Dutch botanist, director of the University of Leiden Botanic Garden and Herbarium. Suringar was an algal specialist and collected plants in the West Indies and South America.
Willem Suringar was born at Leeuwarden and studied medicine at the University of Leiden (1850-1855). He also took lessons in botany here, and in microscopy at the University of Utrecht. Receiving his doctorate in 1857 he took up an associate professorship in botany at Leiden, where he also found himself in charge of the botanic garden when its director, W.H. de Vriese, left on an expedition to the Dutch East Indies. It was not long after Vriese's return to Holland that he died in 1862 and Suringar was officially appointed director of Leiden Botanic Garden and in 1871 he also succeeded F.A.W. Miquel as director of the Dutch National Herbarium.
The herbarium was incorporated into the University of Leiden in 1876, where one of Suringar's students was the early geneticist, Hugo de Vries. Suringar was especially interested in algae and amassed a large personal collection of algal specimens as well as adding them to the university herbarium. He bought F.T. Kützing's collection for his own herbarium, later selling it for one guilder under the condition the specimens should be given to the Leiden herbarium if and when a curator of algae was appointed.
As well as his work on algae he was active in many other areas and authored a Dutch flora which went through 13 editions. He spent 1884-1885 in the West Indies, joined in his research by fellow botanist Jacobus van Breda de Haan, geologists Karl Martin and Gustaaf Molengraaff and entomologist J.R.H. Neervort van de Poll. Suringar was particularly taken with the Melocactus Link & Otto genus (melon cactus), which his predecessor Miquel had studied, and subsequently built a succulent greenhouse at Leiden in which to cultivate the cactus.
He married Sara Valckenier in 1862. Their son Jan (1864-1932) took both their names as a double barrelled surname (Valckenier Suringar). Also a botanist, he is sometimes known as Valckenier. It is believed Suringar may have given the Clifford Herbarium (as described by Linnaeus in Hortus Cliffortianus, 1737) to his son, who became a professor at Wageningen University. The herbarium is now at the British Museum. Suringar died unexpectedly; his body was found in the botanical laboratory at Leiden, which his ghost is said to have haunted thereafter. The genus Suringaria H. Kylin is named after him.
Sources:
Anon., 1898, Gardeners' Chronicle, 24: 69
J.F. Veldkamp, 1980, "The Rijksherbarium at 150 Years", Taxon, 29(1): 102.
