American clergyman and botanist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania responsible for compiling the first detailed flora of that region. Gotthilf Muhlenberg was born in New Providence, Montgomery County, into a family of Lutheran priests, his father (from Einbeck in Germany) having been the patriarch of this church in the United States. Naturally after his initial schooling in Lancaster and Philadelphia (where his family moved in 1761) he travelled to Germany to train as a minister. For six years he studied at a school in Halle before attending the university of that city for one year in 1769. Following this Muhlenberg returned to Pennsylvania where he was ordained and began to help his father in his pastoral work. After marrying Catherine Hall in 1774 he worked in a parish in Philadelphia until 1780. Following this Muhlenberg moved to the Lutheran Church in Lancaster where he remained for the rest of his life.

Muhlenberg's botanical career began when he was forced to flee Philadelphia to escape British forces during the War of Independence. While in hiding in the countryside he became interested in the plants around him and started to study them. Once settled in Lancaster he started to develop an extensive network of correspondents, both in the States and in Europe, focussing on the flora of the area and making collections. By 1791 he had gathered a herbarium of some 1,100 specimens from a three mile radius of the town and began to compile an "Index Flora Lancastriensis". Containing the descriptions of 454 genera and over a thousand species, both native and introduced, this flora was never published but was presented to the American Philosophical Society in 1791. In 1796 he produced a supplement to this work, containing 44 new phanerogamic genera (including nine new grass species) as well as 26 genera (226 species) of cryptogamic plants.

Muhlenburg's next plan was to produce a flora of the United States and for this he wished to cooperate with all North American botanists, although he found to his disappointment that many were less than enthusiastic. Eventually, with the help of 28 willing correspondents, he was able to publish Catalogus plantarum Americae septentrionalis, his catalogue of the known native and naturalised plants of North America, in 1813.

Muhlenberg was responsible for the first description of many North American plants, but was particularly interested in the grasses, and over half of his new discoveries were either in this, or the Cyperaceae family. In his garden Muhlenberg cultivated native and exotic grasses and experimented on their uses (for he was also interested in economic and medical botany) and after his death the grass section of his flora of Lancaster was published separately (1817). The Poaceae genus Muhlenbergia was named after him by Johann Schreber, and many specific epithets also bear his name. Muhlenberg was awarded an MA from the University of Pennsylvania (1780) and a doctorate in divinity by Princeton College (1787) as well as being named a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1785.

Sources:
J.W. Harshberger, 1899, Botanists of Philadelphia: 92-97
A.A. Heller, 1908, "Muhlenberg and his work in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania", Muhlenbergia, 4: 70-73
H.B. Humphrey, 1961, The Makers of North American Botany: 185-186.