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Plant Exploration

© Jojo

Plant exploration has taken people far away from their homelands throughout history. Queen Hatshepsut mounted an expedition to find frankinsence trees in around 1500 BC. She got her wish in the form of 31 young trees packed in wicker baskets. Chinese emperors cultivated very sophisticated ornamental gardens some 5,000 years ago (probably more sophisticated than most of ours, although I can not speak for all of us). The Greeks had a huge interest in plants for their own sake, whether they were useful or not. Plant explorers were often also missionaries, soldiers and others engaged in military activities, or happened through on trading expeditions, so the collections and identifications were often haphazard and coloured by their other ventures.

In 16th century Europe, print and the book form enabled herbals. These books drew from other books, plant references in Classical literature and medieval traditions. The resulting herbals often contained totally corrupt descriptions. Looking through some of the ancient herbals will give you a glimpse of some of these rather amusing depictions. The illustrators were not taking absinthe. No, they were simply copying from another's description. So writers and illustrators became feild botanists and set out to see it for themselves.

Around this time also, collections of dried plant materials called Herbariums popped up all over the place. These were apprently very popular in the late 1500s, along with collections of dead animals and especially insects.

In the 17th century, the renaissance brought increased intellectual enlightenment along with a few other factors which suddenly made it more practical and fashionable to become a plant explorer, or plant hunter, in earnest. I find it amazing that 100 years of frenzied exploration went on before a truly scientific approach to collection and naming of plants was adopted, namely, Linnaeus' Latinized taxonomy of plants and technology such as the Wardian case, a tiny greenhouse used for sucessfully transporting exotic plants across long distances.

Plant Exploration Links
Chelsea Physic Garden
The garden was founded in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries. Many modern botanical gardens have Physic gardens within their bounds. Physic gardens contain plants grown for herbal and pharmaceutical medicine.

Who Was Carl Linnaeus?
A biography of Linnaeus, plus some thoughts on what made this nature-lover think in new terms of science and evolution.

Nature's Garland
A short history of botanical illustration.

Selections in Botany from Antiquariaat Junk
A sampling of some very old herbals.