Jean Houzeau de Lehaie

Jean Auguste Hippolyte Houzeau de Lehaie (6 March 1867 - 4 September 1959) was a Belgian biologist and horticulturist who devoted his career to the botany of bamboo species and the introduction of many into European gardening practice through his property, L'Hermitage, near Mons in the Belgian province of Hainaut. He was also a student of the temperate terrestrial orchids of Belgium and France.

Portrait of Jean Houzeau de Lehaie by Marcel G. Lefrancq (1950)
A forest of the bamboo Phyllostachys edulis (Carrière) J.Houz. that was renamed by Houzeau de Lehaie in 1906 from the earlier name Bambusa edulis Carrière

An inveterate traveler, he was the patron and editor of a journal devoted to bamboo, Le Bambou, which he published in 1906 to 1908. Over many decades he freely disseminated exotic bamboos to public and private gardens, testing them for hardiness in northern Europe.

His archaeological interests were stimulated by the Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes, near Mons. From 1945 to 1947 he edited and published the journal La Solidarité paysanne, defending the plight of the traditional modern European farmer.

Gift of land

Rather than sell his land for a cemetery for German soldiers after the First World War, Houzeau de Lehaie donated the land for the St Symphorien Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on the condition that it receive, amicably in death, German and Commonwealth graves.[2]

References
  1. International Plant Names Index.  J.Houz.
  2. Madigan, Edward. "St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, the Battle of Mons and British Centenary Commemoration". Oxford University. Retrieved 16 November 2014.

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