A brief biography of Wolfgang Wolf and typification of the plant names he published

Abstract

Wolfgang Wolf (1872–1950) was a German-born Benedictine monk and self-taught botanist who lived and worked at the St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama, U.S.A. Wolf studied and documented the plant life of the north central region of the state, amassed a personal herbarium of thousands of sheets and became particularly expert in the genera Talinum and Erythronium. A brief biography of Wolf is presented, highlighting his little-known correspondences between many prominent botanists during the first half of the twentieth century. Typification of the nine names he published then follows, including the designation of four type specimens.