Biography

Russian botanist who travelled in his early career to South America and for many years collected plants in East Asia. Maximowicz was a linchpin of the Imperial Botanical Gardens of St Petersburg, where he was curator and later director of the herbarium. Born in Tula, south of Moscow, Carl Johan Maximowicz described himself as of German extraction. He attended the University of Dorpat (now Tartu), where he studied medicine and botany under A.A. von Bunge. After taking his candidate's degree in 1850 he became assistant to von Bunge at the university's botanic garden and was then appointed Keeper of the Herbarium at the Imperial Botanical Garden, St Petersburg, under the directorship of C.A. Meyer.

No sooner had he settled into the role, however, than he was despatched on a journey around the world as botanist and collector for the Garden. In 1853-1854 he visited Rio de Janeiro, Valparaiso and Honolulu, before being abandoned on the coast of Manchuria as the expedition's naval frigate was commandeered to serve in the Crimean War. Aged 25, resilient and energetic, Maximowicz continued botanising where he was dropped off and in the country around the River Amur. In 1855-1856 he was joined in this work by fellow Dorpat graduate Leopold von Schrenk, with whom he explored the Kidzi Lake and Marinsk area before heading home along the Siberian post road.

He arrived in St Petersburg in 1857, laden with herbarium specimens, including many new taxa. He published Primitiae Florae Amurensis in 1859 and then returned to eastern Asia, where his path was blocked by various difficulties such as stubborn Chinese officials and frozen rivers. He nevertheless made it to the coast, eventually, and caught a steamer to Japan, where he remained for nearly four years collecting both plants and zoological specimens (1860-1864). By this time Japan was more open to foreigners than earlier in the century and 1860 also saw visits from plant hunters John Gould Veitch and Robert Fortune.

Based in Hakodate, Maximowicz travelled extensively in the south of the country including Mount Fuji, Nagasaki and the island of Kyushu, with an assistant named Chonosuke. In 1861 he sent back 800 herbarium specimens to St Petersburg, while 72 chests full of specimens accompanied him on his return via the Cape of Good Hope in 1864. He was soon elected a Member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and in 1869 appointed Chief Botanist of the Botanical Garden and Director of the Botanical Museum of the Academy. With a family at home and these extra responsibilities, it is perhaps no surprise he did not venture abroad again. Thanks to his travels and work he was considered the pre-eminent authority on plants of East Asia and Japan, though he lamented the administrative work that got in the way of his studies. Recurrent bouts of malaria also laid him low periodically and he did not enjoy the Russian winters, which finally laid him to rest in February 1891.