Johann J. Bernhardi studied Medicine and Botany at the
University of Erfurt, and after graduation practiced medicine for a time in his native city. In 1799 he was named director of the
botanical garden at
Gartenstraße, and in 1809 was appointed professor of botany, zoology, mineralogy and
materia medica at the university. He served as director of the botanical garden until his death in 1850, being buried in the central avenue of this botanical garden. Throughout his life thanks to acquisitions and interchanges with other botanists, he assembled a considerable
herbarium of 60,000 plants with specimens from North America, South America, Asia, and Africa. After his death this herbarium did not remain in
Germany but due to the efforts of
George Engelmann, who, in 1857, shortly after the death of Bernhardi bought the complete herbarium for the amount of 600 dollars for
Henry Shaw, founder of the
Botanical Garden of Missouri in the U.S.A., forms the nucleus of the collection and the initial museum of this Botanical Garden (at the moment the "Missouri Botanical Garden herbarium" contains over 6.2 million specimens and the library over 120,000 volumes). Johann J. Bernhardi studied and described several species of
orchids, including
Epipactis atrorubens. He described a species of rose without thorns,
Rosa × francofurtana, found in the garden of the house of Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe in
Weimar. The genus
Bernhardia (family
Psilotaceae) is named in his honor. He was editor of the
Thüringischen Gartenzeitung (Thuringian garden newspaper) and the
Allgemeinen deutschen Gartenmagazin (General German garden magazine). The thoroughfare,
Jacob-Bernhardi-Straße in Erfurt, is named in his honor. ==Works==