was not involved in evacuating the specimens, but the museum was empty when he returned from military service. In a twist of fate, his temporary position at the Natural History Museum was made permanent in 1943. After the war, he continued to work at the Natural History Museum and also wrote several papers, including "Phytogeographia aegea". In this paper, he proposed the idea of a phytogeographical border between Europe and Asia, which has since become known as "Rechinger's line". In 1953, Rechinger visited the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship. There, he worked for three months at the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden on the genus Rumex. He made important contributions involving flora native to Southwestern Asia and Greece, being recognized for his work on Flora Iranica and as the author of Flora Aegaea. As a taxonomist, he described many species of plants. Rechinger was also a lecturer of botany at the University of Vienna, and in 1956–57 was a visiting professor in Baghdad, where he founded a herbarium. He was in 1971 elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He retired from lecturing in 1971, but carried on with his plant explorations. He went to Iran in 1977. He also collected in Western Australia in 1982, Indonesia in 1985, Chile in 1987 and Sri Lanka in 1990. He went deaf in old age. In 1986, Scottish botanist Ian Charleson Hedge and Karl Rechinger published Plant life of South-West Asia by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, It was based on a symposium that was dedicated to Karl Heinz Rechinger on his eightieth birthday. He died on 30 December 1998. Botanical specimens Botanical specimens collected by Rechinger are held at herbaria around the world, including the National Herbarium of Victoria at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Harvard University Herbaria, and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Publications Flora Aegaea (1944) Flora of Lower Iraq (1967) Flora Iranica (1998) Eponymy The lichen genus Rechingeria, the fungus genus Rechingeriella, the plant taxa Androcymbium rechingeri, Carthamus rechingeri, Centaurea rechingeri, Erysimum rechingeri, Campanula rechingeri, Paronychia rechingeri, Euphorbia rechingeri, Onosma kaheirei, Trifolium rechingeri, Stipa rechingeri, Trisetum rechingeri and the land snail Albinaria rechingeri are named in his honor. He also collected reptiles on his journeys, including two species and one subspecies that were named after him; Elaphe rechingeri (now treated as synonym of Elaphe quatuorlineata), Eirenis rechingeri and Podarcis erhardii rechingeri.