His father, Frederick Brooke Westcott, was a botanist of some distinction.
Another brother, Gotthilf Henry Ernest Muhlenberg (1753-1815), was a prominent Lutheran clergyman, and was pastor of a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from 1779 to his death; but he is best known as a botanist, and published Catalogus plantarum Americae septentrionalis (1813) and Descriptio uberior graminum et plantarum calamariarum Americae septentrionalis indignarum et circurum (1817).
C. Williamson (best known as a botanist) in Pritchard's Infusoria, in 1861.
According to Roxburgh, the great Indian botanist, the cultivated rice with all its numerous varieties has originated from a wild plant, called in India Newaree or Nivara, which is indigenous on the borders of lakes in the Circars and elsewhere in India, and is also native in tropical Australia.
He accordingly matriculated there on the 5th of November 158r, and immediately entered upon attendance at the lectures of the celebrated physician and botanist, Andrea Cesalpino.
