Carl Ludwig Blume

Charles Ludwig de Blume or Karl Ludwig von Blume (9 June 1796 – 3 February 1862) was a German-Dutch botanist and entomologist who spent most of his professional life in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. As deputy director of agriculture at the Bogor Botanical Gardens in Java (1823–1826) and later director of the Rijksherbarium in Leiden, he conducted extensive studies of Southeast Asian flora, publishing numerous influential works including Bijdragen tot de flora van Nederlandsch Indië (1825–1827) and Rumphia (1835–1849). Together with Philipp Franz von Siebold, Blume co-founded the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Horticulture in the Netherlands in 1842, helping to revitalise the country's reputation as a centre for botanical study and exotic plant cultivation. His scientific contributions were recognised with his election as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1855, and his legacy is commemorated in the botanical journal Blumea, which bears his name.

Biography

Blume was born at Braunschweig in Germany, but studied at Leiden University and spent his professional life working in the Dutch East Indies and in the Netherlands, where he was Director of the Rijksherbarium (state herbarium) at Leiden. His name is sometimes given in the Dutch language form Karel Lodewijk Blume, but the original German spelling is the one most widely used in botanical texts: even then there is confusion, as he is sometimes referred to as K.L. Blume (from Karl).