Christen Raunkiær
| Christen C. Raunkiær | |
|---|---|
c. 1930
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| Born | 29 March 1860 Lyhne, Jutland, Denmark |
| Died |
11 March 1938 (aged 77) Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Fields | Plant ecology, botany |
| Institutions | University of Copenhagen |
| Alma mater | University of Copenhagen |
| Doctoral advisor | Eugen Warming |
| Doctoral students |
Johannes Iversen Carsten Olsen |
| Known for | Raunkiær life forms, Raunkiær's frequency law |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Raunk. |
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Christen Christensen Raunkiær (29 March 1860 – 11 March 1938) was a Danish botanist, who was a pioneer of plant ecology. He is mainly remembered for his scheme of plant strategies to survive an unfavourable season ("life forms") and his demonstration that the relative abundance of strategies in floras largely corresponded to the Earth's climatic zones. This scheme, the Raunkiær system, is still widely used today and may be seen as a precursor of modern plant strategy schemes, e.g. J. Philip Grime's CSR system.
He was born on a small heathland farm, named Raunkiær, in Lyhne parish in western Jutland, Denmark. He later took his surname after it. He succeeded Eugen Warming as professor in botany at the University of Copenhagen and the director of the Copenhagen Botanical Garden, a position he held from 1912 to 1923. He was married to the author and artist Ingeborg Raunkiær (1863–1921), who accompanied him on journeys to the West Indies and the Mediterranean and made line drawings for his botanical works. They divorced in 1915, the same year as their only son Barclay Raunkiær died. Raunkiær later married the botanist Agnete Seidelin (1874–1956).
Raunkiær's research axiom was that everything countable in nature should be subjected to numerical analysis, e.g. the number of male and female catkins in monecious plants and the number of male and female individuals in dioecious plants. Raunkiær also was an early student of apomixis in flowering plants and hybrid swarms. In addition, he studied the effect of soil pH on plants and plants on soil pH, a work his apprentice Carsten Olsen continued.
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