A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume ıı | Number ı | Fall 2006 Essay: The Botanical Garden 2 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: Introduction Fabio Gabari: The Botanical Garden of the University of Pisa Gerda van Uffelen: Hortus Botanicus Leiden Rosie Atkins: Chelsea Physic Garden Nina Antonetti: British Colonial Botanical Gardens in the West Indies John Parker: The Botanic Garden of the University of Cambridge Holly H. Shimizu: United States Botanic Garden Gregory Long: The New York Botanical Garden Mike Maunder: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Profile 13 Kim Tripp Exhibition Review 14 Justin Spring: Dutch Watercolors: The Great Age of the Leiden Botanical Garden New York Botanical Garden Book Reviews 18 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants By Anna Pavord Melanie L. Simo: Henry Shaw’s Victorian Landscapes: The Missouri Botanical Garden and Tower Grove Park By Carol Grove Judith B. Tankard: Maybeck’s Landscapes By Dianne Harris Calendar 22 Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor The Botanical Garden he term ‘globaliza- botanical gardens were plant species was the prima- Because of the botanical Introduction tion’ today has established to facilitate the ry focus of botanical gardens garden’s importance to soci- The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries widespread cur- propagation and cultivation in former times, the loss of ety, the principal essay in he botanical garden is generally considered a rency. We use of new kinds of food crops species and habitats through this issue of Site/Lines treats Renaissance institution because of the establishment it to describe the and to act as holding opera- ecological destruction is a it as a historical institution in 1534 of gardens in Pisa and Padua specifically Tgrowth of multi-national tions for plants and seeds pressing concern in our as well as a landscape type dedicated to the study of plants. However, these and corporations, the offshore intended for shipment to own. As we come to under- that combines nature, art, other sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century manufacture and assembly parent institutions in stand more fully that all life and science within a global Tbotanical gardens, including those at Breslau, Heidelberg, of products and provision of Europe. Botany was thus depends on plant life, the context. We could not within Kassel, Leiden, Leipzig, and Montpellier, did not spring into services, and the revolution globalized. floor of the food chain, and the space allowed include existence purely as a result of the great intellectual ferment of in media communications Even as vernacular lan- that plants still provide a more of the botanical gar- the times. Rather, they have their roots in the herbal manu- made possible by satellite guages were coming into large portion of humanity’s dens whose distinguished scripts of antiquity, most notably the De materia medica of the technology and the Internet. general use, newly discov- pharmacopoeia, the role of histories would have first-century CE Roman physician Dioscorides. This long-con- There is, however, another ered plants continued to be botanical gardens in foster- enriched the composite sulted reference work, which combines a brief discussion of a much older globalization named in Latin, and by the ing the conservation of essay we have devoted to the plant’s physical characteristics with remarks about its remedial that has been in process ever eighteenth century the uni- native and locally cultivated subject but hope that the properties for specific diseases or injuries, was copied many since prehistoric peoples versal system of binomial vegetation throughout the eight articles that are includ- times and remained the authoritative text on most known traded seeds and crops. The Latin taxonomy that is still world has become impera- ed here are sufficiently plant species well into the seventeenth century. study and classification of used internationally had tive. Botanical gardens today representative to convey the Many Dioscorides-based herbals perpetuated the knowl- plants was well established been adopted. As a result, play an ever-increasing role story that leads to this edge and application of simples, as herbs were called then, and in antiquity and the Middle botanists in Buenes Aires in propagating endangered conclusion. the collection and study of pharmacological herbs remained Ages. During the Renais- and in Osaka can communi- plants and fostering pro- the focus of apothecaries and physicians both in Europe and sance Europeans made cate, secure in the knowledge grams to reconstitute With good green wishes, the Islamic world. In the thirteenth century Ibn al-Baytar (c. botany a modern science, that they are speaking about destroyed natural habitats. At 1179–1248), the most famous Arabic physician and botanist in and as their seafaring skills the same plant. the same time, a relatively Andalusian Spain, wrote two important books, The Ultimate in gave them the ability to While the European dis- new type, the ethnobotanical Materia Medica and Simple Medicaments and Nutritional Items, circumnavigate the earth, a covery and collection of new garden, is coming into exis- both of which were based on his own personal observations of great transplantation tence. Its mission is to assist Elizabeth Barlow Rogers some 1,400 plants as well as knowledge derived from of species from one land to the preservation of the cul- Editor Dioscorides and the Greek physician Galen. As early as the another began. Colonial ture of traditional communi- tenth century, exotic collections were planted in Andalusian ties and the indigeneous experimental gardens. Furthermore, Christian medieval art plants they collect and grow. depicted images of gardens containing ornamental flowers that had symbolic value, the highest ranked being the rose and the lily, both emblematic of the Virgin Mary. Monasteries also contained gardens with collections of medicinal herbs. Until Renaissance humanism revived a comprehensive and categori- cal Aristotelian approach to natural history, however, there was little impetus to create botanical gardens as ordered collec- On the Cover: tions of plants. “Snake with Ipomoea ochracea,” Factors besides pedagogy influenced the design of the earli- hand-colored engraving from est botanical gardens, and their layouts sometimes incorporat- Albertus Seba's Locupletissimi ed astrological, cosmological, and religious notions. As the rerum naturalium thesauri. (Amsterdam: Janssonio- Waesbergios, 1734-65) 2 botanical scholar Luisa Tongiorgi Tomasi points out, the geo- The Chelsea Physic Garden metric arrangement of Renaissance botanical gardens accord- as seen from across the Thames, ing to astrologically resonant forms – circles, squares, triangles mid-eighteenth century painting – was intended to channel the positive energy radiating from after Canaletto (1697–1768). the planets and stars into objects on earth, thereby increasing The boathouses, center, housed the the healing power of the gardens’ simples. The cardinal direc- boats used for “herborising” tions, cosmologically significant in all cultures, also influenced expeditions to collect plants. pre-Enlightenment botanical garden plans. In addition, early botanical garden designs embodied the biblical concept of because the plethora of new paradise as an enclosed, geometrically ordered quadripartite plants being introduced space with four dividing paths symbolizing the description in into Europe included many Genesis 2:10: “A river went out of Eden to water the garden; non-medicinal species, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.” exploration and subsequent Seen in this light, the arrangement of plants collected from colonization required the the four corners of the earth in botanical gardens was intend- consideration of botanical ed to be a re-gathering of the paradisiacal bounty of Eden that science as a discipline in was scattered at the time of the Fall. These early botanical gar- its own right. dens also should be understood as outgrowths of the gardens of princes and other wealthy individuals whose collections The Eighteenth Century of rare plants were outdoor extensions of their wunderkammer, In order to communicate cabinets containing all manner of exotica, both natural and across vernacular language manmade. The concept of the botanical garden as a kind of barriers, medical men and ethnographic and natural history museum can be traced back botanists needed a universal to this period. and founder of the botanical garden at the University of Pisa, classification system that would provide a uniform designation Libraries were, as they remain today, essential elements of invented the herbarium, a collection of pressed dried plants for every plant. The Latin binomial or two-name system – one botanical gardens. The invention of the printing press in the labeled and systematically classified. This method of display, for genus, the other for species – was the great contribution of fifteenth century greatly increased the opportunity for libraries unlike temporary field observation, enabled the study of a the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) to natural to expand their collections, thereby extending the distribution plant’s form and structure over an indefinite period of time. science. As vernacular languages began to replace Latin of plant knowledge in general. However, the wood-block prints The co-evolution of the herbarium and the botanical garden as the European lingua franca