Meet Roderick Bouman | Collections Manager, Hortus Botanicus Leiden

Netherlands based botanist, Roderick Bouman, is a true champion of plant collections. An expert in the field of plant evolution with a keenness to share his knowledge, he serves as the perfect ambassador to the collection he stewards. The enthusiasm he expresses for the plant world inspires visitors to the Hortus Botanicus Leiden, the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, as well as the plant community at large. Check out the impressive tours that Roderick and his team have built, including several audio tours, on Leiden's Garden Explorer website. 

When did you know you wanted a career in Botany?
This was actually relatively late in my education. At first, my aim was to become a veterinarian up to the end of high school. At the time, you had to be accepted through a literal lottery system in the Netherlands, as there were not enough spots available. I ended up in biology and gradually during my bachelors, I became more fascinated by the world of plants. Still, later, I did internships in both plants and paleontology, but finally chose to pursue my interest in evolutionary botany. Luckily, a position became available at Hortus Botanicus Leiden.

What is an IrisBG report you use/ generate most often?
Most often we produce checklists of a section of the garden to be used for inventories. These can also be sent to researchers or colleagues from other departments to see what plants are currently living in the collection and can be incorporated in new lessons or exhibitions. After inventory, we can also see which records were not seen or haven’t been updated in a long time.

There are others we use quite often like the statistical reports, but we are also very happy with the option to create custom reports for specific projects. Recently, we made exports of the sizes of various trees for students surveying the garden. Their measurements could be directly imported from the report, which provides a snapshot of the size of our monumental trees this year. Hopefully, this can be expanded in the coming years to track their growth. We want to explore further how to incorporate the knowledge we gain from these projects into IrisBG.

Is there a particular tree or plant or horticulture-related event that you have learned a valuable lesson from or about?
While I spent several years studying plants of the genus Phyllanthus for my PhD research, [Roderick's dissertation is available to read on Leiden's website]. I’m not particularly fond of how some of their fruits taste. Since I started working at the Hortus, I’ve been trying to get more species for the collection at our botanical garden, but it’s quite difficult as they are not extremely showy. Many species also have capsular fruits that explode to disperse the seeds, so sometimes they are collected when they are not ripe yet.

There are several species with edible fruits that you can readily get in Asia like Phyllanthus emblica, (synonym Emblica officinallis) and Phyllanthus acidus (synonym Cicca accida). These would be perfect showpieces to highlight the research at the garden. For several years, I never had a chance to taste the fruits as the trees were always in flower when I visited. Then there was a trip in 2019 when I went to Indonesia. I tried the fruits with some friends, but to my disappointment, I didn’t like them at all. They are a mixture of bitter and sour.  While some may like it, it’s not for me.

We still haven’t managed to get viable seeds or young plants of these species, so we are open to anyone who can add to our collection. Despite their taste, they are still one of my favourite groups of plants that have seen a remarkable diversification. In the future, we want to explore these patterns further and expand to the evolution of other plant groups.

For further reading about Roderick Bouman and his work, read the article profiling him, Working in a living museum. View the video below to hear Roderick speaking on his research of Phyllanthus.

Note: Non-Dutch speakers can take advantage of the subtitles! Select your language in the settings option (the gear-shaped icon) at the bottom of the of the video window.