| Jean Robin | |
| Birth Date: | 1550 |
| Birth Place: | Paris |
| Death Date: | 25 April 1629 |
| Death Place: | Paris |
| Nationality: | French |
| Field: | Naturalist |
| Author Abbrev Bot: | J.Robin |
Jean Robin (1550, in Paris – 25 April 1629, in Paris), was a French herbalist.
Robin was the gardener of the French kings Henry III, Henry IV and Louis XIII. He was described as "simplicist" (i.e., a person growing simples, medieval medicinal herbs) or "arborist" (a person growing trees, arbres in French). In 1601, he sowed the first Robinia introduced in Europe, either in his garden, which is now the place Dauphine,[1] or in the garden of the School of Medicine, which included the current square René-Viviani (where the Robinia still stands).[2] According to other sources, Robin sowed a Robinia in each of these two gardens. In 1636, his son Vespasien Robin (1579-1662) planted another specimen of Robinia in the King's Garden, now the Jardin des plantes de Paris, where it still stands.Robin published several books, the first one in 1601 was a catalog of the 1,300 native and exotic species he cultivated (Catalogus stirpium ...).
Robin was responsible for several gardens, including the one that Catherine de' Medici created for the Tuileries Palace. The small flower garden of the School of Medicine (rue de la Bûcherie) was also entrusted to him from its creation in 1597. This garden closed in 1617.
J. Robin had brought many seeds and onions of exotic plants from Holland, which he refused to share. When the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants (now Jardin des plantes) was created in 1626, Guy de La Brosse made Vespasien Robin his sub-demonstrator: he thus obtained that Vespasien's father gave to the garden "more than twelve hundred species, which formed the first stock of the School of Botany "[3]