German (Bavarian) naturalist who travelled in Brazil and Mexico. Karwinsky was born in Keszthely in present-day Hungary and made his first natural history collections in Brazil (1821-1823). He was sent to Mexico in 1826 by the German-American Mining Society of Dusseldorf and the Bavarian government to make further collections of natural history objects. He remained five years in Mexico, mainly in the province of Oaxaca, and sent home great numbers of living plants, in particular agaves and cacti. While not quite as fervently sought after as orchids, cacti and succulents were also highly prized in the 19th century and Karwinsky sold a single specimen of the rare Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus (Lem.) K. Schum. for 1,000 francs in 1842, a price far exceeding the plant’s weight in gold. He visited Mexico once more in 1840 at the behest of the Russian government, sending his collections this time to St. Petersburg. On this journey he met up with the Danish collector Frederik Liebmann (1813-1856), with whom he travelled from Veracruz to Xicaltepec. Karwinsky died in Munich. The genus Karwinskia Zucc. and Erigeron karvinskianus DC., the Mexican fleabane, are among the taxa named after him.

Sources:
O.A. Flores-Villela, H.M. Smith and D. Chiszar, 2004, "The History of Herpetological Exploration in Mexico", Bonner zoologische Beiträge, 52(3-4): 315
W.B. Hemsley, in F.D. Godman and O. Salvin (editors), 1888, Biologia Centrali-Americana, 4: 123
A. Lasègue, 1845, Musée Botanique: 212.