Walter, Carl (1831 - 1907)

German-born Carl Walter spent a great deal of time collecting in Victoria and south-eastern New South Wales for Mueller.

Walter arrived in the colony of Victoria in the 1850s, and he probably participated in Government Astronomer R. L.J. Ellery's geodetic survey of East Gippsland and the New South Wales border between 1869 and 1871. During the 1890s he made several collecting trips to the Victorian alps in company with Charles French junior, and made his collections and notes available to club members.

He was a good photographer, and the first to collect plants on lofty, isolated, granitic Mt Ellery (1305 m), where he discovered the large-flowered remarkable Prostanthera watteri (Monkey Mintbush) that Mueller named after him. Later Walter kept a wine shop in Swanston Street.

He wrote several botanical papers in the Victorian Naturalist, recording the alpine vegetation and the discovery of new plants (Walter 1899b, 1907).
 

Extracted from: Flora of Victoria, Vol. 1, Chap 5, 'Botanical Exploration of Victoria', by J.H.Willis & Helen M. Cohn (1993). [consult for source references]