Happy 200th, Baron!

If you walk down the path next to the Herbarium in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, you might find yourself caught in the frozen gaze of a very stern-looking gentleman; his bronze bust, replete with medals, forever keeping an eye on who comes and goes in his beloved gardens. This is Baron von Mueller, and today marks his 200th birthday.

Ferdinand Müller was born on this day in 1825, in Rostock, modern day Germany. After losing both his parents at an early age, he trained as a chemist, and it was during this time that he created his first herbarium (a collection of preserved plants) as a requirement of his studies. When 22-years-old, he decided to seek a new life in Australia and set sail for Adelaide.

Attempts at both farming and pharmacy in South Australia proved unfruitful and in 1852, with the Victorian gold rush in full swing, he came to Melbourne with plans to continue onto the goldfields shortly thereafter. In Melbourne however he got his big botanical break when Lieutenant-Governor, Charles La Trobe, offered him the newly created position of Government Botanist for the Colony of Victoria.

Baron von Mueller

Bartier, W. et al. (1857) Album of Coppin family portraits, performers and historical figures.
Coppin collection, MS 8827 State Library Victoria

Müller was now in his element. He anglicised his name to Mueller, established the National Herbarium of Victoria and embarked on the first of many overland expeditions, seeking and collecting plants wherever he went. In 1857 he became the inaugural director of the Botanic Gardens, which La Trobe had established 11 years prior but until then had been managed by a superintendent.

Mueller propagated, planted, collected and corresponded at a prodigious rate. He took on more work too: animals were added to the Gardens and for a while he oversaw the ‘Botanical and Zoological Gardens’, before the menagerie was rehoused at Royal Park establishing Melbourne Zoo. He was the founding president of the Royal Society of Victoria and sat on the committee that arranged the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. He distributed seeds freely to organisations and individuals alike, wrote scientific papers, textbooks and more than 3000 letters a year.

He received awards and accolades from around the world for his work; a knighthood from Queen Victoria and a hereditary title from King of Württemberg, among more than 150 others. Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller had now made it big time.

The original National Herbarium of Victoria

Moir, J. K. & Harringtons, printer (1933) [Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne] [picture]

State Library Victoria

But it wasn’t all beer and skittles. In the gardens, he struggled with an unreliable water supply and butted heads with government officials and powerful members of the nursery trade who saw him as competition. And the public were increasingly voicing their disappointment too. They wanted a ‘pleasure garden’ and not a scientific collection of plants.

In 1873, after some 15 years as director, he was told to vacate the gardens. Someone else would be brought in to reimagine the terrain and create a pleasure garden for the people… and hopefully be a little easier to deal with for the government.

Von Mueller was thus relegated to the Herbarium (which stood then where the Shrine of Remembrance is today) and he could botanise all he liked without upsetting the government, the nurserymen or the public. Reportedly, he never stepped foot in the Botanic Gardens again.

Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller

Anon (1954) Ferdinand Von Mueller.
J. K. Moir collection
State Library Victoria

But botanise he continued to do. He embarked on more expeditions, continued his incredible rate of correspondence and sent Australian seeds across the globe. He also introduced blackberry into Australia, the curse of which took time to be felt but remains the bane of farmers and environmentalists alike today.

Baron von Mueller died in 1896, having never married. He was, many thought, married to his work. The preserved plant collection he commenced all those years ago, now housed in the building standing behind his bust, has grown to more than one-and-a-half-million specimens and today is the largest such collection in Australia.

There are numerous landmarks across Australia named in von Mueller’s honour. One of the less significant of these is a small creek that the Great Ocean Road crosses between Cape Patten and Apollo Bay. I always have a chuckle whenever I pass it. It’s infested with blackberry. I reckon von Mueller would be proud.