Plants
and People - Field Trip - Cushing Library
INTRODUCTION
Human interaction with plants is a fundamental activity in that
we, and
all other animals, rely on for subsistence. The average
individual member of hunting-gathering human groups operating
around
the World 20,000 years ago was probably much more familiar with
the
local flora, in terms of species recognition, than most people
today. This is because a local flora offers many valuable
resources - food, medicine, and building materials. The
flora
also contains potential hazards, especially toxins. Thus,
it has
always been important to be able to discern patterns of
variation,
recognize significant structural features (key characters), and
identify kinds (species). The discipline of Plant
Systematics has
extremely deep cultural roots in all parts of the world.
While it
is clear that African, Asian (Chinese
herbology
-
see history), and Native American (Badianus
Manuscript) cultural groups carried a wealth
of
botanical lore into modern times, current angiosperm
classification
systems have been derived from a European base that is briefly
reviewed
here.
Objectives for this part of the lab are to:
□ observe some old herbaria and herbals
□ learn about the making and uses of herbals
□ observe the changes through time of the methods of
producing books
and illustrations
Safety concerns:
□ Books are not dangerous to you, but you are dangerous
to books.
DO NOT handle the herbaria and books unless the curator
specifically
says you may
□ Do not touch the printing press or any of the other
displays
|
HISTORY
Early efforts to catalog plants and their uses were recorded
on Sumerian
clay tablets and
the papyrus
scrolls
of the Egyptians. (see
Papyrus)
THE ANCIENTS
One
of
the
first
documented efforts to systematize a local flora was that of
Theophrastus
(370 -285 B.C.), a Greek student of Plato and successor to
Aristotle as
director
of the Lyceum and its botanical garden. His written
botanical
products,
including Inquiry
into Plants and The Causes of Plants
provided,
among other things,
a systematic treatment of over 500 species ordered according
to 'habit'
(trees,
shrubs, herbs, etc.) and separated according to flowering
and
non-flowering.
A few generic names currently in use, such as Daucus (carrot),
Asparagus,
and Narcissus (daffodil), originated during
this time.
A Roman
military
surgeon, Dioscorides
(1st century A.D.) later added about 100 additional 'kinds'
or species
from
the Mediterranean flora and some illustrations to produce a
similar
document,
De
Materia
Medica, that
described
the plants and their medicinal applications. This
included
natural
groupings of species that represent well-defined modern
Families
(Fabaceae,
Apiaceae, Lamiaceae).
Intellectual
stagnation of the middle ages resulted in minimal original
work in
plant systematics and much use of information developed by
the early
Greeks and Romans. However, Albertus
Magnus (German - 1200-1280 A.D.)
produced a classification system
that
recognized - for the first time - monocots and dicots.
Outline of Botanical
Material Examined at the Cushing Memorial Library and
Archives
Herbaria
(pressed,
mounted
plant
collections):
1.
Pennybacker's
Herbarium
-
Julian Pennybacker was a student in 1881 and
his work was probably directed by David Porter
Smythe, physician at the
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas at its
initiation as an
institution (1876) and central figure for the
initiation of the A&M
Botany program (more
info
on
Dr.
Smythe).
2.
Carter,
E.
W.
Herbarium - Collection of plant specimens from the
A&M campus, 1890. Material associated with
the A&M
Department of Botany.
3. Keller,
Henry.
Herbarium of the Most Important Grasses of the
Field and the
Forest. Call No.: QK89 .K4 1876. Grass
specimens from Europe with
descriptive information from the 1890s.
Herbals:
4.
Fuchs'
Herbal (Call
No.:
580 F951n) by Leonhard
Fuchs
(German
- 1501-1566) one of the earliest (1st herbal
produced about 1525) and
considered a landmark work with its beautiful
illustrations (see, for
example, this lovely cucurbit,
another cucurbit,
and
a
mandrake.
5. Dodoens,
Rembert. QK41 .D648 1644
Early
botanists were usually trained medical doctors,
since the study
and practice of medicine required a thorough
knowledge of plants and
their curative effects. Belgian botanist Rembert
Dodoens (1517-1585)
studied medicine in Europe and was appointed court
physician to two
Austrian emperors. He later served as professor of
botany at Leiden
University in the Netherlands. Dodoens's
experience as a
physician and his interest in the medical aspects of
botany led him to
write A
new
herbal, or historie of plants.
In this
book, he
took the
science of botany a step forward by arranging plants
according to
selected characteristics, rather than
alphabetically, as had been done
in the
past and also incorporated many of Fuch's woodcuts
along with some new
illustrations which include an early European
reference to the tomato
(Solanum
lycopersicum).
6.
Hill,
John, 1716-1775. The British herbal
: an history of plants and trees, natives of Britain,
cultivated
for use, or raised for beauty. London
: Printed
for T.
Osborne and J. Shipton [etc.] , 1756. from
the Aboca
Museum:
John
Hall's "British Herbal" is one of a series of popular
English herbals
from the 18th century. It is initially published in weekly
installments
in 1756 and is complete within a year. The following year
the same work
is reprinted in a color volume that enjoys broad success.
This interest
is due above all to its images and resulting didactic
usefulness. In
each plate (75 in all), numerous illustrations are
presented, often of
the same species in all of its varieties. We invite you to
take a look
at the images on our
site. Hill himself
has produced
the drawings as
well as, it would seem, the copper
engravings. Especially noteworthy is
the frontispiece depicting the Genius of Good Health
receiving the
homage of the four continents which in turn will be given
to the
English readers. The plants for "use" and those for
"beauty" come from
the United Kingdom and, in small part, from the rest of
the world. The
classification is binomial following Linnaeus' example
of a few
years
prior. The virtues of the plants are listed with additions
and pleasant
commentary by the Author.
7. Gerard,
John.
The Herball, or General Historie of Plantes,
Call
No.: 581 G356h, 1636.
John Gerard (1545-1612) was a
surgeon, well
traveled and a dedicated gardener. He grew over 1000
plants
mostly for seed. His herbal is largely based on the earlier
work of
Dodoens. Gerard altered the classification
of plants and added a great deal from his personal
observations. First
published in 1597, it was later corrected and reprinted in
1633
(You may see the 'Johnson' edition present at the Cushing
Library).
Even to this day,
amateurs calling themselves "herbalists" freely plagiarize
material from Gerard's herbal.
In his work we see the old belief in the efficacy of herbs
to treat not
only physical diseases but those of the mind and spirit.
This belief is
shared by the greatest civilizations of antiquity. Gerard
also
describes methods of aromatherapy involving the inhalation
of volatile
oils and the absorption of these through the skin into the
circulatory
system.
8. Parkinson,
John. Theatrum
botanicum:
=
The
theater of
plants. Or, An herball of a large extent,
Call
No.: QK41 .P2 1640a
John Parkinson (1567-1650)
was the last
of the great English herbalists. His books include Theatrum
Botanicum
(The Theater of Plants) published in 1640 when he
was 73.
Parkinson's monumental Theatrum
Botanicum describes over 3800 plants and in its day
was the most
complete
and aesthetically beautiful English treatise on plants.
9. Linne, Carl von. Hortus
Cliffortianus,
Call No.: QK98 .L77 (typical
image)
In 1736, on a visit to the house of the
botanist
Johannes Burman (1706-1779), Clifford was introduced to an
up-and-coming young Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, who was
living and
working there. Linnaeus, who was to become one of the most
noted
natural historians of all time, later visited Clifford's
garden and
impressed him with his botanical knowledge. Clifford was
most keen to
employ Linnaeus at the Hartekamp (Netherlands - see Google
Earth image) and, with the inducement
of a volume
of Sir Hans Sloane's 'Natural History of Jamaica' (a copy
also present
at the Cushing, representing the 2,000,000th accession by
the Evans
Library), persuaded Burman to let Linnaeus go and join him
as his
physician and horticulturist. Clifford had a tendency
to
hypochondria
and was no doubt pleased to have a physician on his
doorstep. And so in
1735 Linnaeus started his dream job of supervising the
hothouses and
naming specimens and classifying them according to his own
system.
During his stay he was to produce an important botanical
work which is
of value to taxonomists and historians to this day, the Hortus Cliffortianus,
in which he
described many new species from living and dried specimens
in
Clifford's possession.
Hortus
Cliffortianus contains a number of
illustrations, including
this
baroque
frontispiece by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759). Its
symbolism, includes a young Apollo with Linnaeus's features,
casting
aside the shroud of darkness (ignorance).
This work was commissioned by Clifford as
a
catalogue of the plants in his garden and herbarium.
Linnaeus
arranged the plants according to his own sexual system,
classifying
them into groups based on the numbers and form of their male
and female
parts. Each species was allocated to a genus and given
a short
phrase-name (pre-binomial) in Latin, describing the features
which
served to distinguish one species from another. Linnaeus
also included
synonyms of earlier authors, distributional information, and
sometimes
a short description. The significance of these entries lies
in the fact
that when Linnaeus, 15 years later, introduced the
consistent use of
binomial nomenclature in his Species Plantarum
(1753), he took many of
his species concepts direct from the accounts in this work.
Folio Editions:
10. MUTIS,
José
Celestino (moo-teas) Flora de la Real
Expedicion
Botanica del
Nuevo Reino de Granada. Publicada bajo los
auspicios de los
Gobiernos de Espana y Colombia y merced a la
colaboracion entre
los Institutos de Cultura Hispanica de Madrid y
Bogota. (2 items
taken from the Cushing collection - Cucurbits and
Passionflowers, Call No.: QK265 .R4 t.27,
Call
No.: QK265 .R4 t.45, pt. 1. Publication of the
series
started in the 1950's with the last volume published in
2004.)
Mustis was a Spanish botanist who was
born in Cadiz, 6 April, 1732 and died in Santa Fe de Bogota,
12
September,
1808. After studying mathematics, he went through the
medical course at
the College of San Fernando, in Cadiz, was graduated at
Seville, and
was appointed in 1757 professor of anatomy in Madrid. In
this city he
became acquainted with Linnaeus, who later called him
"phytologorum
americanorum princeps," and named several plants in his
honor. Mutis
accompanied Don Pedro Mesia de la Cerda as his physician in
1760 to his
viceroyalty of New Granada. He was appointed professor of
mathematics
in the College of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, and was the
first to
teach, in the viceroyalty to teach he Copernican system,
which had been
prohibited by the Spanish government. Desiring to examine
the plants of
the hot region, and to visit the silver mines of Mariquita,
he left
Bogota and resided first in La Montuosa between Giron and
Pamplona, and
from 1777 till 1782 in Real del Sapo and Mariquita. At La
Montuosa he
began his "Flora de Nueva Granada," on which he bestowed
forty years of
labor, but which remained unfinished at his death. Mutis was
the first
to distinguish the various species of
cinchona or Peruvian bark. (more
info on Mutis)
11. Rosser, Celia and George,
Alexander. The
Banksias, Call No.: QK 495 .P957 R67
This
enormous book was produced more as an art object than a
handy reference
work, though it does contain detailed information about the
genus Banksia.
The genus was named
after Sir Joseph Banks, a fascinating explorer and
botanist. (more info
on the
genus and Sir
Joseph).
QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT,
REVIEW, AND
STUDY:
1. What purposes did most early herbals serve?
I.e., who
usually owned them or used them for reference? What
sorts of
plants were included?
2. How do the herbals you saw at the Cushing library
reflect the
changes through time in the process of book and paper
production?
3. How do the herbals you saw reflect the development
of
taxonomic thought?
====================================================================================================================
Thanks to the staff at the Cushing
Memorial
Library
and Archives
for their help with the selection and preparation of
materials for this
session.
last updated 8/17/1022 MDR
