A plant collector in Anatolia in the middle of the nineteenth century:
Theodor Kotschy (1813-1866)

Asuman Baytop

Karl Theodor Kotschy (1813-1866) is an Austrian botanist who has much collected from the Near-East. He was educated in his youth to be a clergyman. But his passion for travelling and for plant collecting made him a keen collector-botanist.

He made his first expedition to the Near-East between 1835 and 1843. In 1836 he collected from Hatay, Adana, İçel and Toros dağı (Bolkar dağı, Bulghar Dagh). In 184l he travelled from Gaziantep to Mardin, continued to Iraq and Iran, and returned home from Iran in 1843 via Erzurum-Trabzon-Istanbul. In June 1853 Kotschy returns to Toros dağı and herborizes there till the beginning of October. In 1856 he is in Hatay. In 1859 he largely collects from İçel, Adana, Hatay, Niğde, Kayseri, Erzincan, Urfa, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Siirt, Bitlis, Muş, Bingöl, Erzurum, Van, Gümüşhane, Trabzon. In 1862 he explores the Amanus mountains, where he catches malaria. He dies in Vienna in 1866. We see that between 1836 and 1862 Kotschy has been 7 times in Anatolia where he herborized in the South (İçel, Adana, Hatay), in Eastern Inner Anatolia, in the Southeast and the East. He has also collected from İstanbul and İzmir.

His rich collection is widely distributed over 71 herbaria located in 22 countries of the world. Turkish specimens seem to be found in 15 European herbaria. The number of Kotschy's Anatolian specimens cited in Flora of Turkey is close to 800 from which 335 are type specimens. Boissier records nearly 1400 Turkish specimens of Kotschy in his Flora Orientalis. With the numerous material he collected, Kotschy has been much helpful to the taxonomists interested in the Turkish flora.

Key words: Theodor Kotschy, botanical expeditions in Anatolia, flora of Turkey, history of botany. Anahtar kelimeler: Theodor Kotschy, Anadolu'da botanik geziler, Türkiye florası, botanik tarihi.