Leo František Černík learned his love for botany from his father František Černík, who came from Bojkovice and studied at the Piarist grammar school in Kroměříž. One of the science teachers here was the well-known Moravian botanist František Xaver Veselý, who passed on his enthusiasm for botany to many of his pupils. Leo František Černík was born in Lang-Enzersdorf where his father worked as a teacher. The family later moved to Klosterneuburg, which meant that Černík gained botanical experience largely in Lower Austria. Černík studied high school and then medicine in Vienna. During his studies he was an assistant to the anatomist and histologist Carl Toldt and helped him illustrate his famous atlas of anatomy. Beside general medicine, Černík studied plant physiology and biology under Professor Julius Wiesner. As a student, he took part in archaeological excavations and made significant discoveries, for example near Klosterneuburg and Bojkovice. Leo František Černík made scientific journeys to near and distant countries (e.g. Romania, Russia, the Balkans and Egypt) and brought back various artefacts and natural objects from his travels. In the end Černík decided to be a dermatologist in Olomouc but he kept his enthusiasm for natural sciences, especially for botany, to the end of his life. He also worked scientifically on arachnids and lower fungi, but most intensively on phytopathology. He even established his own botanical garden in Olomouc - but, he did not grow plants in flowerbeds, but rather in the open, in places most suitable for each plant. In his research he described more than 1,500 phytopathological manifestations, i.e. diseases or deformations of plants, which he captured in drawings or photographs. He published the results of his research in many articles in both Czech and German. Noteworthy without doubt are his multi-volume treatises published from 1930 onwards under the name Krankheiten und teratologische Missbildungen an Pflanzen der Olmützer Flora (Diseases and Teratological Deformations of the Plants of Olomouc Flora) as a special copy of Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Vereins in Brünn (Treatise of the Natural History Society in Brno). František Leo Černík died on January 7, 1943 in Olomouc. Černík bequeathed his phytopathological herbarium containing several thousand items, as well as his professional library and part of his ethnographic collections from Africa to the Patriotic Museum Association in Olomouc. Some of his finds from excavations were acquired by the Ethnographic Museum in Vienna and other Moravian museums. Černík donated some of the books and objects brought back from his travels to the Bojkovice Regional Museum (now called the Bojkovsko Museum). He also bequeathed his grandfather`s house in Bojkovice to the Museum. Part of the museum collections was to be housed here, an exhibition hall, a public library and a reading room were to be established, and a memorial to Dr Černík was to be created. These ideas were only partially realised and, in the end, Černík`s house was demolished in the 1980s. The urn with the ashes of František Leo Černík was placed in the urn grove in Bojkovice in the 1990s.

Connected places: Commemorative Plaque to František Xaver Veselý in RajnochovicePamětní deska Františka Xavera Veselého v Rajnochovicích

Keywords: botany; mycology; zoologie; phytopathology; herbarium; botanical garden; scientific illustration

Grave of Leo František Černík in Bojkovice