On March 24, 2021, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender visited the Botanic Garden of Freie Universität Berlin. They wanted to learn more about the Botanic Garden’s main areas of research and fields of activity.

The global decline in biodiversity is one of the key challenges facing our society. Scientists employed at the Botanic Garden are working on creating a digitally networked knowledge base in order to counter the biodiversity crisis and promote sustainable development on a global level. Botanic collections are of crucial importance as a research resource. During his visit, the German President inspected the “living” collections in the greenhouses, in the gardens, and in the Dahlem seed bank (for botanic species protection) as well as the permanently preserved objects in the herbarium.

The director of the Botanic Garden, Professor Thomas Borsch, and the president of Freie Universität, Professor Günter M. Ziegler, accompanied President Steinmeier and reported on interdisciplinary research activities. It was a pleasure to welcome the German President among the other visitors eager to learn more about Germany’s largest botanic garden, which has been an important location for research for the past 300 years.

Humboldt Sent Valuable Plant Specimens from South America

Thousands of valuable plant specimens that Alexander von Humboldt sent to Berlin from his trip through South America are stored in the Willdenow Herbarium. This historical collection is a small part of the largest herbarium collection in Germany with 3.8 million specimens.

Through international networks, the Botanic Garden makes millions of collected documents and correlated data digitally available to the global scientific community for the protection and preservation of biodiversity. It is one of the pioneers of biodiversity informatics.

At the end of the tour, the German President also visited “his” orchid, Dendrobium Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which is kept in the Botanic Garden for its prominent namesake. There it is allowed to thrive under optimal conditions. The orchid was named after President Steinmeier on the occasion of his state visit to Singapore in 2017. In the Botanic Garden it is in good company with the Dendrobium Angela Merkel. Neither of these plants is on public display.

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This text originally appeared in German on April 24, 2021, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität.