Louis van Houtte
Louis Benoît van Houtte (born June 29, 1810 in Ypres , † May 9, 1876 in Gentbrugge (now part of Ghent )) was a Belgian botanist, plant collector and tree nursery owner. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Van Houtte ".
Life
Louis van Houtte was born in Ypres on June 29, 1810, the only son of Timothee Van Houtte and Isabelle, née De Witte. The family was wealthy and the early years of his childhood were very sheltered. He discovered his interest in plants early on and cultivated his own flowerbed in the family's garden. However, on March 2, 1821, his father died at the age of only 53. Van Houtte initially continued to live with his mother in Ypres. When he was 15 years old, he went to Paris on the mediation of the French general Joseph François Durutte , who was friends with the family, to attend the business school École supérieure de commerce . He studied here for almost three years. He used his free time to visit the botanical garden and for botanical studies in private gardens and parks.
However, when his mother lost a large part of the family assets within a short period of time, he had to drop out of college. Through a letter of recommendation from General Lafayette , he found employment with a bank in Clermont-Ferrand , France , which enabled him to financially support his mother, who had followed him there. In the two years that he spent in Clermont-Ferrand, he continued with his botanical studies.
During the Belgian Revolution in 1830, he joined the rebels and fought for Belgian independence. He then returned to independent Belgium and initially worked in the office of the Provisional Government. With the constitution of the first parliament, he moved to the newly founded Belgian Ministry of Finance in Brussels.
In December 1831 he married Clémence Boutez, who died after a year of marriage.
Since the nature-loving van Houtte was not interested in dry and theoretical civil service, he asked on February 1, 1833 for an indefinite leave of absence from the ministry, which was also granted to him, which amounted to an honorable discharge. He had been interested in horticulture and botany since his youth and believed that it would be his calling. After his discharge from civil service, he therefore sought contact with Joseph Julien Ghislain Parmentier (1782–1847) from Enghien , one of the leading Belgian botanists, whose extensive succulent collection he often visited for study purposes, and with the plant collector and diplomat Édouard Parthon de Von (1788 –1877) from Antwerp. He regularly published the results of his studies in the journal L'Émancipation . Since the contributions were received very positively, he founded in November 1833 together with the botanist Charles Morren (1807-1858) the monthly magazine L'Horticulteur Belge . It was the first magazine to deal with Belgian horticulture. It appeared from 1833 to 1838; A total of 119 hand-colored botanical illustrations were published in the form of copperplate engravings and lithographs.
Van Houtte opened a seed and flower shop in Brussels, where he also sold flower bulbs and garden tools.
Expedition to Brazil
Van Houtte, who found it difficult to get over the loss of his wife, decided to travel to Brazil on behalf of the plant collector Édouard Parthon De Von to collect exotic plants. Since he did not want to be dependent on a single financing, he tried to find more clients. Finally, he was commissioned by the Belgian King Leopold I to collect orchids and other exotic plants in Brazil. He was also supposed to collect plants and seeds for the botanical garden in Brussels, as well as insects and other natural objects for the museum in Brussels on behalf of the Belgian government.
He left Belgium on January 5, 1834 to sail to Rio de Janeiro on a merchant ship , but due to bad weather conditions the ship had to anchor several times for several days on the way. He used a longer stopover on the Cape Verdean island of Maio to explore the flora here. The ship did not reach Rio de Janeiro until May 1834. Since the country had no developed road network, he had to move through very rough terrain. Since he had difficulties transporting his extensive equipment, he hired a local named Domingo. From Rio de Janeiro he went on numerous excursions; so he climbed the Corcovado , spent seven months in the province of Minas Gerais and toured the provinces of Serra dos Órgãos , Mato Grosso , Goyaz , São Paulo and Paraná . From Brazil he made trips to Guatemala and Honduras. In Banda Oriental he met the Scottish plant collector John Tweedie (1775–1862), with whom he traveled together for some time.
He was very successful in collecting plants and seeds and sent several boxes of plants to the Botanical Garden in Brussels, but found them unpacked in a storage room on his return. Van Houtte spent a total of two years in Brazil. After returning to Belgium he published several travelogues about this time.
Van Houtte returned to Brussels in early 1836 and married Wilhelmina Lefebvre (born February 28, 1810 in Maastricht , † August 18, 1881 in Gentbrugge) in July of the same year . With her he had a son and two daughters. He took up a position as director of the Botanical Garden in Brussels. The botanical garden was, however, in a very neglected condition and van Houtte tried to reorganize the diverse plant collections and to revise the garden. At that time, the Botanical Garden was organized as a stock corporation and van Houtte's reform efforts met with resistance from the board. That is why he gave up the position in 1838 after only two years.
The nursery Louis van Houtte
founding
After resigning from his position as director of the Botanical Garden, Louis van Houtte decided to set up a nursery, and found a supporter in Adolf Papeleu from Ghent, a flower lover whom he had met during his time in the Botanical Garden. Papeleu offered to provide the company with capital as a partner, and the two men initially planned to establish themselves in a London suburb. However, due to numerous bureaucratic hurdles, the acquisition of land by foreigners was almost impossible there, so that they finally gave up the project, also on the advice of Lindley, who was a close friend of van Houtte. Instead, they decided to set up the nursery in Ghent, Papeleu's hometown.
They negotiated with the owner of what was then the largest nursery in Ghent, Alexander Verschaffelt (1801–1850), who offered them a lease for an area of around one and a half hectares for 32 years. The contract provided for a right of first refusal at the end of the term, which van Houtte exercised in 1872 and bought the area. In 1839 he founded his own nursery and tree nursery in Ghent. To this end, he bought land from Alexander Verschaffelt, who also ran a gardening business there. The nursery opened in 1839; While van Houtte was setting up the nursery in Gentbrugge, Adolf Papeleu made trips to Guatemala and the Sunda Islands to collect new exotic plants, which were then cultivated and propagated in the nursery so that they could be sold. Van Houtte was striving for business independence, which is why he and Papeleu parted by mutual agreement after five years.
A price list with 22 pages was published in the first year. As the number of plants grown in the nursery increased, the list grew larger. Since it also contained very precise botanical descriptions and information about their culture for many plants, it was very popular with many plant lovers and finally reached editions of almost 100,000 pieces. Van Houtte's botanical expertise, his business acumen and also his talent for languages led to great economic success. His nursery became a “Mecca for all gardeners and garden lovers”.
Van Houtte also decided to set up a school for gardeners to train qualified horticulturalists. He negotiated this idea with the Interior Minister Charles Rogier , with whom he had known since his work for the Belgian interim administration from 1830 and who supported him in the project. Van Houtte later named the Genus Rogiera ( Rubiaceae ) in his honor . The school was founded on April 30, 1849 and was later attached to the Ghent Botanical Garden.
Plant breeding and crops
Van Houtte was primarily concerned with the breeding of hybrids in order to optimize the properties of the plants and to achieve new, interesting shapes. He was particularly interested in the breeding of slipper flowers (calceolaria), in which he succeeded in cultivating so-called herbaceous slipper flowers, as well as bulb plants. In 1837 he succeeded in crossing the gladioli G. natalensis × G. oppositiflorus , which resulted in the hybrid Gladiolus × gandavensis . This was an important basis for the breeding of modern gladiolus hybrids.
In addition to his own cultivars, van Houtte also offered plants for sale in various countries that he had commissioned to collect plants and then cultivate them in the nursery. Józef Warszewicz , who later became director of the Botanical Garden in Krakow, traveled on his behalf to Venezuela, Honduras and the Belgian colony of Guatemala, where he settled as a self-employed plant collector. Hermann Aribert Heinrich Kegel (1819–1856) toured the three Guyanas and Cuba and Karl Pabst (1826–1863) the Cape Verde Islands and the Brazilian provinces, which van Houtte had not been able to explore on his own trip. Wilhelm Ackermann traveled to tropical Africa, the Angolan coast and the island of São Tomé for the van Houttes nursery .
The Houtte nursery was also known for the cultivation and breeding of orchids , amaryllis , Gesneriaceen , begonias and azaleas . From the 1860s he also devoted himself intensively to the propagation and marketing of bulb flowers. He hired a gardener from Haarlem , which until then was considered the European center of flower bulb culture.
Aquatic plant culture
Van Houtte's nursery was known, among other things, for the cultivation of water plants, especially water lilies. After it was first successful in England to bloom the giant Amazon water lily ( Victoria regia ) , which was newly introduced to Europe , van Houtte did everything in his power to be the first nursery to do so on the European continent. For this he hired the gardener Eduard Ortgies , who had previously looked after the culture of the Victoria water lily in Chatsworth , and had a glass house with a water basin built according to his instructions.
.jpg)
After he had succeeded in this, a new competition began among European gardeners as to who could make the giant blue water lily Nymphaea gigantea bloom first. The plant was discovered by John Carne Bidwill (1815-1853) in New Holland, who sent seeds, leaves and flowers to the English botanist William Jackson Hooker . He succeeded in classifying the plant botanically based on the material, but the seeds sent were no longer capable of germination. The following year Bidwill sent some rhizomes instead of seeds to England, which were sold at high prices to the nurseries of Chatsworth House, Syon House , Fallings Park, Regent's Park and the nursery van Houtte. Of these, van Houtte was the first to succeed in making the plant bloom; on October 1, 1853, the first flower of an offshoot of the original tuber opened.
The nursery after Louis van Houtte's death
Louis van Houtte died on May 9th in 1876 in Gentbrugge . He was buried on May 12th. Almost 2,000 people attended the funeral; Charles de Kerchove de Denterghem, on behalf of the Royal Society for Agriculture and Botany of Ghent, Eduard Pynaert , the director of the state gardening school founded by van Houtte, Ch. de Guchteneëre, the mayor of Gentbrugge, as well as Eduard Morren and August van held his grave Geert eulogies.
Initially, his wife Wilhelmine van Houtte took over the management of the nursery. She died 5 years later on August 18, 1881 in Gentbrugge. After the mother's death, the children initially took over the company together. In 1889 the company became Societe Anonyme Horticole Louis Van Houtte, Pere. renamed. In 1894 the children of van Houttes, Leonie and Louis fils, were released from the new owners, a consortium of private investors. After the crisis of the thirties and the Second World War, they decided to sell the old premises. In 1951 the city bought the facility in Gentbrugge and incorporated it into the municipal green service. So after 112 years the name Van Houtte disappeared from horticulture in Ghent. Four years later the family moved again largely in favor of a consortium of private investors. Louis van Houtte's son, Louis Aimé Van Houtte, was the company's secretary, Albert Van Bockxstaele, who had been head of the nursery administration since 1880, was appointed managing director of the company.
During the First World War, the nursery was temporarily in a combat zone; During this time, important collections of plants were lost due to destruction and the inability to heat the greenhouses. The nursery continued to enjoy an international reputation between the two world wars. However, the global economic crisis and the Second World War hit the company hard. In 1951 the site and the buildings were finally sold to the city of Ghent, which housed the municipal building yard here. With this, the van Houtte company went out after 112 years .
Volunteering
Van Houtte was the mayor of his home town of Gentbrugge for 21 years. During his tenure, he founded two schools and had a church built. He also took care of the expansion of the road network in order to ensure better connections between the small town of Gentbrugge and nearby Ghent.
Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe magazine
In 1845 van Houtte founded the monthly botanical journal Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe (Flora of the greenhouses and gardens in Europs) . The first edition appeared in April 1845. The first year appeared in the three languages French, English and German, from the second year the magazine was only published in French.
In addition to van Houtte, Charles Lemaire and Michael Scheidweiler also worked on the magazine's editorial team. In addition to the high scientific demands of the published plant descriptions, hand-colored botanical illustrations in particular established their outstanding international reputation. On the premises of the tree nursery, van Houtte had his own studio building, in which up to 100 employees, including botanical draftsmen, lithographers and printers, created the illustrations. Most of all ornamental plants, new varieties and botanical curiosities introduced to Europe were shown. van Houtte offered most of the plants presented for sale in his nursery, so that the magazine also served as a catalog that supplemented the price lists published several times a year.
However, since the technical editing was associated with enormous work, van Houtte lacked the time with the increasing volume of his gardening, so that from 1850 the magazine appeared at more irregular intervals and with a different number of issues per year. Even after van Houtte's death, Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe continued until 1883 and comprised a total of 23 years.
Honors
Order of Merit
For his services to botany and horticulture, van Houtte was awarded the following medals:
- Commander of the Order of Charles III. (Real y Distinguida Orden Española de Carlos III.) (Spain)
- Knight of the Royal Order of Leopold (Belgium)
- Knight of the Order of Saint Anne (Russia)
- Knight of the Order of the Rose (Brazil)
- Knight of the Order of Christ (Portugal)
Dedication names and plant varieties
- Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle devoted van Houtte genus Houttea ( Gesneriaceae ) His former colleague Charles Lemaire called the plant genus Vanhouttea from the family of Gesneriad (Gesneriaceae) after him. Decaisne renamed the species originally named Gesnera pardina in Houttea pardina . The palm species Nephrosperma van-houtteanum is also named in honor of van Houtte.
- In 1863 the French rose breeder D. Granger named a pink blooming Remontant rose after Louis van Houtte. With the red Remontant rose Louis van Houtte (II) by the breeder François Lacharme (1817–1887), another rose variety was named in honor of van Houtte in 1869.
Other honors
- After van Houtte's death, his memorial was donated to him on the initiative of the Ghent nurseries. In 1876 Eduard Regel and the Ferdinand Enke Verlag called for donations to finance it.
- On his 100th birthday, an honorary parade was held in Gentbrugge in his memory.
- The city of Ghent dedicated an exhibition to van Houtte in the summer of 2010 with the title Louis Van Houtte - De Gentse tuinbouwprins uit de negentiende eeuw (Louis Van Houtte - The Ghent Horticultural Prince of the 19th Century).
literature
- Gustave Guilmont: Louis Van Houtte. In: Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe - Annales generales d'Horticulture. Volume 22, Gent 1877, pp. I - XXIV, (French).
- Eduard rule : Louis van Houtte . In: Garden flora . General monthly for German, Russian and Swiss horticulture and flower studies and organ of the Imperial Russian Horticultural Association in St. Petersburg. 25th year, Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1876, pp. 262-266
- Wilhelm Neubert: Van Houtte's price list and his Flore des Serres et des Jardins de L'Europe. In: German magazine for garden and flower science - magazine for garden and flower friends, and gardeners. Volume 6, Hoffmann'sche Verlags-Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1853, p. 369
- The Van Houtte establishment . In: Hamburger Garten- und Blumenzeitung , 9th year, 1853, pp. 517-521
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Gustave Guilmont: Louis Van Houtte. In: Flore des serres [...] , pp. I - XXIV
- ↑ a b c d e Eduard Regel: Louis van Houtte . In: Gartenflora , pp. 262–266.
- ^ Louis van Houtte: Courte Excursion dan les montagnes des Orgues et dans le forêts vierges au Brésil. In: Flore des serres et des jardins de l'Europe . Volume 4, Gent 1848, pp. 333a-f
- ↑ a b c d Wilhelm Neubert: Van Houtte's price list [...] In: German magazine for garden and flower science , p. 369
- ^ A. Stelzner: The nursery of van Houtte zu Gent. In: weekly for gardening and botany . 1st year, Karl Wiegandt, Berlin 1858, pp. 141–144
- ↑ Van Houtte's Flower-Onion-Flor in Gent. In: Weekly of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States for Horticulture and Herbology . No. 28, Berlin, July 16, 1864, pp. 217-221
- ^ Eduard Ortgies. In: Garden flora . Journal of horticulture and flowers. 43rd volume, Berlin 1894, pp. 225-229
- ^ Otto Froebel: Personal News. † Madame Van Houtte. In: Journal of the Swiss Horticultural Association : Illustrated monthly report for practical gardening. 1st year, 1881, p. 318
- ↑ a b c Luc Dhaeze-Van Ryssel, René Deherdt, Lucien Debersaques, Ronald Viane: Information on the exhibition: Louis Van Houtte - De Gentse tuinbouwprins uit de negentiende eeuw. July 17 to August 29, 2010 in Ghent, accessed on April 10, 2015
- ↑ Van Houtte, Louis Benoit. In: Frans Antonie Stafleu, Richard Cowan: Taxonomic literature: a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types. Volume 6, Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, Utrecht 1986, pp. 670-675
- ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
- ^ Entry of the roses Louis van Houtte and Louis van Houtte II on the World of Roses homepage , accessed on April 11, 2015
- ↑ Eduard Regel : V. Personal Notes and Latest. In: Garden flora . Volume 25, Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1876, p. 224
Web links
- Author entry and list of the described plant names for Louis van Houtte at the IPNI
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | van Houtte, Louis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | van Houtte, Louis Benoît |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian botanist, plant collector and tree nursery owner |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 29, 1810 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ypres |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 9, 1876 |
| Place of death | Gentbrugge |