The botanical career of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794-1868) started early. By the age of sixteen, he had built up a personal herbarium of plants occurring in the vicinity of his hometown, Erlangen, Bavaria, and also from the botanical garden. He became a medical student initially at the University of Erlangen in 1810. But at the same time he was studying botany with Johann von Schreber, who in turn had been a student of C. Linnaeus. Humboldt's travels to South America and the resultant publications stimulated much interest in that continent. An expedition to Brazil sponsored by both the Bavarian and Austrian governments came about when the daughter of Maximilian I Joseph, emperor of Austria, married the crown prince of Portugal, who was then living in Brazil. In 1815, Martius, the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, and several other naturalists were selected to participate in this expedition. Martius assumed the role as surgeon for the expedition and was also given responsibilities for the botanical and ethnographical work. The success of the expedition was gained primary from the efforts made by Martius. Over a three-year period, 1817-1820, Martius and Spix, sometimes traveling together and at other times traveling separately, explored much of the interior of Brazil, the first Europeans to enter these areas since C.-M. de La Condamine in the 1730s-1740s. On Martius’ return, the emperor appointed him to be curator of the royal herbarium (Botanische Staatssammlung, Munich), a position that Martius held for the next thirty years (until 1854). His initial appointment was as a fellow of the Academy (as well as assistant curator of the Munich Botanical Gardens), then in 1826 as professor of botany at the University of Munich, and finally in 1832 he was promoted to be senior curator. He was also elected to membership in many learned societies.

            The experience in Brazil caused Martius to devote his professional life to tropical botany. His special fascination with palms (he was called the “father of palms”) led to his pubishing three volumes of Historia naturalis palmarum (1823-1853). With Endlicher, he founded and edited the Flora brasiliensis. Martius devoted twenty years on this series, with 46 of the total 130 fascicles of this folio series being published by the time of his death in 1868. The series, completed by Urban and Eichler, was printed at the expense of the Bavarian government. According to Schultes (1970) the Flora brasiliensis was of such a scope that it remains to this day “the basic work for research in most floristic studies of the lowland tropics of South America”.

            Both by exchange and by sale, Martius’ botanical collection became one of the largest private herbaria, with around 300,000 specimens from around the world. About half of the specimens were from the Amazon Basin. This rich herbarium was acquired by the Belgian government in 1870 and formed the nucleus of an international collection for the newly established Jardin Botanique National de Belgique (BR). Martius’ archives are also now conserved in BR in Meise. Although Martius was blessed with a long and productive life, his traveling companion Spix was not so lucky. Spix worked assidulously and managed to publish extensively on the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds of Brazil, but he died only six years after his return from the expedition, from illnesses contracted during his time in the Amazon.