Education
Holtze studied at Hildesheim and Osnabrück before serving an apprenticeship in Hanover, where he subsequently worked for four years in the Royal Gardens.
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Maurice Holtze
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He spent two years in the Imperial Gardens of Saint St. Petersburg before emigrating in 1872 to Melbourne, then to Darwin, Northern Territory. While in Darwin (then called Palmerston, later Portuguese Darwin) he made trial plantings of a large number of tropical plants of potential economic importance: rubber, rice, peanuts, tobacco, sugar, coffee, indigo and maize. He supplied the sugarcane tubers for the Cox"s (later Cox) Peninsula sugarcane venture in which B. C. DeLissa and West. H. and G. T. Bean had a large interest.
Holtze sent a large number of botanic specimens from the Darwin area and nearby islands, many of which had not been previously described, to Sir Ferdinand Mueller.
In Adelaide, succeeding the great Doctor Schomburgk as curator, he did much to make the Botanic Gardens an attractive place for the general public to visit, a novel policy at the time. He established lakes populated with water-lilies and lotuses, which became quite famous.
A son, Alexis L. Holtze, was Horticultural correspondent for the Mount Barker Courier, and editor of the Garden and Field. Clerodendron holtzei (now Clerodendrum holtzei), Sida holtzei, Habenaria holtzei and Polyalthia holtzeana were named for him.
Probably also Northern Territory natives Uvaria holtzei, Aristolochia holtzei, Polycarpaea holtzei (incorrectly Polycarpaea holtzii), Trichosanthes holtzei, Goodenia holtzeana, Utricularia holtzei, Calochilus holtzei, Habenaria holtzei (since renamed Habenaria rumphii), Sterculia holtzei, Eulophia holtzei, Piper holtzei, Hibbertia holtzei and Calogyne holtzeana. of which all but two were described by Ferdinand Mueller.
He was awarded the Imperial Service Order in 1913.
