In 1813 he moved to Regensburg as an assistant to botanist David Heinrich Hoppe (1760–1846), and afterwards worked as an assistant to Heinrich Christian Funck (1771–1839) in Gefrees, where he performed research of mosses (Bryopsida) native to the Fichtel Mountains.
Between 1817 and 1818 he and Hoppe co-edited two exsiccata-like series, namely Plantae cryptogamae selectae and Plantae phanerogamicae, gramineae et cryptogamiceae selectae, quas in locis natalibus collegerunt et exsiccaverunt D. H. Hoppe et Fr.
[2][3][4] In 1820 he was appointed associate professor of natural history and botany, and director of the botanical gardens at the University of Greifswald.
In 1821, botanist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck named a genus of flowering plants (in family Annonaceae) from Brazil as Hornschuchia.
[5] Hornschuch specialized in the field of bryology, and with botanist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776–1858) and engraver Jacob Sturm (1771–1848), he was co-author of Bryologia Germanica (1823–31).