Biography

Finnish botanist and medical practitioner interested in the flora of Finland and north-western Russia. Born in Oulu, Fredrik Nylander studied natural sciences at the Imperial Alexander University (now the University of Helsinki) from 1836. During this period he spent several years travelling in Europe, visiting Germany, Italy, France and England. He also took classes in medicine at the same time.

In 1940 Nylander gained his 'candidate's' degree and moved to Sweden for a few years in order to study medicine and botany. In 1942 he undertook expeditions throughout Fennoscandia and reached as far as the Arctic Ocean, Karelia and Russian Lapland. Collecting specimens throughout the region, as part of his application for docentship he presented a work on 100 uncommon species of the Finnish flora. Named Spicilegum plantarum fennicarum the first volume was published in 1843 and that year he conducted further fieldwork in order to present the second volume for his PhD thesis in 1844.

Returning to Russia again he was employed in some capacity by the Imperial Botanic Garden of St. Petersburg and continued his studies on the flora of this region. In 1846 the third volume of the Spicilegum was published. Nylander intended this volume to be the beginning of a series on Finnish sedges, but no more publications of this sort were produced. The tree volumes he did publish, though, were quite unique at the time in their critical approach to the species concept.

Settling back in Finland, Nylander practised medicine for the rest of his life and later published his other important contribution to the field of botany, a monograph of the Eriophorum L. genus (1849). Nylander had also applied for the newly opened professorial position at the University of Finland in Helsinki, that of biology and zoology, but he was not successful.

Sources:
R. Colander, 1965, The History of Botany in Finland
H. Väre, 2007, "Typification of names published by the Finnish botanist Fredrik Nylander", Annales botanici Fennici, 44: 465-480.