Under the request of their family, he became a gardener and studied botany in 1843 at the University of Heidelberg (with Gottlieb Wilhelm Bischoff) and in 1849 at the University of Göttingen (with August Grisebach and Friedrich Gottlieb Bartling), in 1850, he was promoted with a dissertation of the causes of the plant to spread, in 1851, he went to a collecting trip in the Cape Verdean Islands and studied its habilitation in Heidelberg on the local flora of Cape Verde.
He also provided for example, mint and figworts for Flora Brasiliensis by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius.
After the death of Gottlieb Wilhelm Bischoff, he temporarily headed the botanical garden.
He hoped to have a full appointment succeeding Bischoff as director of the botanical gardens, instead, Wilhelm Hofmeister became in 1863.
He suffered a stroke in 1902 and after the death of his wife in 1904, he moved to Elberfeld, he died in 1905.