South African botanist from Pretoria. Gerrit Germishuizen has been employed by the Botanical Research Institute (now SANBI) since 1975, first in the Transvaal Division of Nature Conservation and subsequently at the National Herbarium. As a senior professional officer, he was responsible for curating and providing identification services for the families Fabaceae (Leguminosae), Loranthaceae, Viscaceae, and Polygonaceae.
In 1983 he earned an MSc degree from the University of Pretoria for his thesis, A Morphological-taxonomical Study of the Genera Polygonum, Reynoutria, and Bilderdykia in Southern Africa. He has since worked in various positions in the organisation, as Assistant Curator: Finance, Assistant Curator: Herbarium, and Principal Scientist, and from 1997 in the Research Publications Unit as a scientific editor of SANBI publications and as editor of Bothalia. For 30 years (1975-2005) he belonged to the South African Association of Botanists, and since joining the Dendrological Society in 1980 has been associate editor of its journal.
The main focus of his research has been taxonomy, and region and wildflower guides. He is the author of 126 publications in the scientific and non-scientific press, as well as two illustrated books on local flora with Anita Fabian, Transvaal Wild Flowers and Wild Flowers of Northern South Africa, and one with Brenda Clarke, Illustrated Guide to the Wildflowers of Northern South Africa. He has specialised in members of the family Legiminosae and written up new species for the Flowering Plants of Africa.
As sole collector, he has gathered in excess of 10,000 specimens in all provinces of South Africa, as well as in Swaziland and Namibia, the majority of them from under-represented areas where only a few collections were recorded for a quarter-degree square grid in the National Herbarium. The two collections from Swaziland were made in an area that has since become a dam site. His last collecting trip, in 2001, was made to the Spergebiet in the Namib Desert, in collaboration with the National Botanical Research Institute of Namibia. He provided 183 voucher specimens cited in Plants of Northern Provinces of South Africa: Keys and Diagnostic Characters (Retief, E. & Herman, P.P.J., 1997) and 144 cited in Swaziland Flora Checklist (Braun, K.P., Dlamini, S.D.V., Mdlandla, D.R., Methule, N.P., Dlamini, P.W. & Dlamini, M.S., 2004).
Sources:
Personal communication, February 2007.
