Tulipa clusiana was named after Carolus Clusius, who founded the Leiden Botanical Garden in the Netherlands in 1593. Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius (Arras, February 19, 1526 – Leiden, April 4, 1609), seigneur de Watènes, was a Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists. In the history of gardening he is remembered not only for his scholarship but also for his observations on tulips "breaking" — a phenomenon discovered in the late 19th century to be due to a virus — causing the many different flamed and feathered varieties, which led to the speculative tulip mania of the 1630s. Clusius laid the foundations of Dutch tulip breeding and the bulb industry today.