Moritz Kurt Dinter (10 June 1868 – 16 December 1945) was a German botanist and explorer in South West Africa. Education and career Dinter was born in Bautzen, where he attended the Realschule. Having completed his military service and joined the Botanic Gardens at Dresden and Strasbourg to further his botanical and horticultural interests. He was appointed assistant to Prof. Carl Georg Oscar Drude, the plant geographer, in Dresden. As a result of his keen interest in exotic succulents, he was selected by Sir Thomas Hanbury to manage his acclimatisation garden, the Giardini Botanici Hanbury at La Mortola, near Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera. This garden had a large collection of South African bulbs and succulents. He also spent about six months at Kew, returned to La Mortola and decided on a trip to South West Africa. He landed at Swakopmund in June 1897, having sailed on the "Melitta Bohlem". Dinter started his collection in the countryside around Swakopmund, moved on to Walvis Bay and Lüderitz where he was intrigued by the succulents growing between shoreline rocks. Since he was a collector, financially dependent on sales of his plant specimens, he travelled frequently and widely in the company of his two Herero helpers. These collections he sent to Haage & Schmidt in Erfurt, as well as to Schinz in Zurich and Engler in Berlin. The German government at the time appointed him as botanist in the territory, a position he held until 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Dinter experimented with growing various species of exotics and indigenous trees - first at Brakwater near Windhoek and later at Okahandja - Cypresses, Eucalypts and Acacia erioloba. In the Herero Wars he lost most of his personal effects and about half of his plant collection. He visited Germany in 1905 and donated the remainder of his collection to Berlin-Dahlem. According to his Index, in 1900 he started a new set of numbers for his specimens. While in Bautzen he met Helena Jutta Schilde, who followed him to South West Africa and married him in Swakopmund on 16 May 1906, after which they settled in Okahandja; she turned out to be a tireless companion and colleague on his many expeditions. In 1907 he was visited by Galpin and Henry Pearson at Okahandja. Dinter visited the Lake Otjikoto in 1911 and collected several hitherto unknown species of plants, among them grass of