Botaničar Ivo Horvat

Summary

With the exhibition "Botanist Ivo Horvat" in the City museum in Čazma is a way of paying due respect to the great scientist and botanist, professor doctor Ivo Horvat on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, April 23, 1963 – April 23, 2013.

He was born in Čazma on October 7, 1897, where his father served as a Royal district judge. In September 1898 his father died, and soon after, his older sister Ančica Marijana died too. Academician, doctor Antun Bauer, the Archbishop of Zagreb and Ivo Horvat's godfather became his guardian and tutor. Widowed Regina Horvat and her son moved to Dubravica, Hrvatsko Zagorje, where Ivo finished the first grade of elementary school. The next three grades he attended in Samobor. After elementary school he attended the Classical gymnasium in Zagreb, and in 1916 he enrolled into the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, studying natural history and geography. He soon became an assistant at the Botanical Institute, and started writing his dissertation from the third year of his studies. He successfully graduated on June 15, 1920 and on July 31, 1920 he gained the title of doctor of Sciences (Dr. Sc.) in the area of botany by defending his dissertation called Value of gametophyte in ferns phylogeny with respect to the type Phyllitis hybrida (Milde) Christensen. In 1933 he became a docent and in 1940 a professor and the head of the Botanical Institute and the Botanical Garden. During the period between 1930 and 1945 he worked as an editor of the Croatian Encyclopaedia for the botany section and published a series of definitions and phenomena in all five toms, along with a number of photographs. He was legally investigated in 1945 and, although all charges were dropped, he was fired. He then left to Macedonia where he worked until 1947 when he got a position as a professor and the head of the Botanical Institute and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Zagreb, where he worked for the rest of his life. He died on April 23, 1963. His excellent language skills – in German, French, English, Slavic and classical – were the reason he was able to participate as a guest lecturer on many European universities and be a member of many European botany committees and congresses. He was married to Marija Horvat with whom he had three children.

His first paper on phytocenology (the sociology of plants) in Croatia, Ivo Horvat published very early in his scientific days. The title of the paper was On the vegetation of Plješevica, Lika, published in the Geographical Bulletin in Ljubljana in 1925, 1: 113- 123, where he deferred to Josias Braun-Blanquet, the founder of a new approach to studying plants, plant communities and habitats. In the beginning Ivo Horvat researched the Southeast Europe, only to widen his research to cover practically the entire Europe (apart from England and Spain). His main areas of scientific interests and the most important results according to Rac and Lovrić (1997) are: phytocenology, cenodynamics, fossil vegetation, ecological vegetation mapping, synecology and phytocenological analysis, mountain ecology and altitude zoning, classical floristics and taxonomy, nature protection and reservations and organization and specialization of younger experts. Phytocenology deals with plant communities on which he published most of his scientific papers and five monographs. Cenodynamics studies the development of vegetation under different influences of animate – primarily human – and inanimate nature – climate, wind, soil, relief. This is the basis on which Ivo Horvat developed a scientific scheme of reconstruction and rational use of vegetation; his scientific results are mostly applied in forestry, agriculture, spatial planning, environmental protection, etc. Fossil vegetation, mainly paleoecology and paleocenotics, is the area in which Ivo Horvat, with Szafer, was the first to study the development of vegetation and name the extinct communities of plants by defining the typology and the zone arrangement during the icing periods, and thus determine that the vegetation which spread all over Europe after the icing was partially preserved on the Dinara mountain. This is the reason why Croatia is rich in endemic plants and relics, along with Spain and Greece, while the vegetation of the middle and northern Europe was destroyed by man. During the last two decades, botanists from Eurasia have been proving this thesis in their research. Ivo Horvat was the first to implement ecological vegetation mapping of space based on phytocenological recording entered into a detail-scaled map in Croatia and Yugoslavia. He was also the first in this area to have developed synecology – exact and comparative field study of coherence between vegetation, climate, soil and the influence of man. As the most important European expert on altitude zoning and mountain synecology, he was the first to distinguish the types of southern sub mountain conifers (Calamagrostio-Abietalia) and the southern mountain type of dry moors (Acantholimo-Astragaletalia) on the Mediterranean.

Ivo Horvat systematised ferns, moss and other plants, especially irises (Iris croatica, Iris reginae, Iris galicicae, Iris rudskyi, etc.) and was responsible for establishing several natural reservations and national parks (National parks Risnjak in Croatia and Pelister in Macedonia, forest reservation Plješevica in Lika, the valley Zelenjak – the natural and memorial reservation of the Croatian national anthem, Dubravica swamp in Hrvatsko zagorje) and is one of the most significant explorers of the Velebit mountain, vegetation of the Balkans, whose northern part was declared as a national park in 1999. He was mentoring many young botanists from both Croatia and the rest of the world and helped them with their dissertations. He was a persistent, hardworking and dedicated scientist and a great organizer. These areas of interest and his contribution in these fields make Ivo Horvat one of the Three Greats of the world botany along with J. Braun-Blanquet and R. Tüxen.

Ivo Horvat published over 200 scientific papers, and his life work Vegetation of the Southeast Europe was translated to German 11 years after his death (Horvat I., Glavač V., Ellenberg H., 1974: Vegetation Südosteuropas. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stutgart). During a decade of relentless research on mountains and moors, he collected the biggest personal herbarium of Southeast Europe consisting of over 75 thousand leaves (which is kept in the Botanical Institute on the Faculty of Science in Zagreb), 52 notebooks of field journals, 67 folders of additional material for both his published and unpublished works, manuscripts of 39 synthetic vegetation tables and 9 vegetation maps, several hundreds of films and photographic plates, several hundreds of mostly unique scientific books, several thousands of mostly unique prints of scientific works of other worldly renowned botanists. Most of this significant legacy is kept at the Ruđer Bošković Institute, while the books are at the National and university library in Zagreb. The highest award for protection of nature in the Republic of Croatia was named after Ivo Horvat by the Croatian government. He is the second mostly cited Croatian naturalist after Ruđer Bošković, and the greatest botanist of the 20th century.

The City museum in Čazma (the birthplace of Ivo Horvat) has acquired material which became the basis of the Memorial collection of the botanist Ivo Horvat, which is a part of the electronic inventory, thanks to the donation of his wife Marija. The largest part of this collection is made up of his published books and scientific works. Apart from that, through the cooperation with M. Rac from the Ruđer Bošković Institute, the Museum has acquired a number of replicated photographs and documents of the Horvat family. The Museum keeps supplementing the Memorial collection with editions of his works and other documents, and also celebrates anniversaries through exhibitions and other event so that the general public would not forget this great scientist and patriot.

Thanks to Marija Horvat, the herbarium has been brushed up for use and display, while the rest of his heritage still waits to be made available.