German-born pharmacist and botanist who spent most of his life in the United States. Born near Stuttgart, Mohr studied chemistry before travelling to Suriname in 1845 with the explorer and botanist August Kappler. Having always held an interest in botany, Mohr collected plants in Suriname for European herbaria. Despite having planned to spend more than three years in the country, illness forced him to return to Europe in 1846, where he spent a period working as a chemist in the Moravian city of Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic) after his recovery.
This work came to a halt when revolution broke out in 1848 and Mohr decided to embark on another adventure, emigrating to the United States. After arriving in New York he joined the gold rush to California, but was unsuited to the strenuous work of a gold miner and settled instead for some time in Cincinnati in 1850. On his way from the west he made the acquaintance of plant collector Duke Paul von Würtemberg, who was at that time ranging across large parts of the U.S. During spells in Indiana and Kentucky, Mohr mixed with many other German immigrants. One of them, Sofie Roemer, from Zweibrücken, he married in 1852. Another of his new friends was the Swiss palaeobotanist and bryologist Leo Lesquereux, with whom he furthered his botanical studies.
He briefly collected plants in Mexico in 1857 and intended to live in the country, but was forced to return to the U.S. due to a revolution. He settled in Mobile, Alabama, establishing a pharmacy. Despite being caught up in the events of the American Civil War, he continued to botanise. In 1879 he published The Forests of Alabama and Their Products and contributed to Lesquereux's Mosses of North America (1884). Having become a recognised botanist, Mohr gave talks at Harvard University and undertook work for the government's Department of Agriculture. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Alabama in 1893 and in his last years of life Mohr worked at the Biltmore Herbarium in Asheville, North Carolina, compiling work on the botany of Alabama. He is best known as the author of Plant Life in Alabama, published in 1901.
Sources:
L.J. Davenport, 1988, "Charles Mohr, Botanist", Alabama Heritage, 10: 32-45.
