in the Orchidaceae was named for him by British botanist John Lindley in 1842 after it was originally described by William Henry Harvey. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

brownleeae: for a Miss Brownlee, possibly either a daughter or grand-daughter or some other relative of the Rev. John Brownlee. The taxon Erica brownleeae was collected by H.R. Brownlee, grandson of Rev. John Brownlee, with William Tyson in 1887. (Gunn & Codd)

bruceae: for Eileen Adelaide Bruce (1905-1955), British botanist, assistant curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and plant collector in South Africa. She served in Anti-Aircraft Command during WWII, worked at the National Herbarium at Pretoria after the war on a revision of Kniphofia, and had numerous publications in Bothalia and Flowering Plants of Africa. She is commemorated in Kniphofia bruceae, Brachystelma bruceae, and former taxon Vernonia bruceae. (Gunn & Codd)

bruce-bayeri/brucebayeri: for Martin Bruce Bayer (1935- ), plant collector, Haworthia enthusiast. See bayeri.

Bruchia: for Philipp Bruch (1781-1847), German pharmacist and bryologist, co-author with Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (1808–1880) of the epic Bryologia europaea, a six-volume work on European bryology, still considered one of the classics of its day. The genus Bruchia in the Bruchiaceae was published in 1824 by German bryologist Christian Friedrich Schwagrichen. (Wikipedia)

Bruguiera: for Jean Guillaume Bruguière(s) (1749/1750–1798), French physician, zoologist, botanical artist and plant collector, who accompanied the explorer Yves Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec on his first voyage to the Antarctic in 1773. They visited Mauritius and the islands later named Kerguelen and on the way back they stopped at Madagascar. They apparently also stopped at the Cape, either on the outbound or on the return part of the trip, and Bruguière(s) probably collected there. Kerguelen-Trémarec subsequently made a second voyage and claimed the Kerguelen Islands and other territories for France. In 1790 Bruguière(s) began a trip to Persia with the French entomologist Guillaume-Antoine Olivier but had to give it up due to ill health. In 1792 he set off, again with Olivier, on a six-year odyssey to Persia, during which time he made collections on some of the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Turkey, Asia Minor, Iran and Egypt. One of the purposes of this trip was to establish a Franco-Persian alliance which would have gained France the ability to cross Persian territory to attack British interests in India. This goal of the trip was unsuccessful. He was mainly interested in life forms such as molluscs and other invertebrates, and most of the species names he published were for molluscs. He contributed the sections on invertebrates for the 3-volume work Tableau Encyclopédique et Méthodique des trois Règnes de la Nature, and a description of their travels together entitled Voyage to the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Persia (1807) was published by Olivier. The genus Bruguiera in the Rhizophoraceae was named for him in 1793 by French naturalist Jean Baptiste Antoine Pierre de Monnet de Lamarck. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

brummittii: for Richard Kenneth Brummitt (1937- ), British botanist on the staff of Kew Herbarium, made a brief collecting trip to South Africa and Swaziland in 1970, author of Index to European taxonomic literature and co-author with C.E. Powell of Authors of plant names: A list of authors of scientific names of plants, with recommended standard forms of their names, including abbreviations. He made more extensive collections in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. He is commemorated with Tephrosia brummittii. (Gunn & Codd)

Brunia: for Dr. Alexander Brown (fl. 1692-1698), a naval surgeon and plant collector for Leonard Plukenet who worked in the East Indies around 1690. He had a large herbarium of East Indian plants and also sent specimens to James Petiver (c.1665-1718), Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719), and Charles du Bois (1656-1740). Various sources have suggested that the epithet may have commemorated Dr. Cornelius Brun (Corneille de Bruin) (1652-1719/1726/1727), a contemporary of Linnaeus and Dutch apothecary who travelled in Russia and the Levant, painter, botanist, author of Voyage au Levant, but Gunn & Codd maintained that the honoree was Alexander Brown. This has been confirmed by a communication from Italian botanist Marco Grandis to Alice Notten at Kirstenbosch, and David Hollombe provided this very interesting summary of the name which also confirms Gunn & Codd: "Johannes Burmann named Brunia for Dr. Alexander Brown. It had previously been named Eriocephalus bruniades for Dr. Brown, by Plukenet. Lamarck took the name from Linnaeus but defined and delimited it differently.  Linnaeus described the genus as having one-loculed ovaries (like the species later split off as the genus Berzelia) and Lamarck described the ovaries as two-loculed.  Because most later authors had followed Lamarck, it was decided to conserve the genera Berzelia Brongn. and Brunia Lam. and reject Brunia L." Brunia is in the family Bruniaceae. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Gunn & Codd; PlantzAfrica; Marco Grandis, pers. comm. to Alice Notten; David Hollombe)

brunnthaleri: for Josef Brunnthaler (1871-1914), Austrian botanist and plant collector in South Africa, conservator of the Botanical Museum of the University of Vienna. He also collected fruits, seeds, reptiles, amphibians and termites. He is commemorated with Xanthoparmelia brunnthaleri, Aloe brunnthaleri, and possibly Delosperma brunnthaleri. (Gunn & Codd)

Brunsvigia: for Karl (Carl) Wilhelm Ferdinand (1713-1780), also known as Charles I or Karl I, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburg, patron of the arts and sciences who promoted the study of plants, including the beautiful Cape species B. orientalis. He also founded the Collegium Carolinum, an institute of higher education which is today known as the Technical University of Brunswick. The genus Brunsvigia in the Amaryllidaceae was published in 1755 by German anatomist and botanist Lorenz Heister. Braunschweig, a town in Germany, was known as Brunsweik in Low German and Brunswick in English, and the name also translates into Latin as 'Brunswick.' (PlantzAfrica)

brussei: for Franklin Andrej Brusse (1951- ), South African lichenologist, author of numerous publications on the lichens of South Africa, commemorated with Neofuscelia brussei. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

bruynsii: for Dr. Peter Vincent Bruyns (1957- ), South African mathematician and succulent plant botanist, research associate at the Bolus Herbarium, winner of the UCT Book Award, author of the two-volume Stapeliads of Southern Africa and Madagascar (2005) and Monograph of Orbea & Ballyanthus, Apocynaceae, Asclepiadoideae, Ceropegieae (2002), has collected more than 8000 specimens mainly in tropical and southern Africa. He has been commemorated with species in Scopelogena, Conophytum, Euphorbia, Eriospermum, Haworthia and Bulbine. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

bryantii: for Edward Godfrey Bryant (fl. 1918-1932), mining engineer and plant collector in South Africa. He has been honored with the name of the taxon Stomatium bryantii and Psilocaulon bryantii, both of which were collected by him. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

brycei: for James Bryce (1838-1922), Irish-born jurist, politician, historian, and mountaineer, member of the House of Lords, and Ambassador to Washington, collected plants in South Africa in 1895. He is commemorated in Geranium brycei which he collected in 1896 in Basutoland. He was an inveterate traveller and wrote a classic work based on his travels in the United States in the 1880's called The American Commonwealth. He also wrote Transcaucasia and Ararat which included his account of being the first European to climb Mt. Ararat, Impressions of South Africa, The Holy Roman Empire, Five Centuries of Irish History, as well as a book about his travels in South America. Mt Bryce in the Canadian Rockies is also named for him. (Elsa Pooley; JSTOR)

bryhnii: for Haakon Bryhn (fl. 1908-1909), Norwegian plant collector of mosses in Zululand. He was the son of Norwegian moss authority Niels Bryhn, and is commemorated in former genera Leucoloma haakonii (now L. rehmannii), Fissidens haakonii (now F. borgenii) and Campylopus bryhnii (now C. nanophyllus). (Gunn & Codd)

Bryobartramia: for Edwin Bunting Bartram (1878-1964), American botanist and bryologist born in Philadelphia, great great great great grandson of John Bartram (the early American botanist, horticulturalist and explorer. whom Linnaeus referred to as the "greatest natural botanist in the world"), member of the Torrey Botanical Club, New England Botanical Club, Sullivan Moss Society, and the Academy of Natural Science, and was President of the Philadelphia Botanical Club. He described many new species and authored a number of books. He was a high school drop-out and worked for the Insulated Wire Company of Philadelphia, starting as an office boy and rising to company manager before retiring at 39. He had for a long time been fascinated with gardening and botany, and with bryology in particular. He published many papers on flowering plants and made many botanical trips with the highly regarded American botanist Merritt Lyndon Fernald. He was the author of Honduran Mosses Collected by Paul C. Standley, Mosses of Dominica, British West Indies, and mosses of the Ecuadorian Andes Collected by P.R. Bell, Costa Rican mosses Collected by Paul C. Standley in 1924-1926, and Mosses of the Phillippines, wrote numerous articles, and published papers about the mosses of Western Australia and Queensland in 1951 and 1952. He is commemorated in genus Bryobartramia and Campylopus bartramiaceus. The genus Bryobartramia in the Bryobartramiaceae was published in 1948 by British bryologist George Osborne King Sainsbury. (Harvard University Library Online; JSTOR)

buchananii: for Rev. John Buchanan (1821-1903), a Presbyterian clergyman and plant collector in KwaZulu- Natal and the Free State. His name is on species in Asparagus, Hypocratea, Apodolirion, Kniphofia, Carex, Pteris, Cyphostemma, Reissantia and possibly others. (Elsa Pooley; Gunn & Codd)

Buchenroedera: for Wilhelm Ludwig von Buchenröder (1783-1841), South African botanist, lieutenent in the Hottentot Light Infantry, merchant in Uitenhage District. He was a friend of Danish botanical collector and apothecary Christian Friedrich Ecklon and German botanist Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher, and the genus Buchenroedera in the Fabaceae was named in 1836 by them. All species in this genus (at least in southern Africa) have now been transferred to Lotononis and Aspalathus. (Gunn & Codd)

buchholzianus: possibly for Reinhold Wilhelm Buchholz (1837-1876), German herpetologist and plant collector. The taxon in southern Africa with this specific epithet is Tylecodon buchholzianus, published in 1978 by Australian botanist Hellmut R. Toelken.

Buchnera: the CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says, "presumably named in honor of the German naturalist Johann Gottfried Buchner (1695-1749), or after the physician Andreas Elias Buchner (1701-1769), a German naturalist." The latter is correct according to Hortus Cliffortianus. Buchner studied medicine at the Universities of Halle and Leipzig and graduated in 1721. He was an associate professor and later full Professor at Erfurt (1736-1745) and then at the University of Halle, serving as Vice-President three times. He was a member for many years and in 1735 its President of the German Academy of Natural Sciences. He was the editor of Miscellanea physico-medico-mathematica (1731-1734) and authored An easy and very practicable method to enable deaf persons to hear (1759). The genus Buchnera in the Scrophulariaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.)

buckerveldii: the holotype of Antholyza buckerveldii, now synonymized to Gladiolus buckerveldii, was collected by an M.H. Buckerveld in 1926 in the Clanwilliam area of South Africa, so I assume this is the honoree here. (JSTOR)

Buddleja: for Rev. Adam Buddle (1660-1715), an English rector, amateur botanist, collector of British plants, and authority on bryophytes, compiled a new English flora which was never published. The genus Buddleja in the Buddlejaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753, and is often written incorrectly as Buddleia. (PlantzAfrica; Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.)

buderiana: for Johannes Buder (1884-1966), German botanist and plant physiologist, professor of botany at several universities and Director of the Botanical Garden in Greifswald, commemorated with Anacampseros buderiana. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

buekiana/buekii: for Heinrich Wilhelm Buek (1796-1878/79), German botanist who described many new species but specialized in the Boraginaceae and Campanulaceae, best known for an index to De Candolle's Prodromus, published in four parts. He is commemorated with Scabiosa buekiana and Diastella buekii. (PlantzAfrica)

buettneri: for Dr. Oscar Alexander Richard Büttner (Buettner) (1858-1927), German botanist, head of a research station in Togo and later professor in Berlin. Name sometimes given as Richard Büttner or Richard Buettner. He is commemorated with the taxa Aloe buettneri and Kosteletzkya buettneri. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

buhrii: for Elias A. Buhr (fl. 1971), a farmer and plant collector from the Nieuwoudtville area, commemorated with Aloe buhrii. (PlantzAfrica; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

bullerianus: possibly for Sir Redvers Henry Buller (1839-1908), served in South Africa during the 9th Cape Frontier War in 1878 and the Zulu War of 1879, popular commander and war hero in both the 1st and 2nd Boer Wars. However I can't find any reason that he would be commemorated with a plant name. The taxon that bears this name, Convolvulus bullerianus, is no longer current, and is considered a synonym of C. natalensis.

Bulliarda: for Jean Baptiste François Bulliard (1752-1793), French physician and botanist, naturalist, student of Jean Jacques Rousseau and author of Flora parisiensis, Elementaire Dictionnaire de botanique, and Histoire des Champignons de la France (Natural History of the Mushrooms of France). The genus Bulliarda in the Crassulaceae was published in 1801 by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

bullockii: for Arthur Allman Bullock (1906-1980), British botanist, senior scientist at Kew Gardens, collected extensively in Zambia and Tanzania. He is commemorated with the former taxon Dichapetalum bullockii (now D. cymosum). (JSTOR)

Bunburia/Bunburya: possibly for Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809-1886), traveller, plant collector in South Africa, author of A Journal of a Residence at the Cape of Good Hope. There is also a genus Bunburya in the Rubiaceae likely named for the same person. Bunburia in the Asclepiadaceae was published in 1838 by British botanist William Henry Harvey and Bunburya in the Rubiaceae in 1844 by German botanist Christian Ferdinand Friedrich Hochstetter after having been previously described by Carl Daniel Friedrich Meisner. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

burbankii: for Luther Burbank (1849-1926), American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He created hundreds of strains and varieties of plants including many fruits and vegetables. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1986. In southern Africa he is commemorated with the taxon Solanum burbankii. (ePlantScience.com; UBC Botanical Gardens Forums; Wikipedia)

Burchellia/burchelliana/burchellianum/burchellii: for William John Burchell (1781-1863), botanical collector, painter, writer, gardener, entomologist, early explorer and naturalist in South Africa who was the author of Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, a book that was published in 1822. His name is also on the Burchell's zebra and on Burchell's coucal. "[He is] regarded as one of the greatest of the early African explorers. He was an accomplished naturalist, who amassed vast natural history collections and described many new species. His achievements were not fully recognized by his contemporaries and he became a solitary and unhappy figure in later life. He developed an interest in natural history early on in life and was particularly taken with botany, which he studied at Kew Gardens. In his mid twenties Burchell took up the position of schoolmaster and acting botanist on the island of St. Helena. His fiancee set out to join him in 1807, however, upon arrival, she announced a change of heart; she was to marry the captain of the ship that had carried her to the island, and Burchell was to remain a bachelor until his death in 1863." (website of Oxford University Museum of Natural History) The genus Burchellia in the Rubiaceae was published by Scottish botanist Robert Brown in 1820. He was one of the most productive collectors in the history of South Africa whose name is on at least 60 taxa including Aspalathus, Stachys, Erica, Carex, Trifolium, Tephrosia, Podalyria, Lotononis, Berzelia, Asclepias, Microloma, Restio, Eriospermum, Hermannia, Leucadendron, Protea, Rhus, Selago, Sutera, Geissorhiza, Dioscorea, Holothrix, Solanum, Gnidia, Senecio, Cotula, Cliffortia, Dianthus, Androcymbium, Indigofera and many others.

burgeri: for (1) Willem Burger (fl. 1967), South African farmer in Namaqualand, Northern Cape, on whose farm the type specimen of Conophytum burgeri was collected; (2) Mr. S. Burger (fl. 1962), commemorated with Trichodiadema burgeri. This last may be in error because there is a JSTOR record for Trichodiadema burgeri having being collected in 1962 by L. Burger, or the JSTOR record could be a typo or misprint. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names)

burgerianum: for Peter (Pieter) Burger, South African farmer, studied agricultural engineering at Elsenberg Agricultural College. His oldest daughter, Martine Robinson, is a botanical artist at Somerset West. He is commemorated with the taxon Pelargonium burgerianum. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

burgersii: for Christiaan Johannes Burgers (1952-2003?) of the Western Cape Nature Conservation Board stationed at Jonkershoek Nature Conservation Station, did surveys of rare and endangered taxa. He is commemorated in Cliffortia burgersii. (Gunn & Codd)

burgessiae: for a Miss Burgess of Birkenhead. She is commemorated with Dombeya burgessiae. (PlantzAfrica)

burgessii: for Rev. Dr. John Burgess (1758-1795) of Kirkmichael, given credit by Lightfoot in his Flora Scotica (1778). According to the Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists, both he and his son James were lichenologists. The taxon in southern Africa with this epithet is Leptogium burgessii.

Burkea/burkeana/burkeanus/burkei: for Joseph Burke (1812-1873), British botanist and collector in the service of the Earl of Derby, Edward Smith Stanley. He participated in several collecting expeditions with the noted South African botanist Carl L.P. Zeyher in the Transvaal, and later emigrated to the U.S. where he went on a joint expedition with collectors from Kew to Hudson Bay and California. The genus Burkea in the Fabaceae was published by British botanist George Bentham in 1843. He is commemorated with species in Crotalaria, Jamesbrittenia, Drosera, Geigeria, Felicia, Hoodia, Acacia, Oxalis, Ficus, Scirpus, Cineraria, Androcymbium and others. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names; Etymological Dictionary of Grasses)

Burmannia/burmanniana/burmani/burmannii: for (1) Johannes Burman (1706/07-1779/80), Dutch botanist and physician, a professor of botany at Amsterdam University who studied under Herman Boerhaave and who was a close friend of Carl Linnaeus. He was the author of Thesaurus zeylanicus, Rariorum africanarum plantarum, and Flora malabarica, and specialized in plants of Ceylon, Indonesia and the Cape Colony. The genus Burmannia in the Burmanniaceae was published by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753, and Burman was also commemorated with a number of species names. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names); (2) Nicholaas Laurens Burman (1734-1793), Dutch botanist. He was the son of Johannes Burman and succeeded his father to the Chair of Botany at the University of Amsterdam. He was the author of Specimen botanicum de geraniis and Flora Indica, later completed by Johann Gerhard Koenig. Both father and son were botanists at the Hortus Botanicus (Botanic Garden) at Amsterdam. (Wikipedia)

burmeisteri: for Julie Burmeister, an American lichenologist who visited Australia with her academic husband in the mid-1970's. She was interested in and collected a number of lichens, and made contact with Professsor Jack Elix who published the taxon Parmelia burmeisteri. Some of her collections are in the Australian National Herbarium. Since its original publication, its name has been changed to Xanthoparmelia burmeisteri, and that is the taxon that is present in southern Africa. (Jack Elix, pers. comm.)

Burnatia: for Emile Burnat (1828-1920), Swiss engineer, industrialist, magistrate and botanist. He worked at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques in Geneva. He was the author of Flore des Alpes maritimes written in 7 volumes with John Isaac Briquet and François Cavillier, and co-author with August Gremli of Catalogue raisonné des Hieracium des Alpes Maritimes. The genus Burnatia in the Alismataceae was published by Swiss botanist Marc Micheli in 1881. (Wikipedia)

burnetiae: for Alice Mary Burnet (fl. 1969-1981), plant collector in tropical Africa. She is commemorated with the taxon Leptogium burnetiae. (David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

burtoniae: for Helen Marie Rousseau Burton (Kannemeyer) (1878-1973), South African patron of botany, amateur naturalist and botanical collector who married Henry Burton, who was Minister of Railways in an early South African parliament. She was responsible for negotiating with local politicians about the establishment of Kirstenbosch as a national botanical garden. She was also a founding member of the Botanical Society of South Africa. The first volume of Flowering Plants of Africa was dedicated to her. Species that commemorate her include Delosperma burtoniae, Ruschia burtoniae, Oxalis burtoniae and Pelargonium burtoniae. (The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science; Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; Gunn & Codd)

burtonii: for (1) Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), British explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat, who collected Strychnos burtonii (now synonymized to S. madagascariensis) in Zanzibar. (JSTOR; HerbWeb); (2) Richard Charles Fryer Burton, conservator of forests for Natal, possibly commemorated for Cyclopia burtonii.

burtt-davyi: for Joseph Burtt Davy (1870-1940), British-born botanist and agrostologist on the staff at Kew Gardens, worked as research assistant in the Botany Department at UCLA, botanist in the California state agricultural experiment station, assistant curator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture herbarium at Washington, D.C. and botanist in the Transvaal Department of Agriculture. He was greatly involved in the formation of the forerunner institutions of the Botanical Research Institute and helped to lay the foundations of the National Herbarium. He was the author of Maize: Its History, Cultivation, Handling and Uses, with Special Reference to South Africa (1914). He retired to England in 1919 and went back to work at Kew, producing the most valuable work A Manual of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Transvaal and Swaziland in two parts (1926 and 1932), for which his wife, Alice Bolton Davy, did the line drawings. He later became a lecturer in tropical forest botany at the Imperial Forestry Institute at Oxford, visited South Africa again, and started the series Forest Trees and Timbers of the British Empire. He is commemorated with the species Oxalis davyana and former taxon Aloe davyana (now Aloe greatheadii), also Ficus burtt-davyi, Miraglossum davyi, Eumorphia davyi, Xanthoxylum davyi, Streptocarpus davyi, Delosperma davyi, Acacia davyi, Euphorbia davyi and Merxmuellera davyi. (Gunn & Codd)

burttianum/burttii: for B.L. (Brian Laurence) Burtt (1913-2008), also called "Bill," distinguished British botanist and taxonomist. According to an obituary, he described 637 species new to science, more than half in the family Gesneriaceae! He was a giant in the field of plant taxonomy, collected almost 20,000 specimens in a lifetime of fieldwork, and is credited with an astonishing 260 solo-authored and 122 jointly-authored papers, and three major books: Streptocarpus: an African plant study, The Botany of the Southern Natal Drakensberg, and Dierama: the Hairbells of Africa (all jointly written with O.M. Hilliard). He separated from his first wife Joyce in the 1960's and it was only after her death in 2004 that he married his second wife Olive Mary Hilliard. He worked at Kew Gardens and then at the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh. He made five collecting trips to Sarawak and 19 to South Africa. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Linnean Society of London. There is disagreement about whether his name is spelled Lawrence or Laurence. His obituary in the U.K.'s Independent (echoed by the International Plant Name Index, Tropicos and Wikipedia) spelled it Laurence, however The Harvard University Herbarium Database of Botanists, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, and a website of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh spell it Lawrence. He apparently just went by B.L. He is commemorated with the taxa Osteospermum burttianum, Othonna burttii, Wurmbea burttii, Annesorhiza burttii and Schoenoxiphium burtii. He had a cousin named Bernard Dearman Burtt (1902-1938) who was also a plant collector, worked at Kew, did research on tsetse flies, and died in a plane crash at the age of 36. If ever there was a person whose name deserved to be on a genus, it was B.L. Burtt. (Gunn & Codd; Wikipedia)

buseriana: possibly for Robert Buser (1857-1931), Swiss botanist. The taxon in southern Africa which has this specific epithet is Wahlenbergia buseriana, published in 1915 by German botanists Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlecter and Wilhelm Georg Baptist Alexander von Brehmer.

busseana/bussei: for Walter Carl Otto Busse (1865-1933), German agricultural officer in Tanzania who collected there and in Malawi in Southern Africa. W. Busse is listed as having collected Excoecaria bussei, Lonchocarpus bussei, and Philenoptera bussei in Tanzania in 1900. (JSTOR)

butcheriana: for Harry James Butcher (1866-1950), one of a pair of brothers from Durban who gardened with native plants and who discovered Dietes butcheriana near Durban. I found a notice in the London Gazette of March 15, 1892, stating: "Notice is hereby given, that the partnership heretofore subsisting between us the undersigned, Samuel Butcher, Walter Edward Butcher, Arthur George Butcher, Leonard William Butcher, Harry James Butcher, carrying on business as Merchants, at 40, Summer Row, Birmingham, and at Natal, South Africa, under the style or firm of S. Butcher & Sons, has been dissolved, by mutual consent, as and from the 31st day of December, 1881. All debts due to and owing by the said late firm will be received and paid by the last four undersigned, who will continue to carry on the business of the late firm under the same style.- Dated Durban, Natal, South Africa, 8th day of February, 1892. Samuel Butcher, Walter Edward Butcher, Arthur George Butcher, Leonard William Butcher, Harry James Butcher." (David Hollombe, pers. comm.; Fig Tree Indigenous Nursery; London Gazette)

Buttonia/buttonii: for Edward Button (1836-1900), British botanist and plant collector who died in South Africa. The genus Buttonia in the Scrophulariaceae was published by British botanist George Bentham in 1871, and a taxon formerly named Begonia buttonii was collected by someone named Button at Port Natal in 1868, who is presumably the same person. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)

buysianum: for Tobias Gerhardus Tobase (Buys) Wiese (1921-2013), South African farmer and succulent plant enthusiast in the Northern Cape whose son, Daniel Jakobus Gerhardus Wiese (1955- ), actually found the plant Conophytum buysianum. However it was Buys Wiese that brought it to the attention of the botanical world. He was born in Vanrhynsdorp and married Magaretha Elizabeth Senekal in 1947. He had four children. He bought the farm Quaggaskop in the Knersvlakte and founded the Kokerboom Nursery in Vanrhynsdorp, now run by his son Danie who is commemorated with Bulbine wiesei. (Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names; David Hollombe, pers. comm.)

buysii: for Dr. Matthias H. Buys (1965- ), South African botanist. He was Curator at the A.P. Goosens Herbarium, Senior Lecturer at North West University and is currently Senior Plant Systematist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute. He is commemorated with Pelargonium buysii. (Matt Buys, pers. com)

bylei/byliana/bylianus/bylii: for Paul Andries Van der Byl (Bijl) (1888-1939), mycologist, phytopathologist, and plant collector of succulents. He was on the staff of the Division of Plant Pathology at Pretoria, officer in charge of the Botanic Station and Natal Herbarium, professor of phytopathology (plant pathology, i.e. study of plant diseases) on the Agricultural Faculty at Stellenbosch University, the first professor of this subject in South Africa, and finally principal of the Stellenbosch-Elsenburg Agricultural College. He is commemorated with Acarospora bylei, Tylophoron bylii, Lecanora bylii, Cercospora byliana, Uromyces bylianus, Chiodecton vanderbylii and Paraparmelia vanderbylii. (Gunn & Codd) See also vanderbylii.