1575 The Hortus Botanicus at Leiden University

The great age of plant discovery which began in the 16C with the exploration of the Americas triggered an interest in the scientific study & classification of plants. The plants & seeds which made their way to Europe from foreign ports were cultivated to determine their potential uses. At first this was chiefly to determine their potential medical applications.  The great botanical gardens founded in the 16C at Padua, Leiden, & Montpellier were attached to medical schools.

Johannes van Meurs, 1579-16 Leiden University Garden. Engraving after a design by W. Swanenburgh (1608), from Orlers (1614).
The Hortus botanicus Leiden was founded by Leiden University in 1590. The first planting dates from 1594. The Hortus was continuously expanded in the following centuries & the planting has undergone many changes, but many of the trees that were planted during the past 400 years can still be admired today. The buildings in the Hortus include the classical Orangery of 1744.

In 1587 the young University of Leiden asked for permission from the mayor of Leiden to establish a hortus academicus behind the university building, for the benefit of the medical students. A garden where students can study the medicinal properties of plants. That was the ambition a group of scientists presented to Leiden’s municipal government in 1587, 12 years after the university was founded. The scientists had already set their sights on one particular location: an unused strip of land immediately behind the Academy Building. The municipal authorities approved the development of a ‘hortus medicus’ in 1590.

When request was granted in 1590, & the famous botanist Carolus Clusius (1526–1609) was appointed as prefect. Clusius arrived in Leiden in 1593. The herb garden was constructed by Dirck Outgaertsz Cluyt, the former apothecary at the court of William of Orange. The Flemish botanist and professor Carolus Clusius was appointed as its first director; his ambitions reached far beyond a mere garden of medicinal plants. Instead, he dreamed of a Hortus that is home to every known plant in existence. As part of that ambition, he brought previously obscure plants to Leiden, such as the tomato, potato and tobacco plants, as well as tulips. Through his efforts, awareness of these plants grew enormously throughout Northern Europe. Clusius also introduced various plants that were brought back by the Dutch East India Company.  His knowledge, reputation, & international contacts allowed him to set up a very extensive plant collection. Clusius also urged the Dutch East India Company to collect plants & (dried) plant specimens in the colonies. The original garden set up by Clusius was small (about 35 by 40 meters), but contained more than 1000 different plants.

The collecting of tropical (from the Indies) & sub-tropical (from the Cape Colony) plants was continued under Clusius' successors. Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738, prefect from 1709–1730), contributed greatly to the fame of the Hortus with his efforts to collect new plants & specimens, & with his publications, such as a catalog of the plants then to be found in the Hortus.

Another major contribution to the collections was made by Philipp Franz von Siebold, a German physician who was employed on Deshima (Japan) by the Dutch East India Company from 1823 until his expulsion by Japan in 1829. During that period he collected many dried & living plants from all over Japan (as well as animals, ethnographical objects, maps, etc.), & sent them to Leiden.

The first greenhouses appeared in the Hortus in the 2nd half of the 17C, & the monumental Orangery was built between 1740 & 1744. From its original plan the Hortus was expanded in 1736 by Adriaan van Royen & Carl Linnaeus, & in 1817 by Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck & Sebald Justinus Brugmans. An early patron of the Hortus was Carolus Linnaeus(Carl Linnaeus, Swedish Carl von Linné) 1707-1778, who would transform plant collecting with his uniform system for classifying them (binomial nomenclature).