Carl Ferdinand Appun

Life & Legacy

Carl Ferdinand Appun (24 May 1820, Bunzlau- July 1872, Guyana) was a German naturalist.
On the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt Appun was employed by Frederick William IV of Prussia as a botanist in Venezuela where excepting a one-year break in Germany, he spent ten years exploring the flora. After that he went to British Guayana, where he researched as a botanist on behalf the British government. He also visited parts of Brazil -the Rio Branco and Rio Negro on the Amazon to Tabatinga. During a visit in Germany (1868–1871) he published a set of essays in different magazines . His best known work Unter den Tropen (Under the Tropics) was at that time extremely popular. In 1871 he undertook a second exploration of Guyana, where he had an accident which led to his death. His last writings were essays about Indigenous peoples in Venezuela.
Appun described many new plant species and is also known as an entomologist.