Philipp Wilhelm Wirtgen was a German botanist and teacher who was a native of Neuwied

Neuwied

Neuwied is a town in the north of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, capital of the District of Neuwied. Neuwied lies on the right bank of the Rhine, 12 km northwest of Koblenz, on the railway from Frankfurt am Main to Cologne...

.

He was a school teacher in Remagen

Remagen

Remagen is a town in Germany in Rhineland-Palatinate, in the district of Ahrweiler. It is about a one hour drive from Cologne , just south of Bonn, the former West German capital. It is situated on the River Rhine. There is a ferry across the Rhine from Remagen every 10–15 minutes in the summer...

, Winningen

Winningen

Winningen is a municipality in the district of Mayen-Koblenz in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany....

 and beginning in 1831 at Koblenz

Koblenz

Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...

. With botanist Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck

Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck

Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck was a German botanist and pharmacologist who was a native of Schloss Reichenberg in Reichelsheim...

 (1787-1837), he was founder of the Botanischer Verein am Mittel- und Niederrhein (Botanical Association of the Middle and Lower Rhine).

Wirtgen specialized in the study of Rhineland

Rhineland

Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....

 flora, and his work largely dealt with phytogeography

Phytogeography

Phytogeography , also called geobotany, is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of plant species...

, taxonomy

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

 and floristics

Floristics

Floristics is a subdomain of botany and biogeography that studies distribution and relationships of plant species over geographic areas.The term is not to be confused with floristry....

 in the field of botany

Botany

Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

. Among his numerous publications was an 1857 book involving flora from Rhine Province

Rhine Province

The Rhine Province , also known as Rhenish Prussia or synonymous to the Rhineland , was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822-1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg...

 called Flora der preußischen Rheinprovinz und der zunächst angränzenden Gegenden, and a treatise titled Neuwied und seine Umgebung (Neuwied and its Environment).

The plant genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Wirtgenia from the family Poaceae

Poaceae

The Poaceae is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called grasses, although the term "grass" is also applied to plants that are not in the Poaceae lineage, including the rushes and sedges...

is named after him.