German gardener and naturalist from Potsdam whose surname was originally 'Sello' but changed to 'Sellow' after 1814. He was an assistant gardener at the Botanic Garden of Berlin-Dahlem during the directorship of C.L. von Willdenow before studying natural sciences at the Sorbonne University of Paris where he was influenced by important contemporary botanists including R.L. Desfontaines and A.L. de Jussieu. He was employed by the Paris Botanic Garden (1810-1811) before travelling to London (1811-1813) under the sponsorship of F.W.H.A. von Humboldt. In 1814 he travelled to Brazil where he would carry out his most important work and changed his surname to 'Sellow'. Collections were made from Brazil and Uruguay (1814-1831), sometimes with co-collectors. Some 11,750 specimens were deposited at Berlin-Dahlem (B) but most of this material was destroyed during the Second World War. An exchange program organised between Berlin-Dahlem and the University of Vermont (VT) by C.G. Pringle before the Second World War resulted in a duplicate set of some 3,000 numbers, which now constitutes one of the most important surviving collections of Sellow material. Specimens were collected both before and after 1814, with both forms of his surname.