February 19 - Happy Birthday, Carolus Clusius

  Posted on February 19, 2022

This is an update of my post published on February 19, 2011:

A Flemish guy brought a Turkish flower to the Netherlands—and helped start a craze!

Born on this day in 1526, and also known as Charles de L'Ecluse, Carolus Clusius was a Flemish botanist, which means a scientist who specializes in plants. He studied alpine plants, helped introduce potatoes to Germany, surveyed plants in many parts of Europe, and planted the first “official” tulip bulbs in the Netherlands.

Tulips are colorful, showy flowers that grow from bulbs. They used to grow in North Africa, Southern Europe, and parts of Asia from Iran to China. The Turkish people (who created the Ottoman Empire) cultivated the flowers, and several Europeans brought tulips and tulip cultivation to the attention of the general public.

Clusius planted tulips at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens (in what is now Austria) in 1573 and later at the Leiden University's garden, in the Netherlands, in 1594. His bulbs lead to two interesting events:

Tulip Mania

Tulips quickly became status symbols, and people so badly wanted bulbs that would grow into one- or two-colored tulips that they began to pay high, higher, and even higher prices for them. Some people stole bulbs out of Clusius's university garden (one thief got away with more than a hundred bulbs!), and some people began to pay their debts with tulip bulbs. Yes, that's right, tulips became a type of money!

How high did the prices rise? Well, at one point, just one tulip bulb might be worth MORE THAN 10 TIMES the amount a skilled craftsman would make IN A YEAR!!!

Yi-ikes!

With the prices climbing so much higher than tulip bulbs are actually worth, an economic 'bubble formed,” and of course there was a collapse in the value placed on tulips—in February of 1637, tulip prices plunged, and tulip mania was over.

By the way, the most popular tulip colors were two-toned tulips. We now know that the reason for the multicolored stripes or “breaking colors” is a virus!

The Netherlands' Association with Tulips

Even though tulips first grew in North Africa and parts of Asia, and were first commercially grown in the Ottoman Empire, they became so well loved in the Netherlands and have been grown so successfully there for so many centuries, most people think of the flowers as a symbol of the Netherlands!

Tourists come to the Netherlands in the springtime to see the gorgeous tulip gardens:

Make origami tulips.... Here's how. 

...Or egg-carton tulips. 

Even little kids can make handprint tulips.

 

Also on this date:

State Flag of Turkmenistan Day 

International Tug-of-War Day

National Democracy Day in Nepal

Scientist Nicolaus Copernicus's birthday

Best Friends Day

Anniversary of the exhibition of an ancient dhow and its Tang treasure

Anniversary of a couple mailing their kid (!)

National Lashes Day

World Pangolin Day

(Third Saturday of February)

 World Whale Day

 (Third Saturday in February)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• February holidays
• February birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in February
  
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• March holidays
• March birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in March

December 9 – Happy Birthday, Augustus Quirinus Rivinus

Posted on December 9, 2014

Is it a pansy or a petunia? A rose or a rhododendron?

And which flowering plants are closely related to one another?

As long as people have been people, they knew a lot about plants. They closely studied the leaves and flowers, cones and barks, roots and fruits of plants, and they discovered the food and medicine value of the various parts of plants. People passed on this knowledge to younger generations verbally and, once writing was invented, through written texts.

Centuries ago, scientists began to codify this “folk knowledge” that had been passed on from parents to children to grandchildren. They began to categorize things more exactly, and they began to name things scientifically. I'm sure you get that the same plant has different names in different languages: a rose may be warda, roz, roos, bunga mawar, gul, or ruusu, depending on where you live and what language you speak – but it will still, as Shakespeare pointed out, smell as sweet. But once scientists gave the rose one scientific name (in this case genus Rosa), everyone could communicate more easily. (Specific types of roses have different species names: Rosa majalis, Rosa moschata, Rosa woodsii, and so on.)

Today's famous birthday contributed to those early attempts to categorize and name plants. Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, also called Augustus Bachmann, was born in Germany on this date in 1652. He became a doctor of medicine, and he also studied botany and astronomy. He became a professor of pathology (the study of disease), physiology (the study of living systems), and botany (the study of plants). He was put in charge of his university's medical garden.

It was Rivinus who first consistently used genus and species names, such as the scientific rose names discussed above. Carl Linnaeus got credit for the naming scheme we currently use for organisms, and Linnaeus used several of Rivinus's innovations.

Another thing that Rivinus promoted through his use was the dichotomous key. This sort of key is useful for people to determine the identity of an animal, plant, or other organism. There are a series of steps with just two choices; when the user makes her choice, she branches to another question with two choices. This process goes on and on until she arrives at the name of the organism she is trying to identify.

• Check out this example of an online dichotomous key. 

• Here and here are more dichotomous keys you can explore. 

• Learn how to make a dichotomous key at Enchanted Learning. 

It can be fun to make a dichotomous key for your
own imagined fantasy creatures!

Also on this date:

Anniversary of a car-sized space acorn crash-landing??? 

Independence and Republic Day in Tanzania 

Children's author Joel Chandler Harris's birthday 

Weary Willie Day 

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

• December holidays 
• December birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in December
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• January holidays 
• January birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in January

May 24, 2011 - Happy Birthday, Ynes Mexia

She was a social worker until age 51, when she decided to change her life.

And, boy, did she change it! 

Ynes Mexia became a botanist (a scientist who studies plants) and an explorer who discovered more than 500 species of plants!

It's estimated that she collected more than 137,000 plants in six expeditions over a period of just 13 years!

Ynes Mexia was born in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1870; her parents were Mexican, and her father probably worked for the Mexican embassy in the U.S. capital. She apparently didn't have a lot of formal education until she was 51 and started attending botany classes at the University of California at Berkeley. And the reason for the career change? Mexia discovered her love for plants while hiking with the Sierra Club.

Soon Mexia began to take botanical collecting trips in Mexico, Alaska, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, and the American Southwest.

Sadly, she experienced chest pains on a collecting trip in Mexico, and at age 67 she died of lung cancer. Still, she managed to find a passion, make a contribution, and see new sights at a time when some would have said she was “over the hill.”

February 19, 2011

Happy Birthday, Carolus Clusius

A Flemish guy brought a Turkish flower to the Netherlands—and helped start a craze!

Born on this day in 1526, and also known as Charles de L'Ecluse, Carolus Clusius was a Flemish botanist, which means a scientist who specializes in plants. He studied alpine plants, helped introduce potatoes to Germany, surveyed plants in many parts of Europe, and planted the first “official” tulip bulbs in the Netherlands.

Tulips are colorful, showy flowers that grow from bulbs. They used to grow in North Africa, Southern Europe, and parts of Asia from Iran to China. The Turkish people (who created the Ottoman Empire) cultivated the flowers, and several Europeans brought tulips and tulip cultivation to the attention of the general public.

Clusius planted tulips at the Imperials Botanical Gardens of Vienna (now Austria) in 1573 and later at the Leiden University's garden, in the Netherlands, in 1594. His bulbs lead to two interesting events:

Tulip Mania

Tulips quickly became status symbols, and people so badly wanted bulbs that would grow into one- or two-colored tulips that they began to pay high, higher, and even higher prices for them. Some people stole bulbs out of Clusius's university garden (one thief got away with more than a hundred bulbs!), and some people began to pay their debts with tulip bulbs. Yes, that's right, tulips became a type of money!

How high did the prices rise? Well, at one point, just one tulip bulb might be worth MORE THAN 10 TIMES the amount a skilled craftsman would make IN A YEAR!!!

Yi-ikes!

With the prices climbing so much higher than tulip bulbs are actually worth, an economic 'bubble formed,” and of course there was a collapse in the value placed on tulips—in February of 1637, tulip prices plunged, and tulip mania was over.

By the way, the most popular tulip colors were the two-toned tulips such as the red-and-white tulip shown here. We now know that the reason for the multicolored stripes or “breaking colors” is a virus!

The Netherlands' Association with Tulips

Even though tulips first grew in North Africa and parts of Asia, and were first commercially grown in the Ottoman Empire, they became so well loved in the Netherlands and have been grown so successfully there for so many centuries, most people think of the flowers as a symbol of the Netherlands!

Make origami tulips.... Here's how. 

...Or egg-carton tulips. 

Even little kids can make handprint tulips.