Career

Collecting localities

Collections

 

Wit, Hendrik Cornelis Dirk de

 

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 1: Cyclopaedia of collectors)

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 8: Cyclopaedia of collectors, Supplement II)

 

Born: 1909, Purmerend, N.H., Holland.

 

career:

Botanist, educated at Amsterdam University, went to S. Africa in 1938, working for some years at Pretoria, where he prepared his thesis on Setaria in S. Africa (Ph.D. in 1941, after his departure for Java). Since 1941 Botanist on the staff of the Herbarium of the Botanic Gardens at Buitenzorg (Java), specially appointed for the correct naming of the plants cultivated in the Botanic Gardens at Buitenzorg. In Jan. 1946 he was evacuated to Holland.

Onwards of Nov. 1953 Lecturer, later (1959) Professor of Botany at Wageningen. He has specialized in African botany and in aquatic plants.

He published a guide to the Gardens and revised several genera, mostly Leguminosae (Archidendron, Crudia, Sindora, etc. in Bull. Jard. Bot. Buitenzorg). He prepared some manuscript papers, on the history of Netherlands Indian botany and the Botanic Gardens at Buitenzorg.

Crudia dewitii Kosterm. has been named after him.

 

Collecting localities:

W. Java. 1940. With H.J. Ophof at Tjitajam (Dec. 24) ; Moeara near Buitenzorg (Dec. 28).-1941. Islands in the Bay of Batavia: P. Onrust and Purmerend (Jan. 24); Poentjak (Febr. 18); crater Tangkoeban Prahoe (Apr. 12), road to Tangkoeban Praline Volcano (13), between Dawoehan and Kalari (14); Tjiboerial (Apr. 20); Palaboean Ratoe and Tjisolok (June 21); road to Djasinga (July 18); banks of Tjisedane, and Tjianten, S of Tjampea (July 20); Tjitalahab near Bodjong Lopang, limestone hill near Tjibadak (Sept. 16).

 

collections:

In W. Java he collected a small amount of Gramineae, Cyperaceae, and some lichens and Algae; material in Herb. Bog. [BO]. Phanerogams in private herbarium, too. 4000 S. African nos in Leiden [L] and Wageningen [WAG].