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.

This can be seen in Revisio generum plantarum which consists largely of exhaustive lists of species and entire genera which he proposed were to be moved.

[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.

[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.