Milestones in Botany Botany Begins with Aristotle by Ruth A
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Milestones in Botany Botany Begins with Aristotle By Ruth A. Sparrow Again this year Hobbies will give its readers glimpses of the rare first and early editions in the Milestones of Science Collection. Ruth A. Sparrow, Librarian, writes Milestones in Botany as the sixth in her series.—Editor's Note. • • • Living plants are found in all plants, many of them noted for their parts of the world in more or less pro- medicinal value. fusion. The mountain top and the Dioscorides (c. 50 A. D.), a con- desert each has its particular growth. temporary of Pliny, was a Greek bot- The science of this vegetation is bot- anist and physician in the Roman any. Plants from the smallest micro- army. He traveled extensively in this scopic plant to the largest tree have latter capacity and became intensely in- been of interest to man, for they pro- terested in botany. As a result of this vided him with food, shelter, medicine, combination of profession and hobby clothing, transportation, and other ne- he became the greatest of medical bot- cessities and comforts. All these were anists. He knew over six hundred material interests, and for centuries no plants which he has described in Ma- systematic study of plants was under- teria Medica (Venice, 1499). This taken. work holds an important place both in Aristotle (c. 350 B. C.) is credited the history of medicine and botany. as the first patron of botany and the As late as the seventeenth century no first so-called director of a botanic gar- drug was considered genuine that did den. This garden was in the charge of not agree with Dioscorides's descrip- his pupil Theophrastus of Ereus (372- tion. 287 B. C.) who is generally regarded With the exception of Albertus as the first real botanist. He is the Magnus (c. 1193) there was no bot- author of the earliest scientific work anist of any note from these early days on plants, Historia Plantarum (Ven- until the Renaissance. Botany suffered ice, 1497). The first part deals with during the Dark Ages with the other the general anatomy and histology of sciences. Ernest Meyer writes of Al- plants, enumerating the external or- bertus: "No botanist who lived before gans of a tree, as well as the sap, Albert can be compared with him. un- fibres, pith, etc. Several parts concern less it be Theophrastus, with whose trees and shrubs, thorny plants, and work he was unacquainted, and after those used for garlands; another deals him none has painted nature in such with kitchen garden vegetables, cereals, glowing colours or studied it so pro- gums and exudations and means of foundly until the time of Conrad Ges- collecting them. In the second book ner and Caesalpino." Albertus Mag- Ejusdem de Causis Plantarum, Theo- nus was a Dominican monk who, al- phrastus studies the seed, grafting, though he attained a high position in budding, effects of weather and soil, the Church, still found time to pursue cultivation, diseases, and perfumes of his study of nature. While he wrote plants. He describes about five hun- in many other fields of science his out- dred species used mainly for the treat- standing work was in botany. His De ment of diseases. Vegetabilibus (in Parva Naturalia, Pliny in his famous Historia Natu- Venice, 1517) is the first general work ralis (Venice, 1476) devotes sixteen on botany of real scientific importance. of his thirty-seven books to botany. It is bas,xl on the work of Nicholas of He describes about one thousand Damascus. It shows the first indica- [ 12 I tion of real scientific grouping of the earliest known picture of cells. plants which he divides into leafless Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) , an and leaf-bearing. He recognizes that English plant anatomist and plant species are mutable, and he has a most physiologist, and Malpighi both made interesting chapter on the morphology extensive studies on plant structure, of plants, and the very beginnings of and the publication of their results plant geography are to be found here. was almost simultaneous. Grew ap- The sixteenth century saw a revival plied microscopy to the study of the of interest in botany mainly through structure of plants and laid the foun- the efforts of a group of men known dations of vegetable histology. The as herbalists. Otto Brunfels has been Anatomy of Vegetables Begun (Lon- credited with restoring the science of don, 1672) and The Anatomy of botany in Europe. He was followed Plants (London, 1682) were his con- by others, among them Leonhard tributions to the subject. Fuchs (1501-1566), a German physi- Stephen Hales (1677-1761) was cian and botanist. Fuchs's De Historia one of the earliest workers at plant Stirpium Commentarii Insignes (Basel, physiology. His Vegetable Staticks 1542) is one of the most beautiful and (London, 1727) mainly concerns the rarest herbals. It has woodcuts of investigation of the movement of sap extraordinary beauty, the work of in plants. Hales invented a special ap- three outstanding artists of the time. paratus for his experiments on the Plants are arranged alphabetically by gaseous constituents of the air. This their Greek names. This herbal also work is one of the most important contains the first European figures of and original contributions to the sub- certain American plants, including In- ject. dian corn and the great pumpkin. Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish One of the earliest attempts at a botanist, is known as the father of methodical arrangement of plants was modern systematic botany. System made by Andreas Caesalpinus (1519- with him was almost a mania. His 1603), a professor of medicine in Pisa Systema Naturae (Lugduni Batavo- and Rome and later physician to Pope rum, 1735; facs. 190'7) is merely an Clement VIII. He described and dis- outline of his scheme for the classifi- tributed some of the fifteen hundred cation of plants and animals. This was plants known at that time into fifteen accepted as the standard by botanists classes. Linnaeus called him the first until the ultimate establishment of the true systematist. De Plantis (Florence, natural system by Jussieu in 1787. In .1583) is the first edition of his impor- Species Plantarum (Holmiae, 1753) tant work in the history of botany. Linnaeus employed the binomial sys- Robert Hooke (1635-1703) , an Eng- tem of nomenclature, now almost uni- lish mathematician and natural philos- versally used. opher, was the first to apply the term The earliest work on pollination "cell" to the units of plant structure. was Christian Konrad Sprengel's Das He was deeply interested in micros- Entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur in copy and made his own microscope. Bau (Berlin, 1793). At the time He cut thin slices from all kinds of of publication it received scant atten- bodies, both animal and plant, and tion, and Sprengel was so discouraged with the aid of his microscope discov- that he gave up botany. It is however ered that all were porous and per- a most important and outstanding forated much like a honey comb. book and of great beauty. These he called cells. His observations Robert Brown (1773 • 1858), a were published in Micrographia (Lon- Scotch botanist, made a great contri- don, 1665). This publication contains bution to botany in a paper published [13 1 in the Philosophical Magazine in 1828. Olbers Focke's book Die Pflanzen, He had been investigating the passage Mischlinge (Berlin, 1881) which of the contents of a pollen tube into brought the papers to light. In his the ovule. He saw that the granules book Focke gave a remarkable history in the tube were in constant motion. of plant-bastardism and described He did not offer any explanation for Mendel's experiments. It was not un- this, but in recent years it has been til almost twenty years later that the recognized and known since then as full recognition was given Mendel. In "Brownian movement." 1900 De Vries and other botanists in Hooke's cell theory was elaborated searching the literature rediscovered by M. J. Schleiden (1804-1881), a the papers and made them generally German botanist, in his Beitthge zur known to the scientific world. Phytogenesis (Berlin, 1838). The an- Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), a nouncement of the cell theory was an Dutch botanist, announced his muta- outstanding landmark in the develop- tion theory in Die Mutationstheorie ment of botanical science. There were (Leipzig, 1901-1903) . He describes it errors and omissions, but it was revo- as a sudden variation as distinguished lutionary and paved the way for from a gradual variation in which new Schwann who later established the characters become fully developed theory. only in the course of many genera- One of the greatest discoveries in tions. It is a most important contribu- botany was in a new branch—hered- tion to the study of the origin of ity. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), an species. Austrian monk, achieved the first rev- Since the days of Theophrastus olutionary results in the experimental when only some five hundred species investigations of heredity. For some of plants were known and then only years Mendel worked in the garden studied for their medicinal virtues, the of the monastery experimenting on the science of botany has progressed until inheritance of individual characters of today about two hundred and fifty a number of varieties of garden peas. thousand are known and described. After eight years he read a paper be- We know that plants have a similar fore the Natural History Society of existence to animals; that they are Briinn at which time he announced composed of cells; that each part of his results: that height, color, and the plant has its function; and that other characteristics depend on the heredity, variation, and environment presence of determining factors be- play a great part in plant evolution.