Biography

German botanist; director of the Darmstadt Botanic Gardens. Originally from Siegen, Westphalia, Schenck studied natural sciences at the University of Bonn (1879-1880, 1882-1884) and at Berlin (1881-1882), receiving his doctorate from Bonn in 1884. He remained at Bonn as an assistant and tutor until 1896, when he moved to Darmstadt. Here he was appointed to a permanent position at the Polytechnical Institute, which included directorship of the city's botanic garden. He remained in this role until his death in 1927, overseeing a significant growth in the garden's collections and scope.

Some of Schenck's most important research looked at the adaptation of aquatic plants. An English translation of his 1886 work, Die Biologie der Wassergewächse (The Biology of Aquatic Plants), was issued in 2003. In 1886-1887 Schenck undertook an expedition to Brazil alongside A.F.W. Schimper, whom he had met at Bonn. They were eagerly hosted by the expatriate naturalist Fritz Müller at the German colony of Blumenau on the country's south-eastern coast. Müller, an early proponent of Darwinism, set Schenck to work examining the adaptations of tropical lianas and their climbing habit. The three became lifelong correspondents following their time together, though Schenck never ventured back to the humid tropics. He did however make a trip to Mexico in 1908 with Darmstadt gardener Joseph Anton Purpus, in search of cacti and succulents. On the trip they met up with J.A. Purpus' brother, Carl Albert, who collected with them for some time in Veracruz and Mexico states.

Schenck co-authored the botanical series Vegetationsbilder (1903-1924) with George Karsten (1863-1937) and was one of four authors of the widely used textbook Lehrbuch der Botanik für Hochschulen (16 editions, published 1894-1923). His liana studies in Brazil resulted in two volumes of Schimper"s nine-volume series, Botanische Mittheilungen aus den Tropen. Schenck also helped to edit Schimper's plant geography text in the 1890s, when his former travelling partner fell ill following a trip to Africa, and published the results of the German Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1903. His brother was the geologist and botanist Adolf Schenck (1857-1936).

Sources:
E. Cittadino, Nature as the laboratory: Darwinian plant ecology in the German Empire, 1880-1900: 104-105
M. Möbius, 1927, "Heinrich Schenck", Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 45: 89-101.