Heinrich (Harry) Wilhelm Eduard van Bruggen (December 6, 1927 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

– February 8, 2010 in

Amersfoort Amersfoort () is a city and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands, about 20 km from the city of Utrecht and 40 km south east of Amsterdam. As of 1 December 2021, the municipality had a population of 158,531, making it the second- ...

) was a Dutch amateur botanist.

Personal life

After finishing secondary school, van Bruggen became an accountant, first in his uncle's company, later with

Koninklijke Hoogovens Koninklijke Hoogovens known as Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken (KNHS) until 1996 or informally Hoogovens. was a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918. Since 2010, the plant is named Tata Steel IJmuiden. The IJmuiden steelwor ...

, where he became the head of the Administration. In 1950 he married Anna Blom, with whom he had a son; she died in 1996. In April 2000 he remarried with Liesbeth Bakker. Van Bruggen was interested in nature already at a very young age, in particular in animals and plants in and around water. He sowed his first plants when he was 5-years old: ''

Tagetes ''Tagetes'' () is a genusSoule, J. A. 1996. Infrageneric Systematics of Tagetes. Pgs. 435-443 in Compositae: Systematics, Proceedings of the International Compositae Conference, Kew 1994, Vol. I, Eds. D.J.N. Hind & H.J. Beentje. of annual or ...

''. This led to his lifelong interest in

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

, particularly water and marsh plants and

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowerin ...

s. Van Bruggen was an active member of the "Dutch Waterplant Society", for which he did the administration during many years.

Contributions to botany

In the late fifties, van Bruggen obtained from an aquarium-plant importer an ''

Aponogeton The Aponogetonaceae (the Cape-pondweed family or aponogeton family) are a family of flowering plants in the order Alismatales. In recent decades the family has had universal recognition by taxonomists. The APG system (1998) and APG II system (20 ...

'' species which he failed to be able to name using the existing literature. He concluded that it was a new species, unknown to science, and with the help of Hendrik de Wit he described the new species as '' Aponogeton rigidifolius'' H. Bruggen. In subsequent years he published a revision of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Aponogeton'' in several parts (organised geographically), culminating in his ''

magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

'', a complete monograph of this genus, which was well received in professional circles. In total, van Bruggen described 13 new ''Aponogeton'' species. For health reasons, van Bruggen never travelled to the tropics himself, but based his studies on observations from others and both living and dried ( herbarium) materials sent to him. Two ''Aponogeton'' species were named after van Bruggen: '' A. vanbruggenii'' C. B. Hellquist & S. W. L. Jacobs ( Australia) and '' A. bruggenii'' S. R. Yadav & R. S. Govekar (

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

). In addition, one

subspecies, '' Ophrys holosericea'' (N.L. Burman) Greuter subsp. ''vanbruggeniana'' J. & L. Essink & Kreutz, was named after him, commemorating van Bruggen's lifelong interest in this family.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bruggen, Harry Van 1927 births 2010 deaths Botanists with author abbreviations Dutch accountants 20th-century Dutch botanists Scientists from Amsterdam