Christian Hochstetter was a German botanist, clergyman and professor. He played an important role in botanical field work as director of the Unio Itineraria, which promoted collecting and distribution of specimens from many parts of the world.

Hochstetter collected plants himself in Central Europe and on an expedition to Portugal, Madeira and the Azores in 1838. Moritz Seubert's Flora Azorica (1844) is based on collections made by Hochstetter and his eldest son, Karl Christian Friedrich Hochstetter (1818-1880).

Christian Hochstetter's main contribution to botany was as a founder of the Unio Itineraria. The organisation had its beginnings in 1825, when a group of Esslingen botanists hired a young pharmacist, Franz Fleischer, to collect plants in the Tirol. A yield of 15,000 plants from this endeavour led Hochstetter and his associate E.T. Steudel to organise a society to underwrite further expeditions, initially under the banner 'Württemburgischer naturhistorischer Reisvereins', though labels gave the title as Unio Itineraria. Specimens gathered by the society's collectors were determined by experts and distributed to many herbaria in Europe.

Earlier in his life Hochstetter had graduated from the University of Tübingen (in 1807) and in 1808 was briefly imprisoned for his part in an illegal plan to form a colony on Tahiti. He then worked as a teacher and private tutor, before becoming a pastor and school inspector at Brno. He moved to Esslingen in 1824. He published numerous papers on natural history, theology and education.

Sources:
G. Sayre, 1975, Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 19(1): 50
D.F.L. von Schlechtendal, 1960, Botanische Zeitung, 18: 83-84.