Józef Warszewicz

Józef Warszewicz Ritter von Rawicz (Lithuanian: Juozapas Varševičius)[1] (c. 8 September 1812 – 29 December 1866) was a Polish botanist, biologist and plant and animal collector.

While at the university, he joined the November Uprising which was quickly and brutally suppressed, whereupon, with the remnants of the Polish army, he fled to Germany.

In 1844, upon recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt, he was sent by Louis Benoît Van Houtte, a horticulturalist of Ghent, to join a Belgian colony in Guatemala, where he soon became an independent collector and wholesale supplier of plants to European horticulturalists and botanical gardens.

He travelled and collected extensively throughout Central America, discovering a wealth of new plant species in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, where he climbed the 16,000-foot Chiriqui Volcano.

[3] A recurrence of yellow fever in 1853 compelled Warszewicz to return to Kraków where he became supervisor of the Botanical Gardens.