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Linnaeus' and Magnolia's 250Th Formal Anniversary

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Linnaeus' and Magnolia's 250Th Formal Anniversary ISSUE 73 Linnaeus' and Magnolia's 250m Formal Anniversary Nisse vsn Nanna I have no idea what Americans do on the first of May but in Europe it's Labour Day, on which day we, strangely enough, do not work. This year it is also the day that we celebrate the a5o anniversary of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum and at first sight these two events don't have anything in common. That is, until you begin to realise what tremendous labour it must have been for Linnaeus to compile those two volumes: the preparation of the definite version of the manuscript alone took him over a year and that was after he finished assembling his notes and having written a first draft. It is well documented that Linnaeus was literally exhausted when he finally bmught the manuscript to the printer. In this light, it was not at all a bad idea to call this date Labour Day. This first edition of Species Plantaruvt has later become the starting point for bo- tanical nomenclature. For us, it is of interest because Linnaeus included accounts on Liriodevdrov, Magnolia, and Michelia in the Species and anyone who's interested in the history of the naming of our favourite plants sooner or later will want to consult this work. This artide is on the origin of the Species Plan tarum and on the sources Linnaeus used for the names of Magnoliaceae avant ia lettre. Early history of the Species Plsntsrnm The preparation of the Species had begun as early as 1732 when Carl Linnaeus (iyo7-i778) was identifying plant specimens he had collected in Lapland and felt the need for a comprehensive work. Fmm his own correspondence it appears there must have been a draft of parts of such a work in 1733, but soon after he was taken up with other pursuits. For one thing, to be admitted as a lecturer in Botany but also to convince his fianc6e's father of his qualities, he had to get a doctor's degree which was impossible to get in Sweden at that time. So, he went to Holland in 1735 to get a doctor's degree quickly and cheaply in Harderwijk. At that time Holland was more renowned for its high quality printing than for its cheap diplomas and Linnaeus brought with him a number of manuscripts that he wanted to have printed. When he went to Leyden and met Gronovius ()ohan Frederik; t686-t76a), the latter was immediately impressed by the quality of these works, especially the Systems Naturae. He and his friend, Lawson, urged Linnaeus to publish it at once and had it printed at their own expense. Linnaeus' star thereupon soon started to rise in the international scientific community. In September 1735, the wealthy Dutch East India Company director George Clifford (i685-i75o) appointed him physician and curator of his garden, which assured him of financial stability during his stay. He moved to the estate of Hartekamp, where, at Clifford's mansion, he found plant specimens arriving both from the Orient and from the New World for Clifford's garden and herbarium, and, whars more, a library of botanical books that was near incredible for those days. Clifford also enabled Linnaeus to visit England, where he met several lead- io ISSUE 73 M4SNotia ing natura lists and stayed with the famous botanist Dillenius (I 684-I y4y) for a month. Llnnaeus' sexual system of classification While Linnaeus stayed at Hartekamp, he finished a number of manuscripts and had them printed. Among those was the first edition of his Genem P(mr tn rum (iy5y). In this work he elaborated for the first time all genera recognized by him, arranged according to his sexual system, which had been newly introduced in the first edition of Systems Naturae (iy55). For a better understanding, one should know that Linnaeus based his classification upon the sexual parts of the plants, the stamens and pistils, male (andria) and female (gynia) as he called them, the number and arrangement of stamens determining the primary level (C(rtssis), the number of pistils the secondary level (Ordai. This system of classification is highly artificial, of which Linnaeus was very well aware. It was, however, the first ever classification in which all known species could be fitted and it could be used as a key, too. Linnaeus himself saw his classification as a provisional one, simple and practical, but to be abandoned as soon as a more natural comprehen- sive one was found. It was used until about i85o. By that time it had gradually become replaced by a system based on A. L. de Jussieu's Genera P(nutaruin (iy89). Linnaeus also elaborated the characters of the genus Msgiiolia in the Generm No one who has ever counted stamens and pistils in Magnolia will be surprised that this genus was placed in Polyandria Polygvnia (numerous stamens and numer- ous pistils, numerous being more than zo). Cliffor's library Linnaeus' main task while in Clifford's service was the preparation of the Her(us Cfiffortisiuis, a catalogue of the plants in Clifford's herbarium and vast garden. This book is to be considered a precursor for his Species P(an(arum. In it, an ac- count (comprising iy pages plus a one-page index) of the 295 books in Clifford's botanical library is given, systematically arranged, of course; after all it was Lin- naeus who wrote it. Many of the works he later often referred to, he got to see for the first time in Clifford's library. Though he stayed at Hartekamp for only two years, this period had a major influence on his later work, including the accounts on Msgnofia and Michelin in the Species Plrmtarmm Completion of the Species Plantarurn In ry58 Linnaeus returned to Sweden, where he was soon married and appointed professor at Uppsala. It was not until iy46 that he took up work on the Species P(mitnrnm again, but, as he had other duties, the work didn't proceed very pros- perously. By the end of I y48 he had reached the Tetradynamia (that is, he was far past half way) but then had to put the work aside because of illness (gout). It was in June iySI, the month Kalm returned from North America bringing numerous exciting specimens with him, that Linnaeus made a new start. He decided that he would take up only synonyms and citations of major importance and used the abandoned draft of ry46-Iy48 as the basis for the work, referring often to his Her- (us C(iffortiauus for additional synonymy. By the beginning of June iy5z Linnaeus finally reported that the work was done, but then Osbeck returned from China with new material and he once more revised the entire work to include Osbeck's tssue 73 plants. By July ryyz the two volumes were even- ti+ 11=1' tually delivered to the printer in Stockholm. Slgnlflcance of the work What made the Species Plantarum a real land- '!ca mark was not the number of taxa described in it, I . Is although one significant I feahue was of course that the work was compre- hensive in the sense that all plants known by then were induded. The single ?, most important advan- tage however, was the method Linnaeus used to refer to the species. Until then it had been common practice to use a Latin descripttve sentence ' 1'- (phrase-name) to indicate &~ a spades. These sentences were often as long as ten words and thus time and space consuming (in Catesby's Natural History of Carolina for example we find Arbor Tulipifrra Vi r- giniana tripartito aceris folio, We clearly recognize Magnolia virginiana in this plate (t. 39) media lacinia vrlul abscissa of Mark Catesby. it was published with the name Magnolia for the Tuliptree). More- lauri folio subtus albicante in 1730, at least 23 years before over, these names had to Linnaeus placed this species in the genus Magnolia. be changed when new species were discovered and the old diagnostic characters tumed out not to suffice anymore. In Linnaeus' new system of reference, every species was indicated by only two words —a binomial —the first word representing the genus to which a species was assigned, the second word (the epithet) representing the species within that genus. What' s most important is that the name was disconnected from the characters of the spe- cies and could thus act as a point of reference because it was essentially constant. These short names —Linnaeus called them nomina trivialia [trivial namesL to set them apart from the "real" phrase-names —were an immediate hit. It has been helpful, to some extent, that many of Linnaeus' works had been published in Holland, the quality of its printing ensuring them of a wide circulation, so he ' had already gained some reputation before the Species was issued. Linnaeus' ls!iua 73 araenorta new system of naming was soon followed by other authors and within ten years became the de facto standard; within another fifteen years it had completely superseded the earlier names. It was not until r867, however, when Alphonse de Candolle formulated his Lois de ta nomenclature botanique [laws of botanical nomen- clature], that Linnaeus' works were proposed as the starting point of mod- em nomenclature. Finally, the Intemahonal Botani- cal Congress of Vienna (Wien) in r9o5 accepted the Species Plantarum of 1753 as the one work to act as such. The Species Ptantarum serv- ing as the starting point of botanical nomendature doesn't mean that all the information in it was new (it's not the starting point of botany).
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