Maurice William Holtze born in Hanover, Germany, was a botanist who established Darwin's Botanical Gardens in Fannie Bay, Darwin in 1878. When he left to take charge of Adelaide's Botanic Garden in 1891, his son Nicholas was appointed curator of the Darwin Botanical Gardens in his place. Holtze studied at Hildesheim and Osnabrück before serving an apprenticeship in Hanover, where he subsequently worked for four years in the Royal Gardens. He spent two years in the Imperial Gardens of St. Petersburg before emigrating in 1872 to Melbourne, then to Darwin, Northern Territory. While in 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 Peninsula sugarcane venture in which B. C. DeLissa and W. H. and G. T. Bean had a large interest. He was involved in a private agricultural enterprise in Darwin's JungleCreek and Palm Creek region, known as "Holtze Jungle", later "Holmes Jungle". 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 Dr 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. He retired in 1917 and died in 1923 at American River on Kangaroo Island in South Australia at the home of his daughter. He is buried in the Penneshaw Cemetery on Kangaroo Island along with his wife, Evlampia, who died 5 July 1937. A son, Alexis Leopold Holtze, was horticultural correspondent for the Mount Barker Courier, and editor of Garden and Field, later manager of radio station5AD. He was killed in a single-vehicle car crash. Another son, Vladimir or Wladimir "Wallaby" Holtze, was a linesman with the Overland Telegraph Department from 1881, and stationed at Powell Creek, Daly Waters and for a time as postmaster at Tennant Creek. He died in Darwin.
Recognition
Clerodendron holtzei, Sida holtzei, Habenaria holtzei and Polyalthia holtzeana were named for him.
Probably also Northern Territory natives Uvaria holtzei, Aristolochia holtzei, Polycarpaea holtzei, Trichosanthes holtzei, Goodenia holtzeana, Utricularia holtzei, Calochilus holtzei, Habenaria holtzei, Sterculia holtzei, Eulophia holtzei, Piper holtzei, Hibbertia holtzei and Calogyne holtzeana, of which all but two were described by Ferdinand Mueller.
