Baron von Ludwig

Carl Ferdinand Heinrich von Ludwig aka Baron von Ludwig (6 October 1784 Sulz am Neckar – 27 December 1847 Cape Town), the son of a clerk in the ecclesiastical administration, he was a German-born pharmacist, businessman and patron of the natural sciences, noted for having started Cape Town's first botanic garden.

Ludwig served his pharmacy apprenticeship at Kirchheim near Stuttgart from where he went on to work in Amsterdam, first as apothecary and later as technician in a chemical laboratory . In 1805 he responded to an advertisement in an Amsterdam newspaper and applied for a post as pharmacy assistant to a certain Stuttgart-born Dr Liesching of Cape Town. Friedrich Ludwig Liesching was a former physician to the Württemberg regiment at the Cape. Ludwig's application was accepted and he sailed for the Cape in October 1805. His qualifications as pharmacist were approved in 1807 by a body set up to scrutinise the Cape medical and apothecary fraternities. Ludwig was regarded as a physician.

In January 1816 Ludwig married Alida Maria Burgers, widow of Carl Ferdinand Heinrich Altenstaedt. She had inherited a stately dwelling in St. George's Street, and a small but lucrative business from her husband who had been a brewer, and a tobacco and snuff merchant. The business continued to thrive and Ludwig became one of the notables of the Cape community, in 1824 helping to found the South African Literary Society. The success of the business afforded him ample leisure time, so that he could indulge in his other interest, the collection of natural history specimens. Ludwig Beil, the Cape Town organist, accompanied him on a collecting trip to Swellendam in 1826. That same year he shipped a collection of plants and insects to the Stuttgart Royal Museum, in recognition of which he was awarded a Knighthood of the Order of the Royal Crown of Württemberg, which entitled him to place the prefix 'von' in front of his surname. He took a larger collection of plants, insects, birds and mammals with him on an 1828 visit to Germany - for this he received an honorary Ph.D from the University of Tübingen.

On his return from Europe, Von Ludwig bought about 3 acres of land in Kloof Road, Cape Town, and over the next couple of years planted the groundwork of a botanic garden. Besides large numbers of trees, shrubs and bulbs from Europe, America and Australia, he also included fruit trees, vegetables and crop plants. He introduced the Jacaranda tree to South Africa. Many of the species were indigenous, some acquired from Ecklon and Zeyher. The Irish botanist, Harvey, noted his appreciation of the easy access that was provided for studying the plants. Other prominent scientists such as Charles Bunbury and Joseph Dalton Hooker visited what had become known as Ludwigsburg Garden, while Lady Jane Franklin, who explored the garden in 1836, noted that even though only 3 acres in extent 'being well laid out with numerous divisions and paths' made it appear larger. The astronomer John Herschel used a camera lucida to sketch the developing site in 1834 (see drawing above). A certain Leibold was first superintendent of the garden from 1834–37, followed by James Bowie over the period 1838-42, and Thomas Draper 1843-47 until Ludwig's death. The botanist Ludwig Pappe, later Colonial Botanist, prepared herbarium specimens from the garden plants.

...
Wikipedia