Biography

German settler, plant collector, and newspaper editor. Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer was the first permanent resident plant collector in the state of Texas. Born into a wealthy Frankfurt family, he was educated at the Universities of Wiesbaden, Jena, and Bonn and earned a degree in philology in 1827. Returning to Frankfurt, he became a teacher at the Bunsen Institute, which was noted for its radicalism. The school was closed by the government in 1833 after a failed political revolt in which six of the teachers were charged with sedition.

Lindheimer fled to America to rejoin some of his former colleagues on a German settlement in Belleville, Illinois. Soon afterwards, he moved with several companions to Córdoba in Mexico, where he collected natural history specimens, particularly of plants and insects, which were sent back to Germany. On hearing reports of the Texas Revolution late in 1835, he returned to the United States to enlist in the army. After being demobilised, he spent some time in St Louis at the invitation of the botanist George Engelmann, whom he had known in Frankfurt. However, finding the climate in St Louis too severe for his lungs, he decided to take up truck farming in the new republic of Texas. When this proved unprofitable, he was persuaded to give up his business and work for Engelmann and Asa Gray as a plant collector for a proposed flora of Texas.

Lindheimer had always been interested in botany. He had collected in Mexico and during the Texas revolution, and was now situated in a largely unknown region that only a few collectors had visited previously. In the spring of 1843 he set forth for Galveston in a two-wheeled cart loaded with a pack of pressing paper, and worked his way west. The following year he met a group of German immigrants who were building a town on a land grant purchased by Prince Carl zu Solms-Braunfel. The prince was General Commissioner of the Aldesverein, a company formed by 25 German princes with the intention of creating of a semi-feudal colony in Texas.

Received by the community as a man with knowledge and experience of the country, Lindheimer was granted a small allotment on Comal Creek, where he attempted to establish a small botanical garden. He continued to collect plants in quantity for distribution until 1851, primarily in the areas near the German settlements of New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Bettina. After this date he began a new career in journalism, as editor of the German language newspaper New Braunfelser Zeitung, and only collected recreationally to build up his private herbarium.

The first two parts of Englemann and Gray's Plantae Lindheimerianae were issued in 1845 and 1850, but the project remained for others to finish. Besides his work on the newspaper, Lindheimer ran a free private school for gifted children, served several terms as the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and was the first Justice of the Peace of New Braunfels. The last years of his life were devoted to the study of natural history. After his death, his various writings were published under the title Aufsätze und Abhandlungen (1879). His private herbarium was acquired by Prof. Emil Dapprich of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and exhibited at the World's Fair at Paris in 1900. Lindheimer discovered one new genus, Lindheimera Engelm. & A. Gray, and several hundred new species and subspecies, 48 of which have been named after him, including the popular perennial Gaura lindheimeri Engelm. & A. Gray.

Sources:
J.W. Blankinship, 1907, "Plantae Lindheimerianae Part III", Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 18: 127-141
C.S. Ragsdale, "Lindheimer, Ferdinand Jacob", The Handbook of Texas Online:
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fli04.