450 years of Leiden University: National Herbarium and Naturalis
Leiden University was founded in 1575 and is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university has seven faculties (six in Leiden and one in The Hague), with 33.701 students enrolled in 2025. Everything related to nature is studied by famous people. In this third blog, the following are discussed: the National Herbarium and Naturalis.
National Herbarium
The National Herbarium was founded in Brussels in 1829 with Carl Ludwig Blume (1796-1862) as director. The year 1829 was just before the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution in 1830, and at the outbreak of the war, Philipp Franz von Siebold personally evacuated the herbarium collections. Jonkheer Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796 – 1866) was one of the Westerners who taught Western medicine in Japan. From 1823 to 1829, he was a physician at Dejima, the Dutch trading post near Nagasaki. He became known for his collections of Japanese flora and fauna and ethnology. He conducted his research with the help of interpreters and Japanese students, and from 1825 with his assistant Heinrich Bürger.
Leiden was chosen as the new location. The fact that a giant like Von Siebold, who remains the most famous Dutchman in Japan to this day, was involved with the National Herbarium speaks volumes about its stature; moreover, he brought his famous herbarium with him. After a flourishing period in the nineteenth century, it lost its prominent place in Dutch science. A turning point was the appointment of Herman Johannes Lam in 1933, who, like his successor Cornelis van Steenis, put it back on the map, so that after the Second World War it grew into the largest Dutch herbarium, comprising four million herbarium specimens.
The attention of the National Herbarium focused on the study of the flora of the Netherlands and Europe on the one hand, and the flora of Southeast Asia on the other. In the former context, the Heukels' Flora of the Netherlands published, a scientifically oriented flora for both the interested layperson and the botanical community. Within the second framework mentioned, a series of monographs has been published since 1950 in the Flora Malesiana project. This is one of the world's few transnational flora projects, comparable to the Flora Neotropica, the Flora of Tropical Africa, etc.
Ultimately, the Rijksherbarium merged into the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland in 1999, forming its largest department, under the name 'Nationaal Herbarium Nederland – Universiteit Leiden'. In 2013, it merged into Naturalis Biodiversity Center. In 2019, the collection was housed in the new Naturalis building on Darwinweg.
Japanmuseum SieboldHuis is an independent foundation (Stichting Japanmuseum SieboldHuis), established in 1999 to express the special and long relationship between Japan and the Netherlands. The museum opened its doors in 2005. In addition to temporary exhibitions featuring diverse Japan-related subjects and the finest examples of old and new Japan, the SieboldHuis offers, with its permanent Siebold collection, prints, lacquerware, ceramics, fossils, herbariums, taxidermy specimens, coins, clothing, old maps, and hundreds of other treasures. Everything was collected in Japan between 1823 and 1829 by the physician Philipp Franz von Siebold. These objects come from the collections of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Wereldmuseum Leiden, and Leiden University.
Naturalis
Naturalis Biodiversity Center has a long history as an organization. On August 9, 1820, by royal decree and at the initiative of Coenraad Temminck, the National Museum of Natural History ( was established in Leiden.RMNH) founded. In 1878, the geological and mineralogical collections were separated to form the new National Museum of Geology and Mineralogy (RGMto form. In 1990, the RMNH and RGM merged to form the National Natural History Museum, and the activities were combined again. In 1995, the museum became independent as the “National Natural History Museum Foundation”. The name “Naturalis” has been used since the opening of the new building at the Pesthuis in 1998. It was opened on April 7 of that year by Queen Beatrix.
The foundation for the Zoological Museum Amsterdam was laid in 1838 with the establishment of the Zoological Society 'Natura Artis Magistra'. The history of the National Herbarium of the Netherlands, which had branches in Leiden, Utrecht, and Wageningen, dates back to 1829 when Carl Ludwig Blume took the initiative in Brussels to establish the National Herbarium, and King William I ordered its creation by Royal Decree.
In 2010, the National Natural History Museum Naturalis, the Zoological Museum Amsterdam, and the National Herbarium of the Netherlands were merged to form the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity (NCB) Naturalis. The collections and staff were brought together in Leiden. The ultimate goal of the collaborating parties is a full merger. In 2013, ETI BioInformatics, founded by UNESCO in 1990, merged with Naturalis Biodiversity Center. This strengthened the group dedicated to biodiversity informatics. As a result, the Catalogue of Life (Species 2000) was housed there, and contributions were made to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, NLBIF).
Dinosaurus – T.rex
A few years ago, Naturalis uncovered one of the most complete and best-preserved skeletons of the famous carnivorous dinosaur in the Montana prairie (USA). In a pose as if she could attack at any moment, Trix takes you back in time, along with other prehistoric reptiles that ruled the earth for 160 million years.
Thanks to our dinosaur discoveries, researchers at Naturalis have learned a great deal about dinosaurs and the time in which they lived. Our experts know more and more about the animals' behavior and what the environment looked like millions of years ago. Dinotijd takes you into that world, turning the fossils into much more than petrified bones. With special projections and sounds, they transform into flesh-and-blood animals. In Dinotijd, dinosaurs come to life.
In the 12-meter-high hall, the gigantic dinosaurs are shown to their best advantage. And naturally, Trix is the highlight. But the Triceratops deserves a mention as well, because Naturalis has unearthed multiple specimens of this dinosaur. This yields even more knowledge about how the animals are built. During excavations, we never find complete dinosaurs. The missing bones come from a 3D printer; a brand-new technique that is also gaining ground in the museum world. The T.Rex is on display in the museum's permanent collection.
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