Julius von Flotow



Julius von Flotow; full name- Julius Christian Gottlieb Ulrich Gustav Georg Adam Ernst Friedrich von Flotow (9 March 1788 – 15 August 1856) was a German military officer and a botanist specialized in lichenology and bryology.

Von Flotow was born in the village of Pitzerwitz (Pstrowice in Polish) in the region of Neumark. In 1813, he suffered a serious war injury at the Battle of Lützen, from which he never fully recovered and which led to a partial paralysis of his right arm. During a military campaign in France (1819), he took the opportunity to study lichens native to the Ardennes Mountains. In 1829 he started to edit and distribute the exsiccata ''Lichenes exsiccati. Lichenen, vorzüglich in Schlesien, der Mark und Pommern gesammelt von Julius von Flotow''. In 1850 he wrote of how his acquisition of a high-quality Schiek microscope enhanced his studies. In an 1851 study of the crustose lichen Rimularia gibbosa, he introduced the term. In 1832 he took an early retirement from the military and worked as a private scholar in Hirschberg. Among his written works are the following:


 * Reisebericht über eine Excursion nach einem Theile des südöstlichen Riesengebirges (1836)
 * Über Haematococcus Pluvialis (1844)
 * Lichenes Florae Silesiae (1849–1850)

Von Flotow was a member of several learned societies, notably the Leopoldina and the Senckenberg Nature Research Society. He was a recipient of the Iron Cross and was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Breslau in 1856, a week before his death. The genus Flotovia from the botanical family Asteraceae is named in his honor.