Otto Kuntze

Between 1874 and 1876, he traveled around the world: the Caribbean, United States, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Arabian peninsula and Egypt.

[1][2] Even for an era in which botanical and mycological texts were quite formal and rigid in their style; Kuntze's writing stands out as being especially dense and impenetrable.

[3] Potential sources for the schism between Kuntze and the academic world can be seen in examples such as his proposition that Michel Adanson's pre-Linnaean system genus Fungus should be resurrected for numerous Agaricus and Stropharia species.

As a result of this work, the taxonomic records are full of vast defunct genera in which not a single species name is currently accepted.

[5] Kuntze's major attempts at reclassification appear to have been influenced by the issues he saw with Linnaean taxonomy and perhaps even Linnaeus himself: "Linné was a great researcher, an excellent observer, an astute thinker with a tremendous talent for systematics, a tireless worker, an engaging teacher, a sociable person, generally a staid character, but overly ambitious, like even Gistel (cf.

"Whilst widely rejected, Kuntze's work cast a strong light on the inadequacy of previous approaches to botanical nomenclature.