David van, Royen, 1783

Thijsse, G., Mabberley, D. J. & Baas, P., 2023, Exploring the Leiden ‘ Van Royen herbarium’: History and scientific significance of the herbarium specimens of Adriaan (1704 - 1779) and David van Royen (1727 - 1799), Blumea 68 (2), pp. 85-138 : 117

The ‘ Van Royen herbarium’ and botanical networks in the 18th century

The plant collections in the ‘ Van Royen herbarium’ were assembled during the formative years of systematic botany and Linnaean taxonomy ( Stafleu 1971: 9) in and around the Leiden botanical garden, which at that time was an internationally acknowledged centre of botanical excellence ( Stearn 1961). This generalisation is supported by an analysis of the list of contributors to both Adriaan’s and David’s herbarium, and of their correspondents. They include many great names in English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Swiss botany of the day, to a high degree overlapping with Linnaeus’s own network from which he obtained plants, literature and correspondence that informed his Species plantarum and other publications. Of the contributors and correspondents of the Van Royens, enumerated in this paper, over 25 figure in Jarvis’s (2007) list of authors and collectors who were important for Linnaeus.