Olof Swartz

Olof Peter Swartz (September 21, 1760, Norrköping, Sweden – September 19, 1816, Stockholm, Sweden) was a Swedish botanist and taxonomist. He is best known for his taxonomic work and studies into pteridophytes. He attended the University of Uppsala where he studied under Carolus Linnaeus the Younger and received his doctorate in 1781. He first traveled in 1780, to Lapland in the company of several other botanists. From 1783 he sailed for North America and the West Indies, but mostly in the area of Jamaica and Hispaniola, to collect botanical specimens. By 1786 he left for London where he was preparing his flora. There he met Joseph Banks, who was impressed with his knowledge of Botany. He was offered a position with the British East India Company as a travelling physician, but turned it down, and rather returned to Sweden in 1787. However, ten years later he would propose to the Swedish Academy of Sciences the idea of a permanent travel grant, based on the methods he had seen employed by Banks within the British Empire. In 1791 he became the Bergian botanical professor at the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm. The plants he collected, about 6000 specimens, are now held by the Swedish Museum of Natural History, as part of their Regnellian herbarium.

Swartz was the first specialist of orchid taxonomy, who published a critical review of orchid literature and classified the 25 genera that he recognized through his own work. He was also the first to realize that most orchids have one stamen, while slipper orchids have two.

Works

• Nova genera et species plantarum seu prodromus, 1788
• Observationes botanicae, 1791
• Icones plantarum incognitarum, 1794-1800
• Flora Indiae occidentalis, 1797-1806
• Synopsis Filicum, 1806
• Summa vegetabilium Scandinaviae, 1814