Wilhelm Heering


Wilhelm Christian August Heering was a German botanist.
He studied natural sciences at the universities of Munich, Halle and Kiel, receiving his doctorate in 1899. While a student, he began expansion of a herbarium that was formerly maintained by apothecary Johann Jacob Meyer from 1812 to 1834. The herbarium is now kept at the botanical institute of the University of Hamburg.
Beginning in 1899 he focused on studies of freshwater algae, providing information on a wide variety of algae found in the Eppendorfer Moor. In 1902 he began teaching classes at a secondary school in Ottensen, and in 1909 became associated with the Schleswig-Holstein provincial office for nature conservation. From 1911 he worked as a research assistant at the Botanical State Institute in Hamburg, during which time he also conducted lectures at the Colonial Institute. While serving as a deputy officer in World War I, he died on the Western Front in May 1916.
As a taxonomist he circumscribed numerous species within the botanical genus Baccharis.

Selected works

Also, he made contributions involving the green algae class Chlorophyceae to the series Die süsswasser-flora Deutschlands, Österreichs und der Schweiz.