Selmar Schonland (15 August 1860 – 22 April 1940), originally spelt Schönland, the founder of the Department of Botany at Rhodes University, was a German immigrant, who came to the Eastern part of the Cape Colony in 1889 to take up an appointment as curator of the Albany Museum.

Working under Prof. Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour and Prof. Sydney Howard Vines, he developed an interest in the family Crassulaceae and contributed an account of this group to Engler & Prantl's Natürl.

While at Oxford, he translated, with Edward Bagnall Poulton and Arthur Shipley, August Weismann's "Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems".

At first they refused to confirm the grant; then, persuaded by Schonland, they made over De Beers Preference Shares to the value of £50 000 to Rhodes University College, founded by Act of Parliament on May 31, 1904.

By the time Schonland retired, the Botany Department and Rhodes University had become an established centre of taxonomic research and learning in South Africa.