Georg Scholl - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Georg Scholl was a gardener at Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial 1,441-room Rococo summer residence in Vienna, Austria. One of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna...

in Vienna, Germany. He was sent by Emperor Joseph II as assistant to gardener-botanist Franz Boos

Franz Boos

]Franz Boos was an Austrian gardener-botanist in the Age of Enlightenment, a voyager and collector of natural history specimens for Emperor Joseph II of Austria, who reigned from 1765 to 1790....

to collect specimens for the royal garden and cabinet

Cabinet (room)

A cabinet was one of a number of terms for a private room in the domestic architecture and that of palaces of early modern Europe, a room serving as a study or retreat, usually for a man. The cabinet would be furnished with books and works of art, and sited adjacent to his bedchamber, the...

on a collecting trip to the Cape of South Africa. Arriving at the end of May 1786 he completed a few short collecting trips with Scotsman Francis Masson

Francis Masson

Francis Masson was a Scottish botanist and gardener, and Kew Gardens’ first plant hunter.Masson was born in Aberdeen. In the 1760s he went to work at Kew Gardens as an under-gardener. Masson was the first plant collector to be sent from Kew by the newly-appointed director Sir Joseph Banks...

and commisar Robert Jacob Gordon

Robert Jacob Gordon

Robert Jacob Gordon , was a Dutch explorer, soldier, artist, naturalist and linguist of Scottish descent.-Life:...

these becoming longer over the next few months, the itineraries being unknown. Scholl was left at the Cape when Boos left for the Mascarene Islands

Mascarene Islands

The Mascarene Islands is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar comprising Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Cargados Carajos shoals, plus the former islands of the Saya de Malha, Nazareth and Soudan banks...

on 18 February 1787. He returned a year later with so much material that it could not be transported in a single consignment. Boos sailed for Europe on 5 February 1788. Scholl remained at the Cape for another 14 years before returning to Europe. Much of this time Masson was also at th Cape and in correspondence to Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...

pointed out the difficulties of getting transport for their collections. From the collections it seems that Boos and Scholl, or Scholl alone, collected as far north as Namaqualand

Namaqualand

Namaqualand is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of 170,000 square miles/440,000 km². It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into two portions - Little Namaqualand to the south and Great Namaqualand to the...

and east to Kaffraria

Kaffraria

Kaffraria was the descriptive name given to the southeast part of what is today the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Kaffraria, i.e. the land of the Kaffirs, is no longer an official designation...

. Horticulturally the collections greatly enriched the gardens at Schönbrunn Palace and much of their new material was described and beautifully illustrated in the work of botanist Jacquin.

See also

Further reading