Hans Wiehler

Hans Joachim Wiehler (1930-2003) was a Prussian-born American botanist who specialized in the plant family Gesneriaceae. In 1954 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Goshen Biblical Seminary in 1956. He married in 1958 and remained in the United States for the rest of his life. He obtained a Master's degree in Botany from Cornell University and in 1979 a PhD in Botany from the University of Miami. Wiehler was on the staff of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens from 1973 until 1982, when he left Selby to found the Gesneriad Research Foundation in Sarasota, Florida.

Wiehler tended to be a taxonomic "splitter" but many of his generic rearrangements have found acceptance: the segregation of "Gasteranthus" from "Besleria", of "Alsobia", "Chrysothemis", "Nautilocalyx", and "Paradrymonia" from "Episcia", and of "Moussonia" from "Kohleria", have all withstood the tests of recent molecular phylogenies. However, most gesneriad specialists have not accepted his segregation of "Bucinellina", "Dalbergaria", "Pentadenia", and "Trichantha" from "Columnea", and his new genus "Parakohleria" has been synonymized under "Pearcea". His rare instances of taxonomic "lumping" have not been as widely accepted; "Gloxinia" "sensu" Wiehler is a polyphyletic assemblage, recently dismembered, and no other botanists have accepted his synonymy of "Rhytidophyllum" and "Pheidonocarpa" under "Gesneria".

His standard botanical abbreviation is : Wiehler

He has named the nothogenus ×"Koellikohleria" Wiehler (family Gesneriaceae) in Baileya, 16: 30 (1968).

References

* Desmon, L. 2005. Hans Wiehler: a Tribute. Selbyana 25(2): 239-244.

External links

* [http://www.selby.org/index.php?src=gendocs&link=GIC_Wiehler_early_years&category=Research Hans Wiehler: Portrait of the Botanist as a Young Man]