HUNTIA a Journal of Botanical History
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HUNTIA A Journal of Botanical History VOLUME 16 NUMBER 1 2017 Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, a research division of Carnegie Mellon University, specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of botanists, biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the North American flora. Huntia publishes articles on all aspects of the history of botany, including exploration, art, literature, biography, iconography and bibliography. The journal is published irregularly in one or more numbers per volume of approximately 200 pages by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. External contributions to Huntia are welcomed. Page charges have been eliminated. All manuscripts are subject to external peer review. Before submitting manuscripts for consideration, please review the “Guidelines for Contributors” on our Web site. Direct editorial correspondence to the Editor. Send books for announcement or review to the Book Reviews and Announcements Editor. All issues are available as PDFs on our Web site. Hunt Institute Associates may elect to receive Huntia as a benefit of membership; contact the Institute for more information. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Carnegie Mellon University 5th Floor, Hunt Library 4909 Frew Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Telephone: 412-268-2434 Email: [email protected] Web site: http://www.huntbotanical.org Editor and layout Scarlett T. Townsend Editor, Emeritus Robert W. Kiger Book Reviews and Announcements Editor Charlotte A. Tancin Associate Editors Donald W. Brown Lugene B. Bruno T. D. Jacobsen J. Dustin Williams Photographer Frank A. Reynolds Printed and bound by RR Donnelley, Hoechstetter Plant, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania © 2017 Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation All Rights Reserved ISSN 0073-4071 Contents Gouan and Guérin: Professor and student Roger L. Williams 5–15 Augustin Augier’s Botanical Tree: Transcripts and translations of two unknown sources Nils Petter Hellström, Gilles André and Marc Philippe 17–38 Candolle’s Law of Analogies, a savant as useful citizen Roger L. Williams 39–50 Edwin B. Payson, 1893–1927 Roger L. Williams 51–60 Book Reviews and Announcements 61–74 HUNTIA 16(1) 2017 Candolle’s Law of Analogies, a savant as useful citizen Roger L. Williams Abstract Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu suggested in 1774 who developed it; and to Antoine-Laurent de that plants conforming in their external characters Jussieu who subjected it to fixed laws” A( .-P. (the natural families) might also possess conforming de Candolle 1804, p. 6). medicinal virtues. Thus, once the natural order had been established, which he was at the moment preparing In the beginning, there was Linnaeus to publish, it followed that one should be able to (1707–1778; Fig. 2), remembered mainly for determine a plant’s medicinal virtues by its exterior his invention of the sexual system of plant signs. His disciple, Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle, classification and of the completion of binomial when revising Lamarck’s Flore Françoise, also studied for a medical degree and designed his medical dissertation plant nomenclature, still in use today. As to test that Jussiean prediction. He soon found he could all botanists in the 18th century received describe new natural families by segregating them from their botanical training as herbalists while those of Jussieu, if based upon medicinal distinctions. in medical school, it would be legitimate to He defined the phenomenon as the Law ofA nalogies. Some of the well-known Candollean plant families were wonder whether their medicinal knowledge of described in the dissertation, illustrating the rationale plants affected their later endeavors to develop behind his prolific later publications. At the end of the a natural system of plant classification. Candollean era, Jussieu’s 100 natural plant families had Linnaeus, for financial support, had been a been expanded to 200. practicing physician in his initial professional years. In the list of dissertations later directed Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle (1778– by Linnaeus, the Amoenitates Academicae, there 1841; Fig. 1) was a descendant of an old noble is only one direct connection with the materia Provençal family, which, becoming Protestant medica, Johan Lindwall’s dissertation no. 171, in the mid-16th century, expatriated to published in 1772: Observationes in Materiam Geneva. He moved to Paris in 1798, then the Medicam, long after Linnaeus’ major works. preeminent center of botanical research, to Many others, however, included medical obtain the medical degree, which, in those references. Moreover, as Arthur Cain pointed days, was still the prerequisite for botanical out, Linnaeus was also a religious man and study. Botanists today are familiar with a reader of the Bible. He had been greatly Candolle’s abbreviation, DC; but the influence impressed by the Hebrew regulations for of medicine on his taxonomy is little perceived. health, to be found in the book of Leviticus, His doctoral dissertation was dedicated to the references that included such topics as Tranquil founding botanists of the theory of natural mind, Insane love, Eating of permitted families: “To Tournefort who anticipated it; to meats, Sleep, Healthiness of exercise and Bernard de Jussieu who proved it; to Adanson Infectious air. His medical interest, in sum, was preventive medicine, not botanical 1701 South 17th Street, Laramie, WY 82070 classification (Cain 1993). USA 39 40 HUNTIA 16(1) 2017 Figure 1. Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle (1778–1841), Figure 2. Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778), engraving photographic reproduction, 13 × 10 cm, after an by H. Meyer, 50.8 × 34.29 cm, after an engraving by oil painting, ca.1813, by Boilly, Hunt Institute for Ogburne with design by Bartolozzi after an original by Botanical Documentation Archives portrait no. 1. Magnus Hållman for Robert John Thornton (1768– 1837), New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus … (London, 1807, 3 parts), Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Archives portrait no. 10. Having always recognized that his sexual methods and in defining genera had convinced system was artificial, if providing a key to plant him that there were no perfectly constant identification to be universally applicable, characters. That is, characters useful in Linnaeus regarded it to be only a substitute establishing one genus did not necessarily have for a natural method. His beginning of a the same collective value for another genus. He more natural classification, Methodi Naturalis could not, as a consequence, complete a natural Fragmenta, appeared in Philosophia Botanica in system based on all characters, seemingly 1751, 65 “natural orders” followed by a list of unable to depart from his initial belief that over 700 genera, based not upon reproductive definitive characters for natural orders could function, but upon manner of growth and be found only in reproductive systems: an appearance: habitus. essentialism (Larson 1967). Many such groupings are still recognized In 1759 Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777; Fig. today. Orchideae, for example, included 3) planted the first demonstration of the natural Orchis, Satyrium, Serapias, Herminium, Neottia, classifications in the royal garden at the Petit Ophrys, Cypripedium, Epidendrum, Limodorum Trianon, dividing all plants into 15 classes and Arethusa, all in Orchidaceae today. This based upon the only invariable characters he method could also lead to erroneous groups as had found, namely, the number or absence Linnaeus recognized. His experience with his of cotyledons; whether a plant was apetalous, Williams: Candolle’s Law of Analogies 41 monopetalous or polypetalous; the insertion of the stamens or corollas; and whether hypogynous, perigynous or epigynous, all distinctions still recognized today. The 15th class, Diclines irregulares, comprised conifers whose irregularity was being unisexual (B. de Jussieu 1789). As Bernard de Jussieu did not publish the description of his planting at the Petit Trianon, delayed until publication by his nephew in 1789, Dr. Louis Gérard’s (1733–1819) Flora Gallo-Provincialis in 1761, covering Provence alone, became the first published flora to employ a natural method. While it bore considerable resemblance to the planting of 1759, the conventional reference that Gérard simply borrowed Bernard de Jussieu’s plan is untenable. Both men worked not only independently but also were obviously concerned to perfect Linnaeus’ Methodi Naturalis Fragmenta. While their arrangement Figure 3. Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777), engraving of plant families differed in significant ways, by Ph. Langlois after an original by A. Guilleminot, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Archives their systematic concepts made them much portrait no. 8. closer to each other than either one was to Michel Adanson (1727–1806) in 1763, discussed below. Gérard began with the acotyledons, proceeded to the monocotyledons classifying the medicinal virtues of plants. and concluded with the dicotyledons. In his The classes