Pehr Löfling (31 January 1729 – 22 February 1756) was a Swedish

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.

Biography

Löfling was born in Tolvfors Bruk, Gävle, Sweden. He studied at the

University of Uppsala Uppsala University (UU) () is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially founded in the 15th century, the university rose to s ...

where he attended courses taught by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

. When the Spanish ambassador asked Linnaeus to select a botanist for service in the American colonies, the professor at once named Loefling. He went to

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

in 1751 to learn Spanish, and then embarked with other scientists for

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

in February 1754. The Treaty of Madrid (13 January 1750) had fixed the colonial borders of Spain and Portugal. In

Cumaná Cumaná () is the capital city of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located east of Caracas. Cumaná was one of the first cities founded by Spain in the mainland Americas and is the oldest continuously-inhabited Hispanic-established city in Sout ...

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

(then a Spanish colony) Löfling joined a project to demarcate the border with Brazil, the ''Expedicion de Limites al Orinoco''. He was put in charge of a natural history department evaluating the resources of the region. Assisted by two young Spanish doctors, he was involved in the expedition for the remainder of his life. He died in a remote mission San Antonio de Caroni, on the banks of the

Caroní River The Caroní River is the second most important river of Venezuela, the second in flow, and one of the longest, from the Kukenan tepui through to its confluence with the Orinoco River. The name "Caroní" is applied starting from the confluenc ...

near the modern city of

Ciudad Guayana Ciudad Guayana () (English: Guayana City) is a city in Bolívar State (Venezuela), Bolívar State, Venezuela. It stretches 40 kilometers along the south bank of the Orinoco, Orinoco river, at the point where it is joined by its main tributary ...

, Venezuela. His death was considered a great loss to natural history, and especially to botany. Linnæus believed the loss irreparable. The manuscripts of Löfling, which were found after his death, were preserved by his two assistants.

Legacy

In 1753, Linnæus used the name '' Loeflingia'' for the genus of some plants in the family

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family (biology), family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranth ...

, one species of which grows in Spain and the other in Spanish America. Then in 1923, Sprague published '' Pehria'', a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

genus of

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

from South America in family

Lythraceae Lythraceae is a family (biology), family of flowering plants, including 32 genus, genera, with about 620 species of Herbaceous plant, herbs, shrubs, and trees. The larger genera include ''Cuphea'' (275 spp.), ''Lagerstroemia'' (56), ''Nesaea (pl ...

and also named after Löfling. LoeflingZoo CiudadGuayana 04

Parque Löefling in

, Venezuela is named after him. The park includes a zoo.

Publications

Linnæus posthumously published his ''Iter Hispanicum, eller resa til Spanska Länderna uti Europa och America 1751 til 1756'' in 1758.

Notes

References

External links

Pehr Löfling. Polymath Virtual Library, Fundación Ignacio Larramendi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lofling, Pehr 18th-century Swedish botanists Swedish taxonomists 1729 births 1756 deaths Uppsala University alumni Age of Liberty people Swedish emigrants to Venezuela Venezuelan taxonomists