Potts 2023. Sir Henry Willock (1788-1858) and the New-York Horticultural Society. Garden History: Journal of the Gardens Trust 51/1: 67-81. (original) (raw)

Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Plant Science and Technology in A Cultural History of Plants, vol. 4

A Cultural History of Plants vol. 4, 2022

Breaking news: Cultural History of Plants; vols. 1 - 6 have been awarded the Society of Economic Botany’s Daniel F. Austin Award for this year’s best edited volume[s]. My chapter foregrounds the role of knowledge management systems such as plant nomenclature, classification and herbaria in appropriating, translating and exploiting the natural knowledge built up over thousands of years by peoples around the world. The contributions of indigenous peoples, their languages and ways of using and understanding plants, undergird what has for too long been taken to be a European project of accumulating, translating and assembling plant knowledge. Publisher's description: A Cultural History of Plants presents a global exploration of how plants have shaped human culture. Covering the last 12,000 years, it is the definitive history of how we have cultivated, traded, classified, and altered plants and how, in turn, plants have influenced our ideas of luxury and wealth, health and well-being, art and architecture. See https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cultural-history-of-plants-9781474273596/

A Vignette of Botany in the Age of Enlightenment: The Story of Catesby's Climber or the Carolina Kidney Bean Tree,Wisteria Frutescens

Curtis's Botanical Magazine, 2015

The history of Wisteria frutescens (L.) Poir. is discussed, with particular reference to those associated with its discovery in South Carolina, its transmission to Europe, and its initial cultivation in England and the Dutch Republic. A brief appraisal is given of those natural historians associated with the species in the interconnected worlds of medicine, botany, botanical art and horticulture in the early 18th century whose efforts enabled the Carolina kidney bean tree to be discovered, described and distributed. A description of Wisteria frutescens, with a key to the two varieties, is provided. A lectotype is chosen for the name Glycine frutescens var. magnifica Hérincq and neotypes are selected for the names Diplonyx elegans Raf. and Thyrsanthus floridana Croom. Reference One: Linnaeus and Clifford's Garden Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). In the protologue for Glycine frutescens L., his second species of Glycine in Species Plantarum, Linnaeus's phrase name read 'Glycine foliis pinnatis, caule perenni' [Glycine with perennial stems and pinnate leaves] (Linnaeus, 1753: 753). He listed two references to earlier works next to his phrase name: Hort. Cliff. 361, and Roy. Lugdb. 391. He then cited the additional phrase name: 'Phaseoloides frutescens Caroliniana, foliis pinnatis, floribus caeruleis conglomeratis' [shrubby Phaseoloides from Carolina with pinnate leaves and blue flowers in clusters] and then added a third reference: 'Hort. Angl. 55 t.15' and finally 'Habitat in Carolina'. The first reference, Linnaeus's Hortus Cliffortianus (Linnaeus, 1738: 361), described the rare plants grown in the garden at De Hartekamp, Heemstede, near Haarlem in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands [Dutch Republic], the home of George Clifford (III), a rich banking magnate from Amsterdam. George Clifford (1685-1760). George Clifford's grandfather, also George Clifford (I) had moved from Cambridge, where the family originated, to Amsterdam settling on the Zeedijk in the centre of the old city, as a successful banker with extra income arising from a sugar plantation that he had bought in Barbados (Harskamp, 2012). His son George Clifford (II) was a director

Henry Hurd Rusby: The father of economic botany at the New York Botanical Garden

Brittonia, 1992

He played a significant role, not only in the founding of NYBG in 1891, but also in establishing a strong precedent of research and exploration in the field of economic botany at the new institution. As a result of Rusby's influence and activity, the study of useful plants formed an important part of NYBG's original mandate, an institutional commitment that was rejuvenated nearly a century later, with the formation of the Institute of Economic Botany. An indefatigable researcher both in the field and in the herbarium, Rusby left behind a voluminous corpus of published work in systematic and economic botany that is a legacy for modem botanists and pharmacologists.

A Cultural History of Plants, vol. 3: In the Early Modern Era. Introduction

A Cultural History of Plants vol. 3: In the Early Modern Era. Editors: Andrew Dalby, Annette Giesecke, 2022

The connectedness of humans to plants is the most fundamental of human relationships. Plants are, and historically have been, sources of food, shelter, bedding, tools, medicine, and, most importantly, the very air we breathe. Plants have inspired awe, a sense of wellbeing, religious fervor, and acquisitiveness alike. They have been collected, propagated, and mutated, as well as endangered or driven into extinction by human impacts such as global warming, deforestation, fire suppression, and over-grazing. A Cultural History of Plants traces the global dependence of human life and civilization on plants from antiquity to the twenty-first century and comprises contributions by experts and scholars in a wide range of fields, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, botany, classics, garden history, history, literature, and environmental studies more broadly. The series consists of six illustrated volumes, each devoted to an examination of plants as grounded in, and shaping, the cultural experiences of a particular historical period. Each of the six volumes, in turn, is structured in the same way, beginning with an introductory chapter that offers a sweeping view of the cultural history of plants in the period in question, followed by chapters on plants as staple foods, plants as luxury foods, trade and exploration, plant technology and science, plants and medicine, plants in (popular) culture, plants as natural ornaments, and the representation of plants. This cohesive structure offers readers the opportunity both to explore a meaningful cross-section of humans' uses of plants in a given period and to trace a particular use-as in medicine, for example-through time from volume to volume. The six volumes comprising A Cultural History of Plants are as follows:

The early book herbaria of Leonhard Rauwolf (S. France and N. Italy, 1560–1563): new light on a plant collection from the ‘golden age of botany’

2021

The 16th century was a golden age for botany, a time when numerous naturalists devoted themselves to the study and documentation of plant diversity. A prominent figure among them was the German physician, botanist, and traveler Leonhard Rauwolf (1535?–1596), famous for his luxurious book herbarium containing plants from the Near East. Here we focus on the less studied, early book herbaria of Rauwolf. These form a three-volume plant collection bound in leather and gold, which contains over 600 plants that Rauwolf collected between 1560 and 1563 in S. France and N. Italy when he was a student of medicine. We show the botanical value of Rauwolf’s early book herbaria, exemplified by two exotic American specimens, namely one of the oldest surviving specimens of tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), collected in Italy, and the oldest known French record of prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica). We discuss Rauwolf’s professional botanical network during his student years and suggest that the famous S...