Theodor von Heldreich

Who was Theodor von Heldreich?

Theodor Heinrich Hermann von Heldreich was a German botanist, who was born on 3 March 1822 in Dresden and died on 7 September 1902 in Athens.

Scion of an old aristocratic family, he initially studied philosophy. A love of botany, however, took him to Montpellier in 1837 to study under Professor Dunal. He later completed his botanical education in Geneva. His first botanical expedition was to Sicily, after which he published his first work “Tre nuove specie di piante scoverte nella Sicilia.” From 1843 to 1848 he travelled extensively throughout Italy, Greece, Asia Minor and Crete. During 1849 and 1850 he lived in England, and then for a year in Paris where he served as curator of P. Barker Webb’s herbarium. In 1851 he settled permanently in Greece, where he carried out rigorous botanical investigations, publishing thirteen volumes of the “Herbarium Graecum Normale” between 1856 and 1896. In Greece he served as director of the botanical gardens for over 50 years, as well as director of the natural history museum, where in addition to the department of botany he helped create departments of zoology and paleontology. Between 1880 and 1883 he taught natural history to the children of the royal family.