August Gustav Heinrich von Bongard (12 September 1786 – 1839) was a German botanist who worked in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. Born in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

, he was among the first botanists to describe the new plants then being discovered in

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

(under Russian ownership at the time), including species now of major commercial importance like Sitka Spruce and

Red Alder ''Alnus rubra'', the red alder, is a deciduous broadleaf tree native to western North America (Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho and Montana). Description Red alder is the largest species of alder in Nort ...

. The specimens he described were mostly collected by Carl Mertens at Sitka, Alaska. The plant genus ''

Bongardia ''Bongardia'' is a very small genus of plants belonging to the family Berberidaceae, and first described in 1831. There are only two known species, ''Bongardia chrysogonum C.A.Mey.'', native to North Africa, Greece, and the Middle East and ''B. m ...

'' (family

Berberidaceae The Berberidaceae are a family of 18 genera of flowering plants commonly called the barberry family. This family is in the order Ranunculales. The family contains about 700 known species, of which the majority are in ''Berberis''. The species ...

) is named in his honor.

Selected writings

* ''Observations sur la végétation de l'ile de Sitcha'', 1833 * ''Esquisse historique des travaux sur la botanique entrepris en Russie depuis'', 1834 * Genera plantarum ad familias suas redacta (with

Carl Bernhard von Trinius Carl Bernhard von Trinius (6 March 1778, Eisleben – 12 March 1844, St. Petersburg) was a German-born botanist and physician. He studied medicine at several universities, earning his medical doctorate at the University of Göttingen in 1802. ...

), 1835. * "Historical Sketch of the Progress of Botany in Russia from the Time of Peter the Great to the Present Day", (translated from the "''Recueil Des Actes de Pétersbourg de 1834''"); Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Companion to the Botanical Magazine ... By W.J. Hooker. Vol. 1. pp. 117–186, (1836) * Plantae quatuor brasilienses novae (with Carl Bernhard von Trinius), 1839. * ''Verzeichniß der im Jahre 1838 am Saisang-Nor und am Irtysch gesammelten Pflanzen'', A second supplement to "Flora Altaica" (with Carl Anton von Meyer and Karl Friedrich von Ledebour), 1841.Google Books
list of publications

References

* This article incorporates text based on a translation of an equivalent article at the German Wikipedia, listed as: Robert Zander, Fritz Encke, Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold (eds.): Handbook of Plant Names . 13th Edition. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984,

External links

IPNI
List of plants described and co-described by Bongard. 19th-century German botanists Botanists active in North America Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Pteridologists 1786 births 1839 deaths {{Russia-botanist-stub