Nikolai Turczaninov

Nikolai Stepanovich Turchaninov, traditionally spelled Turczaninow (; 1796 – ) was a Russian botanist and plant collector who first identified several genera and many species of plants. The standard author abbreviation Turcz. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name; he has named almost 2500 plant species.

Education and career Born in 1796, Turczaninow attended high school in Kharkov. In 1814, he graduated from Kharkov University, before working as a civil servant for the Ministry of Finance in St. Petersburg. Soon after, in 1825, Turczaninow published his first botanical list. Despite being employed in a different field, he continued his largely self-taught botanical work.

In 1828, he was assigned an administrative post in Irkutsk, Siberia. This allowed him to collect in the Lake Baikal area, which is known for its rich biodiversity. A spate of papers followed, and Turczaninow established his own herbarium containing plants from the region.

During his career, Turczaninow corresponded and exchanged specimens with eminent botanists of the era, including Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, George Bentham, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and Joachim Steetz, among others.

In 1837, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk where he continued to publish botanical names. He also became governor of the region. Harvard University Herbaria and the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Several plant species have been named after him, including Connarus turczaninowii, Hydrocotyle turczaninowii, and Sisymbrium turczaninowii. Also in 1836, Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle published Turczaninovia, which is a monotypic genus of flowering plants from Russia to China, belonging to the family Asteraceae. It was named in Nikolai Turczaninow's honour.