Nikolai Busch

Nikolai Adolfovich Busch (Николай Адольфович Буш; 1869 – 1941) was a Russian / Soviet botanist. He was a leading expert on the flora of the Caucasus and read lectures at the Leningrad State University.

Busch was born in Slobodskoy, where his father worked as a forester. He graduated from Kazan University in 1891 and later pursued further studies at the Forestry Institute in St. Petersburg.^[1] Between 1888 and 1890, he travelled in the Caucasus as an assistant of N. I. Kuznetsov, collecting an extensive herbarium.^[2] Between 1894 and 1911, he conducted eleven expeditions to the Caucasus, along with a trip across Crimea. During one of such expeditions he met Elizaveta Endaurova (a niece of Elisabeth Boehm) which became his companion and then wife.

From 1911, Busch held a professorship at the St. Petersburg Higher Women’s Courses and served as head of the botany department at the Psychoneurological Institute (1910-1917). His extensive fieldwork earned him the prestigious Przhevalsky Medal from the Russian Geographical Society. He described numerous new plant species from the Caucasus and produced detailed botanical-geographical maps of regions such as Ossetia and Digoria. A street in Tskhinval is named after Nikolai and Elizaveta Busch.^[2]

The standard author abbreviation N.Busch is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.^[3]