Ludwig Diels

Ludwig Diels's tombstone at botanical garden in Berlin-Dahlem

Friedrich Ludwig Emil Diels (24 September 1874 – 30 November 1945) was a German botanist.

Diels was born in Hamburg, the son of the classical scholar Hermann Alexander Diels. From 1900 to 1902 he traveled together with Ernst Georg Pritzel through South Africa, Java, Australia and New Zealand.[1][2]

History

Shortly before the First World War he travelled New Guinea and in the 1930s in Ecuador. Especially his collections of plants from Australia and Ecuador, which contained numerous holotypes, enriched the knowledge of the concerning floras. His monography on the Droseraceae from 1906 is still a standard.[citation needed] The majority of his collections were stored at the botanical garden in Berlin-Dahlem, whose vicedirector he had been since 1913, becoming its director in 1921 until 1945. His collections were destroyed there during an air raid in 1943. He died in Berlin on 30 November 1945.[citation needed]

The standard author abbreviation Diels is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[3]

Honours

Several genus of plants have been named after him including; Dielsantha (from Campanulaceae family), Dielsia (from Restionaceae), Dielsiocharis (from Brassicaceae) and Dielsiothamnus (from Annonaceae family). Also Dielitzia (from Asteraceae family), is named after Ludwig Diels and Ernst Georg Pritzel (1875–1946).[4]

References

  1. ^ J.S. Beard in -Beard, J. S. (John Stanley) (1990), Plant life of Western Australia, Kangaroo Press, ISBN 978-0-86417-279-2 – page 9 – emphasises the book – Diels, Ludwig (1906), Die pflanzenwelt von West-Australien südlich des wendekreises : mit einer einleitung über die pflanzenwelt Gesamt-Australiens in grundzügen, Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann, retrieved 20 June 2012 was the first of its kind for Western Australia
  2. ^ "MUELLER BOTANIC SOCIETY". The West Australian. Perth: National Library of Australia. 22 July 1902. p. 3. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  3. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Diels.
  4. ^ Burkhardt, Lotte (2018). Verzeichnis eponymischer Pflanzennamen – Erweiterte Edition [Index of Eponymic Plant Names – Extended Edition] (pdf) (in German). Berlin: Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin. doi:10.3372/epolist2018. ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5. Retrieved 1 January 2021.


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