Johannes Groenland

Who was Johannes Groenland?

Johannes Groenland was a German botanist, horticulturist, and microscopist. He was born April 8, 1824 in Altona, a borough of Hamburg that was part of the Duchy of Holstein at that time. He was the son of Johann Friedrich Grönland, a German organist and music teacher. Groenland was trained in pharmacology in his youth and served as a pharmacist in Altona, Hamburg, and Jena in his early 20s. In 1849 he joined the Schleswig-Holstein army to fight in the First Schleswig War. After the war, Groenland moved to Paris to work as an assistant to Louis de Vilmorin, a French biologist and horticulturist who was also a member of the family firm Vilmorin-Andrieux. While working for Vilmorin, Groenland worked with Theodor Rümpler to prepare the German edition of Les fleurs de pleine terre.

Groenland spent almost twenty years living in Paris working as a botanical researcher and horticulturist. He was a founding member of the Société botanique de France and was known for his work creating hybrids by crossing Triticum vulgare with various species of Aegilops. His botanical research also focused on liverworts, seagrasses, and the genus Drosera; and he served as the editor of the journal Revue horticole. In addition to his research and writing, Groenland developed skills in preparing botanical slides while living in Paris. He ran his own microscopist business from his residence at 13 Rue des Boulangers, and along with Marie Maxime Cornu and Gabriel Rivet, he wrote Des préparations microscopiques tirées du regne végétal, which was commonly used in the 19th century as a textbook on the preparation of microscope slides.