Utrecht University branch

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History

Since 1636, there has been a professor teaching Botany at Utrecht University where a botanical garden has been present from the same date. The history of plant systematics in Utrecht dates from before the publication of the Linnaean system. Between 1743 and 1758 E.J. von Wachendorff, professor of medicine, botany and chemistry, arranged the botanical garden according to his own system.

The history of our herbarium can be considered to have started in 1816 when the University bought the herbarium of Matthias van Geuns (1735-1817), including some 3000 specimens. This herbarium used to fit in the cupboard which is still present in our library. The herbarium was rarely used, neither by Van Geuns himself, nor by his successors, until Miquel was appointed in the chair of botany in 1859.
F.A.W. Miquel (1811-1871) is depicted to the right (courtesy of Utrecht University Museum). He was the first botanist at Utrecht University who really cared about our 'botanical heritage'. Showing a keen interest in botany, systematics, and pharmacy, he established important collections of dried plants, plants preserved in spirits, and fossils. In 1862 Miquel was appointed director of the Rijksherbarium at Leyden. He combined his work in Leyden with teaching at Utrecht University. Since the rules of the Rijksherbarium did not permit the director to have a private herbarium, he sold his private herbarium to Utrecht University. Type collections of South American plants constitute an important element of Miquel's herbarium. Many of these were the primary material for Martius' Flora Brasiliensis.

Although the scope of the Herbarium is worldwide, including, among others, important collections from the Malesian region, attention became increasingly focused on Suriname and adjacent areas in tropical South America. F.A.F.C. Went (1863-1935), professor of general botany, who visited Suriname on a commission from the Dutch Government to conduct an inventory of plant diseases, brought back many herbarium specimens. A.A. Pulle (1878-1955), who became the first professor of plant systematics at Utrecht University, also held the job of director of the Herbarium and - after Miquel - gave a new stimulus to systematic research. He started the Flora of Suriname project. Many volumes appeared under his editorship. After Pulle retired, this project was continued by J. Lanjouw who extended the scope of the research, now to include cytotaxonomy, palaeobotany and vegetation ecology, fields that later on gave rise to separate departments. Due to F.A. Stafleu, botanical nomenclature got more attention, along with taxonomic documentation. In 1984, the scope of the flora project was widened: from 'Flora of Suriname' to 'Flora of the Guianas'.

Systematic wood anatomy merits special attention here. A.M.W. Mennega used the collections made by Stahel as a starting point to build the Utrecht University Wood Collection, now one of the most important collections of (neo)tropical woods in the world. A project of digitisation of photographs of slides started in 1999. This database was used for a book published in 2004: Wood Atlas of the Euphorbiaceae s.l.

As a result of the retrenchment policy of the Dutch Government in the last decade which strongly affected the universities, the number of staff members is now much reduced.

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    Utrecht University branch of the NHN (formerly Utrecht Herbarium)