W. G. Schimper's botanical collecting localities in Ethiopia

Abstract

Wilhelm Georg Schimper probably collected more type specimens of Tropical African plants than any other botanist, with the possible exception of Welwitsch. Although he lived, in the comparatively healthy Ethiopian highlands, to a ripe old age, his work has suffered more than that of most scientists from wars. His possessions in Ethiopia, including plants and manuscripts, were looted and destroyed in 1855, he was imprisoned in 1867, many of his collections and perhaps manuscripts were destroyed in the bombardment of Strasbourg in 1870 and the first set of many of his collections, which alone bore his careful and often copious field notes in full, was mostly destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in 1944. He thus published almost nothing himself and there is no full account of his life. To add to the obscurity Wilhelm Georg Schimper has often been confused with his better-known botanical relatives, his uncle Wilhelm Phillip Schimper, the bryologist, Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper the plant geographer, W.P.S.'s son, and Karl Friedrich Schimper the plant morphologist, W.G.S.'s brother. For example the list of collectors whose plants are in the Kew Herbarium published in Bull. Misc. Inf. Kew 1901 : 1-80 attributes W. G. Schimper's very numerous collections either to W. P. Schimper or simply to 'Schimper