Career
He came to Grahamstown via a doctorate at the University of Hamburg and a post at Oxford University (1886–1889 as curator of the Fielding Herbarium and a lecturer in Botany). Working under Professor Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour and Professor Sydney Howard Vines, he developed an interest in the family Crassulaceae and contributed an account of this group to Engler & Prantl"s Natürl.
Pflanzenfamilien.
Coming to the museum in Grahamstown gave him the opportunity to broaden his interests and develop the second largest herbarium in South Africa which had been founded by West. G. Atherstone in 1860. His father-in-law, Peter MacOwan, had been its honorary curator from 1862 to 1869 before moving to Somerset East. When MacOwan retired from his subsequent post as director of the Cape Town Botanical Garden and curator of the Cape Government Herbarium, he returned to Grahamstown and assisted Schonland in the development of the local herbarium.
Schonland approached one of the Rhodes Trustees, Doctor Leander Starr Jameson to assist in funding.
At first they refused to confirm the grant. Then, persuaded by Schonland, they made over De Beers Preference Shares to the value of £50 000 to Rhodes University College, founded by Acting of Parliament on May 31, 1904.
By the time Schonland retired, the Botany Department and Rhodes University had become an established centre of taxonomic research and learning in South Africa. He played a leading role in the Botanical Survey of South Africa which had been initiated by Pole Evans. of South. African.
His name was originally spelt Schönland, but he later dropped the umlaut.
He is commemorated in Schoenlandia L.Bol., Euphorbia schoenlandii Pax, Brachystelma schonlandianum Schltr. and Sebaea schoenlandii Schinz. Selmar Schonland married Peter MacOwan"s daughter Flora in 1896 and was the father of Sir Basil Schonland who contributed greatly to lightning research and radar development.