The common cerrado shrub Palicourea rigida was first described by Charles Sigismund Kunth. He worked closely with von Humboldt and Bonpland and named many of their collections. Copyright William Milliken. Courtesy of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859), Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (1773 – 1858) and Charles Sigismund Kunth (1788 – 1850).
Two of South America’s most famous botanical explorers, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland did not include Brazil in their itinerary when they made their epic journey across northern South America and Central America (1799 – 1804). Their impact on Central Brazilian botany, however, was considerable in that they collected many ‘generalist’ or ‘supertramp’ cerrado species having wide distribution patterns outside the biome. Although they collected a great many new species, it was another botanist – Charles Sigismund Kunth – who was responsible for naming many of their collections. Kunth was a German botanist born in Leipzig in 1788. Initially a merchant’s clerk, it was Humboldt who encouraged his initial interest in botany at the University of Berlin. Later, based in Paris between 1813 and 1819, Kunth devoted his time to classifying the plants collected by Humboldt and Bonpland on their travels. Many of the new species described from their collections resulted from his endeavours, and appeared in the Nova genera et species plantarum quas in peregrinatione ad plagam aequinoctialem orbis novi collegerunt (1815 – 1825). Other works published by him related to that expedition included Les mimosées et autres plantes légumineuses du nouveau continent (1819), Synopsis plantarum quas in itinere ad plagam æquinoctialem orbis novi collegerunt (1822-1823) and Les graminées de l'Amérique du Sud (1825-1833). In 1820 Kunth became professor of botany at the University of Berlin, and in 1829 sailed to South America, visiting Chile, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Central America and the West Indies. His collections were bought after his death by the Prussian government, and formed a part of the Royal Herbarium in Berlin, although many were later destroyed during World War two. Significant publications by Bonpland include Monographie des Melastomes (1806).
Commonly encountered cerrado species first described by Kunth include Bowdichia virgilioides, Byrsonima coccolobifolia and Palicourea rigida.