Selmar Schonland

Who was Selmar Schonland?

Professor Selmar Schonland, the founder of the Botany Department at Rhodes University, was a German immigrant, who came to the Eastern Cape in 1889 to take up an appointment as curator of the Albany Museum. He came to Grahamstown via a doctorate at the University of Hamburg and a post at Oxford University. Working under Prof. Sir lsaac Bailey Balfour and Prof. Sydney Vines, he developed an interest in the family Crassulaceae and contributed an account of this group to Engler & Prantl's Natürl. Pflanzenfamilien. Coming to the museum in Grahamstown gave him the opportunity to broaden his interests and develop the second largest herbarium in South Africa which had been founded by W. G. Atherstone in 1860. His father-in-law, Peter MacOwan, had been its honorary curator from 1862 to 1869 before moving to Somerset East. When MacOwan retired from his subsequent post as director of the Cape Town Botanical Garden and curator of the Cape Government Herbarium, he returned to Grahamstown and assisted Schonland in the development of the local herbarium.