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This paper recounts the genesis and further developments of two devices that were created in Brussels and nearby around 1900: the Forestry Museum and the Geographic Arboretum in Tervuren. Both the Museum and the Arboretum were designed to serve botanical science, national industry, and agriculture, but also became instrumental in carrying philosophical and political messages and even in achieving down‐to‐earth political aims. The Museum, imposed upon the State Botanic Garden by a Catholic ministry, carried out messages for social pacification, while also taking to the battlefield in the fight between what were then called pure science and applied science. For its part, the Geographic Arboretum had long broken its ties with the State Botanic Garden and even with its own scientific claims by the time the Forestry Museum disappeared in the early 1980s. However, the Forestry Museum had increasingly lost its vocation as a research tool, eventually and solely becoming a tool of communication toward an ever‐widening public, following Belgian society's expanding democratization in the late 19th Century. The lives and fortunes of both devices reveal most of the tensions that rhythmed the history of museums and the political history of a European country.

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The species of Marantaceae described by Édouard Morren are cultivated due to the ornamental value of their leaves. On account of the widely use of these names for horticultural purposes, the taxa proposed by Morren were reviewed. A total of ten lectotypes, seven epitypes and six neotypes are designated, as well as three lectotypes and two neotypes for species indicated as synonyms of Morren names. We also propose the combination of Calathea lietzei, C. kegljani and C. wiotiana in Goeppertia, the latter due to a previous invalid combination. A new name for the illegitimate C. pulchella is also indicated. Calathea mirabilis was described without an illustration or known material and therefore the application of this name is considered uncertain.