In Memoriam: Henry Engledow (6 april 1968 – 13 juni 2026)

On 13 June 2026, Meise Botanic Garden and the wider scientific community lost an exceptional colleague and friend, Henry Engledow, who passed away at the age of 58. 

Henry was a deeply committed, passionate, and highly valued colleague. With his cheerful personality and warm presence, he brought joy to the workplace every day. At the same time, he was a critical thinker who had the rare gift of speaking his mind without alienating others, challenging established practices with wit, fairness, and good humour. He will be deeply missed by colleagues, collaborators, and friends alike.

Henry's scientific career began at the University of Cape Town in 1992, where he pursued his PhD research in the Seaweed Research Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. John Bolton. In his thesis, The biogeography and biodiversity of the Namibian intertidal seaweed flora, he documented the seaweed diversity of Namibia's underexplored rocky shores, which are ecologically dominated by the cold, nutrient-rich Benguela Current. He subsequently shared his expertise as a Lecturer in Botany at the University of the Western Cape from 1996 to 1998.

A bilateral project funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) brought Henry to Europe, where he joined the Phycology Research Group at Ghent University as a postdoctoral researcher from 1999 to 2003. During this period, he applied his marine expertise to study the macroalgae associated with hard substrates along the Belgian coast.

His career soon shifted toward botanical data management. From 2003 to 2004, he served as database manager for the PLANTCOL project of the Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (VBTA). His expertise with the BG-BASE collection management system led Meise Botanic Garden (at that time still the National Botanical Garden of Belgium) to recruit him in 2005 to modernize the management of the herbarium's collection data. Over many years of close collaboration with Kerry Walter on the development and improvement of BG-BASE, his work enabled Meise Botanic Garden to manage a large and complex database of both living and preserved collections of international importance. He also supported other institutions using the system, generously sharing his practical knowledge and willingness to assist fellow users.

Henry’s work resulted in a centralized, databased herbarium collection, including data from nearly 3 million specimens out of an estimated total of 4 million specimens, together with their associated data. More recently, the institution’s living collections have also been incorporated into BG-BASE, which wouldn’t have been possible without the skills and persistence of Henry. He also played a key role in the digitization of the herbarium collections. This effort began with the African Plants Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation, through which the Garden digitized 60,000 botanical types and historical specimens. It was followed by two large-scale digitization projects that together digitized an additional 2.7 million herbarium specimens. 

The herbarium database enabled the creation of major botanical databases for tropical African flora, such as the RAINBIO mega-database, which revealed important insights into the diversity patterns of vascular plants across the continent, and the ECAT dataset, a precise georeferenced database of endemic Central African tree species that supports IUCN Red List assessments. Henry had a strong focus on data cleaning and data integrity, an aspect of his work he was particularly passionate about and excelled in, with a deep appreciation for the historical dimension of botanical data.

Henry recognized early on that the future of scientific collections depended on open access, data standards, and interoperability. He was actively involved in the international communities of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), regularly attending conferences and contributing his expertise. He also collaborated closely with Belgian federal institutions, including the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), to help digitally unify the country's scientific collections. More recently, he contributed to the DiSSCo Flanders project, aimed at integrating natural science collections across Flanders and Belgium via shared digital infrastructures.

Henry's most ambitious undertaking was also his last. In recent years, he worked closely with Sofie De Smedt, Wesley Tack, Maarten Trekels, and Evgeniy Meyke to prepare the migration of Meise's collection data from BG-BASE to the modern collection management system EarthCape. This major project involved standardizing taxonomic names, harmonising data structures, cleaning geographical locations, mapping hundreds of database fields, and integrating persistent identifiers to ensure future interoperability.

It is tragic that Henry passed away just as the herbarium migration was nearing completion. He will not see the finalized system, but his dedication will continue to shape the work of countless researchers in the years to come. Everyone who uses the new collection management system in the decades ahead will directly benefit from the legacy that Henry leaves behind. His scientific and personal contributions will remain firmly embedded in the work of Meise Botanic Garden. 

Selected publications

Berendsohn, W.G., Bernal, S.L., Hidalgo, B.F., Delcid, D.R., Moonlight, P.W. & Engledow, H.R. (2024). Enhancing Herbarium Systems Using Name Matching Mechanisms. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 26: e137867.

Bolton, J.J., Leliaert, F., De Clerck, O., Anderson, R.J., Stegenga, H. & Engledow, H. (2004). Where is the western limit of the tropical Indian Ocean seaweed flora? An analysis of intertidal seaweed biogeography on the east coast of South Africa. Marine Biology 144: 51-60.

Dauby, G., Zaiss, R., Blach-Overgaard, A., Catarino, L., Damen, T., Deblauwe, V., Dessein, S., Dransfield, J., Droissart, V., Duarte, M.C., Engledow, H., Fadeur, G., Figueira, R., Gereau, R., Hardy, O.J., Harris, D., de Hey, J., Janssens, S.B., Klomberg, Y., Ley, A., McKinder, B., Meerts, P., van der Poel, J.L., Sonké, B., Sosef, M.S.M., Stévart, T., Stoffelen, P., Svenning, J.C., Sepulchre, P., van der Burgt, X., Wieringa, J.J. & Couvreur, T.L.P. (2016). RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. PhytoKeys 74: 1-18.

De Clerck, O., Engledow, H.R., Bolton, J.J., Anderson, R.J. & Coppejans, E. (2002). Twenty Marine Benthic Algae New to South Africa, with Emphasis on the Flora of Kwazulu-Natal. Botanica Marina 45: 413-431.

De Smedt, S., Bogaerts, A., Meeter, N.D., Dillen, M., Engledow, H., Wambeke, P.V., Leliaert, F. & Groom, Q. (2024). Ten lessons learned from the mass digitisation of a herbarium collection. PhytoKeys 244: 23-37.

Dillen, M., Abraham, L., Bogaerts, A., De Smedt, S., Engledow, H.R., Leliaert, F., Trekels, M., Dessein, S. & Groom, Q. (2024). The Meise Botanic Garden Herbarium Data Management Plan. Research Ideas and Outcomes 10: e124288.

Engledow, H. & Bolton, J.J. (1992). Environmental tolerances in culture and agar content of Gracilaria verrucosa (Hudson) Papenfuss (Rhodophyta, Gigartinales) from Saldahna Bay. South African Journal of Botany 58: 263-267.

Engledow, H. & Bolton, J.J. (1993). The effect of wave action, sand inundation, mussels and limpets on seaweed alpha-diversity within the lower eulittoral Zone in Namibia. Botanica Marina 37: 267-276.

Engledow, H.R. (1998). The biogeography and biodiversity of the Namibian intertidal seaweed flora. Doctoral Thesis, University of Cape Town.

Engledow, H.R. & Bolton, J.J. (2003). Factors affecting seaweed biogeographical and ecological trends along the Namibian coast. Proceedings of the 17th International Seaweed Symposium: 285-291.

Engledow, H. (2019). Data Migration from One Database to Another: Nervous breakdown of a database manager!. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 21: e37302.

Engledow, H. (2022). Herbarium specimen label interpretation and transcription: First steps used to clean digitized data. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 24: e93888.

Engledow, H.R., Bogaerts, A., De Smedt, S. & Tack, W. (2023). Planning the Migration to a New Database: Implications for the Collections of Meise Botanic Garden. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 7: e111422.

Leliaert, F., Bogaerts, A., de Meeter, N., Dessein, S., Dillen, M., Engledow, H., Groom, Q., Lanata, F., Mergen, P., Ntore, S. & Stoffelen, P. (n.d.). Enabling botanical collaboration through digitization of the Meise Botanic Garden and Central African herbaria. Proceedings by Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences 4: 93-108.

Sosef, M.S.M., Dauby, G., Blach-Overgaard, A., van der Burgt, X., Catarino, L., Damen, T., Deblauwe, V., Dessein, S., Dransfield, J., Droissart, V., Duarte, M.C., Engledow, H., Fadeur, G., Figueira, R., Gereau, R., Hardy, O.J., Harris, D., de Heij, J., Janssens, S.B., Klomberg, Y., Ley, A., Mackinder, B., Meerts, P., van der Poel, J.L., Sonké, B., Stevart, T., Stoffelen, P., Svenning, J.C., Sepulchre, P., Zaiss, R., Wieringa, J.J. & Couvreur, T.L.P. (2017). Exploring the floristic diversity of tropical Africa. BMC Biology 15: 1-23.

Sosef, M.S.M., Degreef, J., Engledow, H. & Meerts, P. (2020). Botanical classification and nomenclature - An introduction. Meise Botanic Garden.

Stegenga, H., Engledow, H., Bolton, J.J. & Anderson, R.J. (2001). The distribution of the family Erythropeltidaceae (Rhodophyta) along the temperate Southern African coast, with the description of Erythrotrichia platyphylla nov. spec. Nova Hedwigia 73: 367-379.

Tack, W., Engledow, H., Pereira, N.V., Amani, C., Bachman, S.P., Barberá, P., Beentje, H., Bouka, G., Cheek, M., Cosiaux, A., Dauby, G., De Block, P., Ewango, C.E.N., Fischer, E., Gereau, R., Hargreaves, S., Harvey-Brown, Y., Ikabanga, D.U., Ilunga wa Ilunga, E., Kalema, J., Kamau, P., Lachenaud, O., Luke, Q., Mwanga Mwanga, I.J.-C., Ndolo Ebika, S., Nkengurutse, J., Nsanzurwimo, A., Ntore, S., Richards, S.L., Shutsha Ehata, R., Simo-Droissart, M., Stevart, T. & Sosef, M.S.M. (2022). The ECAT dataset: expert-validated distribution data of endemic and sub-endemic trees of Central Africa (Dem. Rep. Congo, Rwanda, Burundi). PhytoKeys 206: 137-151.

Vanden Abeele, S., Beeckman, H., De Mil, T., De Troyer, C., Deklerck, V., Engledow, H., Hubau, W., Stoffelen, P. & Janssens, S.B. (2021). When xylarium and herbarium meet: linking Tervuren xylarium wood samples with their herbarium specimens at Meise Botanic Garden. Biodiversity Data Journal 9: e62329.

Vissers, J., Bosch, F.V.D., Bogaerts, A., Cocquyt, C., Degreef, J., Diagre, D., Haan, M.D., Smedt, S.D., Engledow, H., Ertz, D., Fabri, R., Godefroid, S., Hanquart, N., Mergen, P., Ronse, A., Sosef, M., Stévart, T., Stoffelen, P., Vanderhoeven, S. & Groom, Q. (2017). Scientific user requirements for a herbarium data portal. PhytoKeys 78: 37-57.

Volckaert, A., Engledow, H., Beck, O., Degraer, S., Vincx, M., Coppejans, E. & Hoffmann, M. (2003). Onderzoek van de ecologische interacties van macroalgen, macrofauna en vogels geassocieerd met intertidale harde constructies langsheen de Vlaamse kust. Instituut voor Natuurbehoud & Universiteit Gent. 123 pp.