Julian Alfred Steyermark (27 January 1909 – 15 October 1988) was an American botanist. His focus was on New World vegetation, and he specialized in the family Rubiaceae.^[1]

[edit] Life and work

Julian Alfred Steyermark was born in St. Louis, Missouri as the only child of the businessman Leo L. Steyermark and of Mamie I. Steyermark (born Isaacs). He studied at the Henry Shaw School of Botany at Washington University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1933. His distinguished career included the Field Museum of Chicago, the Instituto Botanicao of Caracas and he was with the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis from 1984 until his death. Steyermark's major works were his Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana, Flora of Missouri, and his Flora of Guatemala. During his life, he collected over 130,600 plants in twenty-six countries, which earned him an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records. He made the initial descriptions of 2,392 taxa of plants, including one family, 38 genera, and 1,864 species.

The plant genus Steyermarkia was named in his honor.^[2]

[edit] Major works

• Flora of Missouri (1963) Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press. ISBN 0-8138-0655-0.

[edit] References

• Taylor, Mary Susan. 1989. Plant Taxa Described by Julian A. Steyermark, Annals Missouri Botanical Garden 76(3): 652-780

[edit] Further reading

• Davidse, Gerrit. 1989. Julian Alfred Steyermark, Taxon 38(1): 160-163

[edit] External links

This article incorporates information from this version of the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.