Diedrich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal (1794 / 1866) - Lot. of 58 sheets. Flora von Deutschland - Cruciferae - 1848

Lot of 58 sheets of which 29 copper-engraved Plates in period color and 29 descriptive sheets. Excellent inking and good condition, light traces of foxing, browning and binding marks, all as shown in the photos. Some with time stains. SHIPPED INSURED via courier, BARTOLINI\DPD; for insurance, declare any damage at the time of pickup. Provenance: private collection.

Measures: about 185 x 115 mm per sheet

Flora von Deutschland
Printed and published by Friedrick Mauke 1842
Diedrich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal
Ernst Schenk, teacher of academic drawing in Jena


Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal (Xanten, November 27, 1794 – Halle, October 12, 1866) was a German botanist. The standard author abbreviation Schltdl. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

Von Schlechtendal was born in Xanten am Rhein and when his father Diederich Friedrich Carl von Schlechtendal (1767-1842) became a court judge, his family moved. His mother Katharina Margarete Schleendlich, née Bartels, died when he was only three. His father lost his job when the French occupied the left bank of the Rhine and the family moved to Berlin. Contact with Carl Willdenow sparked his interest in botany from an early age. He attended the Berlin Gymnasium and then a monastery school before enlisting in voluntary military service in Breslau. He was discharged for physical reasons and returned to Berlin to study botany. In 1813 he attended courses in botany and medicine under Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836), Karl August Berends (1795-1826) and Carl Heinrich Ferdinand von Graefe (1787-1840). He attended botany lectures by Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link and also took part in excursions with Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838). He earned a doctorate with a dissertation, Animadversiones botanicae in Ranunculeas Candollii in 1819, and became curator of the Royal Herbarium, which had just acquired Willdenow’s collections under the direction of Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link. He was also involved in organizing Friedrich Sellow’s (1789-1831) collections, plants from August Gerhard Gottfried Lichtenstein (1780-1851), and lichens of Heinrich Gustav Floerke (1764-1835). In 1827 he became an extraordinary professor of botany in Berlin and after Kurt Sprengel’s death he moved to Halle in 1833 where he also became director of the Botanical Garden of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1833 until his death in 1866 from pneumonia.

Schlechtendal married Amalie Henriette Klug (born 1804), daughter of the medical advisor and entomologist Klug. He became founding editor of the botanical journal Linnaea (since 1826) and, with Hugo von Mohl (1805-1872), editor of Botanischen Zeitung (since 1843). He conducted important investigations into the Mexican flora, then largely unknown, carried out in collaboration with Adelbert von Chamisso and based on specimens collected by Christian Julius Wilhelm Schiede (1798-1836), Carl August Ehrenberg (1801-1849), Friedrich Ernst Leibold (1804-1864) and Ferdinand Deppe (1794-1861).

Schlechtendal was a critic of Darwinism, but accepted a limited form of evolution. He advocated a form of common descent of “some groups of very similar species, which also inhabit a limited area.” In 1825 he received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Bonn, perhaps influenced by Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck.

The genus Schlechtendalia (Asteraceae), found in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, was named in his honor. His son Eugen von Schlechtendal worked in poultry farming and bird protection.

Works:
Animadversiones botanicae in Ranunculaceas, Berlin 1819-1820.
Flora berolinensis, Berlin 1823-1824.
Adumbrationes plantarum, 1825-1832.
Flora von Deutschland, Jena 1840-1873 (with Christian Eduard Langethal and Ernst Schenk; fifth edition by Ernst Hallier 1880-1887).
Hortus halensis, Halle 1841-1853.

Wikipedia