Johann Christoph Röhling (27 April 1757 – 19 December 1813) was a German botanist and

clergyman Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...

who was a native of Gundernhausen, a town near Darmstadt. He studied

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Giessen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univer ...

, and later taught school in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. In 1792 he became a pastor in Braubach, and in 1800, a parish priest in Breckenheim. Röhling was the author of "''Deutschlands Flora''", an important treatise on German flora, of which the first edition was published in 1796. He also published a work on mosses of Germany titled "''Deutschlands Moose''" (1800). He was the

taxonomic authority In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...

of the plant genus ''Melandrium'' (family

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranthaceae, Cactacea ...

). The plant genus ''Roehlingia'' (family

Dilleniaceae Dilleniaceae is a family of flowering plants with 11 genera and about 430 known species. Such a family has been universally recognized by taxonomists. It is known to gardeners for the genus ''Hibbertia'', which contains many commercially valuabl ...

) was named after him by

August Wilhelm Dennstedt August Wilhelm Dennstedt (1776–1826), surname sometimes spelled Dennstaedt, was a German physician and botanist who was bürgermeister of Magdala, a town near Weimar. From 1817 he was scientific director of the Grand Ducal Garden in Belve ...

.Roehlingia
The Plant List

References

Wikisource
translated biography @ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 1757 births 1813 deaths People from Darmstadt-Dieburg German Protestant clergy 19th-century German botanists Bryologists 18th-century German botanists {{Germany-botanist-stub