A Brill Calendar: February 19

Clusius and the Hortus Botanicus

Few scholars, let alone inquisitive lovers of plants and gardens, have put such an indelible stamp on the attractiveness of Leyden as the botanist Carolus Clusius (Arras, February 19, 1526 – Leyden, April 4, 1609).

The city of his birth only became an integral part of France in 1659 and was called at the time ‘Atrecht’ in Northern vernacular. In French his name is usually given as ‘Charles de l’Écluse’; in Flanders this would be something like ‘Karel van de Kluis’. However in Europe generally and among his peers he was known as ‘Clusius’, Latin being the ‘lingua franca’ of his age; not to mention the language of his studies.

The belief in the beneficial or harmful application of the elements of plants, herbs and trees in medicine was already a venerable one in the 16th century. Clusius’s expertise, experience and curiosity - gradually increasing during the decades of an exceptionally long life span (affirming the notion that an intimate and knowledgeable association with horticulture favours longevity) - earned him a fame extending to Vienna, where he was responsible for maintenance and improvement of the garden of the Emperor from 1573 until 1587.

After he had spent the final episode of his life in Leyden, both University and City boasted a botanical garden, a ‘Hortus Botanicus’, second to none in Europe. Founded in the heart of the city in 1590 – only fifteen years after the University itself – and planted in 1594, the garden became almost autonomously a magnet attracting international visitors.

It is seldom in history that a personal urge to test and experiment was so generously provided with new and exotic materials. From the New World, potatoes and tobacco arrived; from the Old World and the Ottoman Empire came an elegant and spectacular flower, the tulip. Clusius became the god-father of the Dutch fascination with bulb-growing which generated early in the 17th century a veritable ‘tulipomania’, and later a national industry and iconic ‘brand’.