Statue of Rembert Dodoens - Mechelen

In the middle of the botanical garden stands the statue of the famous scientist Rembert Dodoens , Latin: Rembertus Dodonaeus.

His father , Denys Dodoens, came to Leuven to study medicine. After his studies he became the city doctor in Mechelen. There he built up a very good network, so that he was even allowed to care for Margaret of Austria on her deathbed.

In 1541 he became a doctor in the city of Mechelen; He studied the local flora and started his own botanical garden . Dodoens took a keen interest in botany to support his practice as a doctor.

Dodoens' first major contribution to botany was that he himself began to search for and describe plants . This led to an enormous increase in the number of species described. He himself described about 1340 species , of which about 600 were new .

The second innovation is that he did not follow the monks who claimed that a medicinal plant had a "sign" from which the effect of the plant could be deduced. He always tested new drugs thoroughly and accompanied patients for a long time to study the effects of a drug.

The third major development at Dodoens was that he introduced a fundamental innovation in the classification of plants. In his Cruydeboeck of 1554 he decidedly broke with tradition by not arranging the plants alphabetically but according to their external characteristics.

Willem Vandenameele