Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallroth

Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallroth (1792 to 1857) was a German botanist, born in Breitenstein and died in Nordhausen, whose name is abbreviated Wallr. as a taxon authority. He attended classes in medicine and botany at the University of Halle and continued his studies at Göttingen, where he was a pupil of the botanist Heinrich Adolf Schrader and obtained his medical doctorate in 1816. In 1822 he was appointed district physician to the city of Nordhausen, where he carried out botanical research alongside his medical duties. His writings include a treatise on the cryptogams native to Germany, Flora Cryptogamica Germaniae of 1831 to 1833, and a study of the biology of lichens, Naturgeschichte der Flechten, of 1825 and 1827. He is credited with introducing the terms homoiomerous and heteromerous for the two forms of lichen thallus, and also epiphloeodal, hypophloeodal and gonidium. He retired in 1855, and a large part of his herbarium went to the National Museum in Prague.