Commelin worked on a publication of his descriptions and enlisted artists for illustrations of the rarer plants of the Hortus Medicus in the 1680s. Following his death in 1692, his nephew Caspar Commelin finished the two volumes, resulting in Horti medici amstelodamensis (1697–1701).
The publication of a grand display piece required coordination among botanical experts, artists, engravers, and printers. Jan Commelin thus might be considered more the initiator of the enterprise than simply its “author”—indeed, he died in 1692, five years before publication of the first volume.
Assurance in place, Commelin set to work. After explaining to Lean the mathematical statement whose proof he ultimately wanted the program to check, he brought more mathematicians into the project. They identified a few lemmas — intermediate steps in the proof — that seemed most approachable.
In Maarssen there is a Commelinhof. The genus Commelina is named after him. The standard author abbreviation J.Commelijn is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. [2] Wilfrid Blunt: The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History.