B. P. G. (Bénédict Pierre Georges) Hochreutiner

Born in Saint-Gall in 1873, he studied theology and natural sciences in Geneva before turning fully toward botany. In 1896 he became an assistant to John Isaac Briquet at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève, beginning a long association with the city’s botanical work.

Sources available during this search describe him as a botanist and plant taxonomist who later served as a professor, and eventually as director of Geneva’s botanical garden. A Dutch biographical note also records that he spent time attached to the botanic gardens at Buitenzorg, in present-day Indonesia, and that he later became custodian, professor of botany, and then director in Geneva.

Hochreutiner is especially remembered for his studies of Malvaceae, the plant family that includes mallows and hibiscus. For readers encountering his work today, he stands out as one of those scholar-naturalists whose writing grew out of both careful classification and a lifetime spent close to herbaria, gardens, and the wider history of plants.