Our plants
In the Linnaeus Garden we only grow plants that we know were grown by Linnaeus.
The plants are arranged according to Linnaeus’ sketches. The organisation of the garden reflects his Sexual System, the distinction between spring and autumn flowering plants, and different aquatic ecosystems.
A few of all the interesting plants in the Linnaeus Garden
Siberian corydalis and the wild tulip are some of the plants in the Linnaeus Garden that have their own exciting history.
Siberian corydalis - a pearl among weeds
Carl Linnaeus really wanted to grow bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) in the botanic garden. But from the seeds that he had received by letter from Russia grew Siberian corydalis (Corydalis nobilis).
No Bleeding Heart in Linnaeus's Garden
Ever since the time of Linnaeus, the Siberian corydalis, Corydalis nobilis, has been growing wild around Uppsala. The shiny black seeds have a fatty appendage that ants value as food for their larvae, and in this way the seeds are spread. Corydalis nobilis is native to southern Siberia, Kazakhstan and Xinjiang.
Linnaeus received a letter from Erik Laxman containing seeds that he thought were of bleeding heart, Lamprocapnos (formerly Dicentra) spectabilis. But although the seeds are similar, these proved to belong to a quite different and undescribed species. Linnaeus grew Siberian corydalis in the Linnaeus Garden and at Hammarby. Around 1st May, just in time for the beginning of the open season, it flowers beautifully inside the fence of the Linnaeus Garden.
The Wild Tulip - a botanical heritage
Olof Rudbeck the Elder grew the wild tulip (Tulipa sylvestris) in Sweden’s first botanic garden. Linnaeus described it almost a century later, and it is still growing in the Linnaeus Garden today. It is a rather shy-flowering species, but when the graceful flowers do appear they spread a delightful fragrance.
There are about a hundred species of tulips, but tens of thousands of cultivars. The majority of our garden tulips are assigned to Tulipa gesneriana, which is more a collection of hybrids than a true species. In Rudbeck’s botanic garden there were more than 40 varieties of tulips.
The Jonsboda lime
Carl Linnaeus’ father Nils Ingemarsson grew up in Jonsboda in Vittaryd parish in Småland. While a seminary student in Växjö he took the name Linnaeus after a lime (linden) tree that grew in a ”stone heap” on his father’s farm.
The tree that gave its name to Carl von Linné
When Nils's son Carl Nilsson Linnaeus was ennobled in 1762 he took the name von Linné.
The last trunk of the Jonsboda lime fell in 1823. However, numerous new shoots and trunks developed as suckers from the root. In 2005, material from this lime was propagated at the SLU research station in Alnarp, under the leadership of Rune Bengtsson.
In the Linnaeus Garden grows one of these propagated lime trees, presented to the garden in June 2010 by SLU Alnarp at the initiative of the society Linnés Skogliga Bröder (”Linnaeus’s Brothers of the Forest”).