Schomburgk, Moritz Richard (1811 - 1891)

Summary

Richard Schomburgk was the second Director of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens from 1865 to 1891. He was apprenticed as a gardener in Meresburg and did national service in the Royal Guard, before accompanying his older brother Robert on a 4-year expedition to British Guiana . On returning home, Richard published an account of his travels, Reisen in Britisch Guiana (1847/8), earning himself an international reputation. Because of state of political uncertainty in Prussia, he left in 1848 with 180 fellow members of a colonisation society. He arrived in Adelaide in 1849 and, with his younger brother Otto, started farming near Gawler. On becoming Director, Schomburgk embarked on a program of improvement. He planted avenues of trees; established experimental plots for pasture grasses and other useful plants; created display gardens; built a number of glasshouses including that for famous Victorian waterlily (Victoria amazonica); and established the Museum of Economic Botany. Schomburgk was successful in balancing the horticultural, educational, recreational and scientific aspects of the Gardens. He also maintained good relations with local nursery trade and scientific organisations.

Details

Chronology

1840 - 1844

Career position - Botanist and historian for the Prussian government, British Government and Royal Geographical Society expedition to British Guiana (led by his brother Robert)

1847 - 1848

Career event - Published Reisen in Britisch Guiana

1849

Life event - Arrived in Adelaide

1849 - 1865

Life event - Farming at Buchsfelde, near Gawler, with his brother Otto

1865

Career event - Elected as a Member, Adelaide Philosophical Society

1865 - 1891

Career position - Director, Adelaide Botanic Gardens

1881

Career event - Established the Museum of Economic Botany in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens

1888

Career event - Original [founding] member, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

• Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and State Herbarium

• Moritz Richard Schomburgk - Records, 1844 - 1976, P4-2; Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and State Herbarium. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• Collins, David, Chemistry in 19th Australia - Select Bibliography, An exhibition of the Encyclopedia circa 2005 with assistance from Ailie Smith and Gavan McCarthy., eScholarship Research Centre (original publisher), Melbourne, 2009, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/ciab/ciab_ALL.html. Details

Books

• Adelaide Botanic Gardens, The Botanic Garden, Adelaide, South Australia: centenary volume 1855 - 1955:history, guides and catalogues of plants (Adelaide: Government Printer, 1955), 412 pp. Details
• Aitken, Richard, Seeds of Change: an Illustrated History of Adelaide Botanic Garden (Richmond: Board of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium/Bloomings Books, 2006). Details
• Payne, Pauline, The Diplomatic Gardener: Richard Schomburgk, Explorer and Botanic Garden Director (North Adelaide: Jephcott Press, 2007), 201 pp. Details
• Schomburgk, R., The grasses of fodder plants which may be beneficial to the squatter and agriculturist in South Australia (Adelaide: Printer: William Kyffin Thomas, 1874), 10 pp. Details
• Schomburgk, Richard, Reisen in Britisch Guiana in den Jahren 1840 - 1844, 2 vols (Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. J. Weber, 1847-8). Details
• Schomburgk, Richard, Catalogue of the plants under cultivation in the Government Botanic Garden, Adelaide, South Australia (Adelaide: Government Printer, 1878), 285 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Dalziell, Rosamund, '"Botanical Autobiography and Vegetable Wonders": Richard Schomburgk's Botanical Reminiscences of British Guiana' in To the Islands: Australia and the Caribbean, McDougall, Russell, ed. (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002), pp. 69-78. Details
• Middelmann, Raoul F., 'Schomburgk, Moritz Richard (1811-1891), botanist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 6: 1851 - 1890 R - Z, Bede Nairn, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), pp. 91-92. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060104b.htm. Details
• Payne, Pauline, 'Richard Moritz Schomburgk. Second Director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden 1865-91' in The German Experience of Australia 1833-1938, Harmstorf, Ian, ed. (Bedford Park, South Australia: Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows, 1988). Details
• Payne, Pauline, 'Science at the Periphery: Dr. Schomburgk's Garden' in Darwin's Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific, Roy MacLeod and Philip F. Rehbock, eds (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), pp. 239-259. Details
• Payne, Pauline, 'Richard Schomburgk: explorer, natural scientist, and Botanic Garden Director' in Germans: travellers, settlers and their descendants in South Australia, Monteath, Peter, ed. (Kent Town, S.A.: Wakefield Press, 2011), pp. 126-43. Details

Journal Articles

• Editorial (Dr. Schomburgk), 'Cultivation of Perfume Plants in South Australia (From the Journal of the Society of Arts, Aug.,22,1879)', Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions (1879), 185-186. Details
• Kloot, P. M., 'Dr. Richard Schomburgk's 'Naturalised Weeds' (1879)', Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, 2 (2) (1980), 195-220. Details
• Schwarz, Anja, 'Schomburgk's chook: the entangled South Australian collections of a German naturalist', Postcolonial studies, 21 (1) (2018), 20-34. Details
• Weigl, Engelhard, 'Acclimatisation: the Schomburgk brothers in Australia', International review of Humboldtian studies, 4 (7) (2003), 3-13. Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/30332468. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q106178. Details
• 'Schomburgk, Richard (18111005-18910324)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-498575. Details

Reviews

• Payne, Pauline, The diplomatic gardener: Richard Schomburgk, explorer and botanic gardens director (2007)
  Maroske, Sara, Australian Garden History, 19 (4), (2008), 17-9. Details
• Payne, Pauline, The diplomatic gardener: Richard Schomburgk, explorer and botanic gardens director (2007)
  McKinnon, Ross, Historical Records of Australian Science, 19 (2), (2008), 225-6, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR08008. Details
• Payne, Pauline, The diplomatic gardener: Richard Schomburgk, Explorer and Botanic Garden Director (2007)
  Short, Philip, Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter, 135, (2008), 36-8. Details

Theses

• Payne, Pauline, 'Dr Richard Schomburgk and Adelaide Botanic Garden 1865-91', Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1992. Details

See also

• Aitken, Richard and Looker, Michael eds, The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002), 700 pp. pp. 537-8. Details
• Fagg, Murray, 'Schomburgk, Moritz Richard (1811 - 1891)', Australian Plant Collectors and Illustrators, Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH), 2010, https://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/schomburgk-richard.html. Details
• Harcus, William, South Australia: its history, resources and productions (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1876), 432 pp. Details
• Maiden, J. H., 'A century of botanical endeavour in South Australia', Report of the eleventh meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 11 (1908), 158-199, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/14539732. Details