Freesia
Freesia
New Latin
“A German botanist named one of the world's most fragrant flowers after his best friend — and that friend, a physician named Freese, left almost no other trace in history.”
Christian Friedrich Ecklon was a Danish-German botanist who collected plants in South Africa's Cape Colony in the 1820s and 1830s. He discovered a genus of intensely fragrant, funnel-shaped flowers in the iris family (Iridaceae) and named it Freesia in honor of his close friend Friedrich Heinrich Theodor Freese, a German physician. Ecklon published the name in 1866. Freese himself published nothing of note. He is remembered entirely because his friend named a flower after him.
Freesias are native to southeastern Africa, primarily South Africa and Tanzania. They grew wild in grasslands and rocky slopes, unnoticed by European botanists until the Cape Colony attracted plant collectors. The flowers' penetrating scent — citrusy, sweet, almost artificially intense — made them immediately desirable for European gardens and eventually for the cut-flower industry.
Max Leichtlin, a German horticulturist, introduced freesias to European cultivation in the 1870s. Dutch growers then developed the flower into a major commercial crop. By the 20th century, freesias were among the most popular cut flowers in the world, prized for their fragrance and their clean, curving racemes. The Netherlands alone now produces over a billion freesia stems annually.
The name Freesia has become synonymous with fragrance. Perfumers use 'freesia' as a scent note in hundreds of fragrances. The flower that a Danish-German botanist named after an obscure German doctor is now a global commodity and a perfumer's staple. Friedrich Freese's greatest contribution to history is that he had a generous friend.
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Today
Most people named in botanical nomenclature are the discoverers. Freese was neither a botanist nor a collector. He was simply someone's friend. In an age of self-promotion, there is something moving about a scientist who used his one chance at naming rights to honor a companion rather than himself.
The freesia's fame rests on its scent — something that cannot be captured in a name, a photograph, or a description. You have to stand close enough to breathe it in.
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