Botanist enriches Turkey's flora

Asuman Baytop, a leading Turkish expert on botany and botanical history who provided a significant contribution to the country's flora with her discoveries, was commemorated on Feb. 19 on the 6th anniversary of her demise.

Baytop was born on Mar. 27, 1920, as the third daughter of Meliha Berk and Mehmet Kamil. Mehmet Kamil was one of the doctors of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, according to information compiled by Anadolu Agency correspondent.

Entering Istanbul University's Pharmaceutical Botany and Genetics Institute as an assistant in September 1943, Baytop worked in general botany, pharmaceutical botany, and pharmacognosy courses and laboratories as an assistant of Alfred Heilbronn, a German-Turkish botanist, who is seen as the founder of modern botany in Turkey.

She completed her doctorate in Zurich, in Pharmacognosy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and received title of Doctor of Natural Sciences in 1949.

Baytop was appointed as the director of the Pharmaceutical Botany Chair established at the university in 1964. She launched the Faculty of Pharmacy Herbarium at Istanbul University and managed it until her retirement.

Plant collections from Switzerland to Anatolia

Baytop, who started her botanic trips in 1940-1941 when she was a student, collected plants from Istanbul, Thrace and Anatolia.

She also collected plant samples in Zurich, where she went for her doctorate studies, created her first private plant collection in Switzerland between 1947-1949.

Returning Turkey from Switzerland with a collection that included 601 plant samples, Baytop later presented her collection to the Chair of Pharmaceutical Botany herbaria.

Referred as "tireless plant...