He was the first Belgian botanist of
world-wide renown. He studied at Louvain and visited
medical schools in France, Italy and Germany and
finally became doctor and court physician to
Maximillian II. He was professor of Botany at the
University of Leiden.
His interest in the medical aspects of botany led
him to write a herbal entitled Cruydeboeck, and
to illustrate it, using wood blocks employed in the
Octavo edition of Fuch's work. A number of engravings
were added. It was published in Flemish in 1554 by Van
der Loe. The French edition was known as Histoire
des Plantes. This was later translated into
English and was known as A Niewe Herball
(1578). His final work was Pemptades (1583). He
was also responsible for Hortus Floridus
(1614), an early gardening book printed in Amsterdam.
It represented cultivated garden flowers and was not
strictly a herbal.
