Otto Kuntze

Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze ( born June 23, 1843 in Leipzig, † 1907 in San Remo ) was a German botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Kuntze ," but it is also the abbreviation " O.Kuntze " in use.

Life and work

Otto Kuntze both graduated from a secondary school as well as an economic school and learned the trade of a druggist. Even in his youth he was interested in botany and collected a variety of plants in the area of Leipzig. In 1867 he published the " Pocket Fauna of Leipzig " in which these plants described. At that time he was already relocated to Berlin and worked as a clerk. Between 1863 and 1866 he worked as a merchant in Berlin and has traveled through central Europe and Italy. He spent his free time with the collection of plants in the area of Berlin. He was usually accompanied by botanists Alexander Brown and Paul Ascherson in his excursions. In 1867 he published a work on the " reform German Blackberries " in which he described the genus Rubus. In 1868 he again lived in Leipzig and founded a factory for the production of essential oils and essences and was so successful that he was able to retire after just five years. He devoted himself entirely to botany and traveled from 1874 to 1876 around the world. He attended while the West Indies in the Caribbean, South America, 14 U.S. States, Japan, China, Southeast Asia and India. On this trip he collected approximately 7700 plants and also amassed an ethnological collection, which was coming to the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig. His research regarding this trip he wrote in the book " To the Earth " in 1881 down.

In 1878 he obtained his doctorate, which he studied at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Freiburg im Breisgau. His dissertation was published as a " Monograph of the genus Cinchona L. ". The following year, he wrote theories on systematics in botany, but which were considered critical among his colleagues.

From 1884 to 1890 sorted and he described the plants he collected so far in both Berlin, and in Kew Gardens in London. In the meantime visited Kuntze 1886, the Russian Near East and from 1887 to 1888 he stayed in the Canary Islands. Out of all his collected findings in 1891, he published a two-volume work called " revisions generum plantarum ". In this work he restructured nearly all of Botany, which was highly controversial. Undeterred, he published a third volume of this work with the findings and newly collected plants of South America from the years 1891 and 1893. Though some of his criticisms of the existing system on several botanical congresses were discussed, the majority of his system but was heavily criticized and rejected.

In 1894 he took a trip to South Africa as well as in the German colonies, from the winter of 1895 he lived in San Remo in Italy. In 1904 he traveled to a second and final time the world and visited Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, Samoa, Hawaii and the United States. In 1905 he participated in the Second International Congress part of botany in Vienna, presented there but only the authority of Congress regarding the establishment of rules of nomenclature in question. As a result, the naturalist was denied its competence. His health became worse after the Congress, until he finally died in 1907 in San Remo.

Writings (selection )

• Revisions generum plantarum: vascularium omnium atque CELLULARIUM multarum secundum leges nomenclaturae international cum enumeratione plantarum exoticarum in itinere mundi Collectarum. 3 volumes. Leipzig 1891-1898 (online).
• Phytogeogenesis. The primeval evolution of the Earth's crust and the plants in fundamentals. Paul Frohnberg, Leipzig 1884 (online).