Christian Friedrich Ecklon

Who was Christian Friedrich Ecklon?

Christian Friedrich Ecklon was a Danish botanical collector and apothecary.

Ecklon collected extensively in South Africa. His first visit was in 1823, as first an apothecary's apprentice and then pharmacist, looking for plants with medicinal value. Lack of funding and a deteriorating health forced him to live in poor circumstances, selling bulbs or preparing herbal remedies. Nevertheless, when he returned to Europe in 1828, he had collected an extensive herbarium. During his stay in Hamburg, from 1833 to 1838, he worked on revising this collection. This herbarium would become the basis for the Flora Capensis by his friend, the Hamburg pharmacist Otto Wilhelm Sonder in collaboration with the Irish botanist William Henry Harvey. The herbarium was later sold to Unio Itineraria, a Württemberg Botanical Society.

Ecklon was the author, with Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher who had travelled with him from 1829, of Enumeratio Plantarum Africae Australis Extratropicae, a descriptive catalogue of South African plants. He later returned to South Africa, where he died in 1868.