History of Botany

Psydrax ficiformis (Hook, f.) Bridson (Rubiaceae) is rediscovered after a century from Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary, Tamil Nadu state, India. Detailed taxonomy and first photographs of the live plant are provided. A new combination is proposed for Canthium lanceolatum Arn. under the genus Psydrax Gaertn. and first time detailed taxonomic description is provided. Two names, Canthium ficiforme Hook. f. and C. lanceolatum Arn. are lectotypified here and images of the lectotype specimens are also given.

Long before we understood the risks of transplanting plant and animal species from one country to another, early botanists like James Smith pioneered and solidified our scientific understanding of the natural world by doing precisely that. The Ayrshire born Smith was "distinguished by peculiar enthusiasm" and "uncommon affection" for plant-life, and was described by his peers as a "sincere and devoted admirer of the vegetable world".

This essay follows my edition of Alexandre von Humboldt's five year journey in the Americas for Penguin Books and the puzzle of who Bonpland, his companion, was. I followed him to Buenos Aires and then to Paraguay and Pas de los Libres. His life was so odd that his adventures were  almost fiction. Bonpland died in Argentina in 1858.

Few wild grasses are recorded to identify the life supporting plants for the wild bird Scaly-breasted Munia or Spotted Munia in the varied habitats. Apart, the specific reasons to select the particular grass by the wild bird are also provided.

The importance of exotic plants in European botany of the 18th-century concerned not only the species of edible plants but also the many vegetal species used for therapeutic purposes. Italian pharmacies also made sure to have available those plants with certified therapeutic properties. In many pharmacies of that time it’s possible to find pharmacopoeias, medical formularies and recipes where these exotic plants were mentioned as ingredients for brews and decoctions in which medical properties were celebrated. Some pharmacies had entire collections of vases in which to store these medical products. In this perspective, the literary sources coming from the Emilian pharmacies of the 18th-century are particularly rich. Emilian pharmacists could also take advantage of the studies of the University of Bologna, one of the main medical universities in Europe, whose tradition goes back to the Medieval period. In that century, famous physicians and scientists taught in Bologna, such as Malpighi, Marsili, Morgagni, and Valsalva. At that time one of the problems was that of adding the new exotic drugs to the hippocratic-galenic tradition, and reconciling the different approach that the introduction of these new plants brought to the medical science. Thanks to this material, it’s possible to reconstruct the significative practical and theoretical contribution to Italian medical culture of the 1700s.

Compte rendu de lecture de l'essai poétique : Le Détail du monde, L'art perdu de la description de la nature  de Romain Bertrand (Sciences humaines, Histoire, collection L'Univers historique, éditions du Seuil, Date de parution 07/03/2019, 288 pages. EAN 9782021421415.
Publié sur le carnet hypothèses : https://histoiresnat.hypotheses.org/131

Since the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E., observations on the Indian flora were an important part of Greek literature. Evoking the myth of the Golden Age, the writings depicted India as a fertile land, rich in exotic plants.  At the time of the Corpus Hippocraticum (5th century B.C.E.) trade between India and the Mediterranean passed through the Near East. The Corpus Hippocraticum mentions various Indian medicinal plants whose names reveal their Indian or Median and Persian origins.  Only after Alexander the Great's eastern campaigns were Indian plants introduced directly into the Mediterranean area and came to be more accurately known. The main source of the information on Indian medicinal plants featured in the Historia plantarum of Theophrastus were the botanical observations found in the accounts of the historians who traveled east with Alexander in his military advance. Many of the Indian plants in the Historia plantarum are described again, with variations and additions, in the De materia medica of Dioscorides and in the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, both written in the Roman Empire period. Compared to Theophrastus, these later authors not only featured more eastern species, but they also devoted more space to Indian tropical plants. This was the period in which direct trade between Rome and India flourished and the importation of spices, which were mostly used as medicines, reached its height. As scholars encountered these new exotic plants, they analyzed and described their growth and their interaction with the environment, classified them within the botanical-pharmacological system and deepened how they cured diseases in human body. In the description of Indian plant species, a real knowledge of the plants was often lacking, being mostly known only as commercial products. Though they had no doubts about the eastern origin of these plants, often they did not know where exactly the plants came from. The places whence they were imported were often mistaken for the area where they grew. In any cases, Indian plants were integrated into the botanical-pharmacological system and came to be part of the Mediterranean pharmacopoeia. Described accurately by the same standards used for Mediterranean and Near Eastern plants, they shared, on the basis of common characteristics, the same classification criteria. However, in the descriptions of the medicinal properties of these plants and their use in the cure of illnesses there were no explicit references to Indian medicine. Certain similarities between Indian and Greek medicine and correspondences between the properties and the uses of some Indian plants in the ayurvedic and mediterranean tradition could suggest the transmission of Indian medical knowledge to the Mediterranean World. The study of Indian plants and their presence in and assimilation into the Graeco-Roman world is an important tool to deepen the knowledge of cultural interactions, as well as specifically medical, between the Mediterranean World and the East.

The construction and distribution of books containing large copperplate images was of great importance to practitioners of natural history during the eighteenth century. This article examines the case of the botanist and president of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), who attempted to publish a series of images based on the botanical illustrations produced by Georg Forster (1754–94) on Cook’s second voyage of exploration (1772–5) during the 1790s. The analysis reveals how the French Revolution influenced approaches to constructing and distributing works of natural history in Britain, moving beyond commercial studies of book production to show how Banks’s political agenda shaped the taxonomic content and distribution of this publication. Matters were complicated by Forster’s association with radical politics and the revolutionary ideologies attached to materials collected in the Pacific by the 1790s. Banks’s response to the Revolution influenced the distribution of this great work, showing how British loyalist agendas interacted with scientific practice and shaped the diffusion of natural knowledge in the revolutionary age.

The importance of exotic plants in European botany of the 18th-century concerned not only the species of edible plants but also the abundant vegetal species used for therapeutic purposes. Italian pharmacies also made sure to have available plants with certified therapeutic properties. In many pharmacies of that time, we can find pharmacopoeias, medical formularies and recipes where these exotic plants were mentioned as ingredients of brews and decoctions in which their healing properties were celebrated. Some pharmacies had full collections of vases to store these medical products. In this view, the literary sources from the Emilian pharmacies of the 18th-century are particularly rich. Emilian pharmacists could also take advantage of the studies of the University of Bologna, one of the leading medical universities in Europe, whose tradition dates back to the Medieval period. In the 18th century, famous physicians and scientists lectured at Bologna, such as Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), Ferdinando Marsili (1658-1730), Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771), and Antonio Maria Valsalva (1666-1723). At that time, the inclusion of the new exotic drugs in the Hippocratic-galenic tradition was not an easy task. It was also not easy to bring together the different approaches that the introduction of these new plants brought to medical science. Thanks to this material, it is possible to reconstruct its significant practical and theoretical contribution to the Italian medical culture of the 1700s.

di Daniele Vergari-Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani-Volume 95 (2019) TARGIONI TOZZETTI, Antonio.-Nacque a Firenze il 30 settembre 1785, primogenito di Ottaviano (v. la voce in questo Dizionario) e di Vittoria Campana, sorella del botanico ferrarese Antonio. Sulle orme della consolidata tradizione familiare, si laureò in medicina a Pisa, nel 1807, dopo aver seguito le lezioni di Giuseppe Branchi, Gaetano Savi e Francesco Vaccà Berlinghieri. Tornato a Firenze, completò gli studi medici con Paolo Mascagni e Bernardino Pomponi, venne matricolato alla professione medica e, nel 1810, diventò aiuto del padre Ottaviano come medico fiscale. In questo periodo si rafforzava la strategia familiare, seguita anche dal padre Ottaviano, che prevedeva l'inserimento nei ceti dirigenti della nuova amministrazione, con la creazione di una rete di protezioni e clientele legate a personaggi di rilievo come Girolamo de' Bardi. In questa strategia va considerato l'arruolamento volontario, nel 1809, del giovane Antonio nelle guardie d'onore a piedi, responsabili del servizio a palazzo Pitti, sede della nuova corte di Elisa Bonaparte. Un servizio breve ma estremamente significativo per il consolidamento delle relazioni dello scienziato fiorentino. Dedicatosi allo studio della botanica e della chimica, nel 1811 Targioni Tozzetti vinse il concorso alla cattedra di chimica presso il costituendo Conservatorio d'arti e mestieri, terza classe dell'Accademia di belle arti di Firenze, grazie anche all'intervento diretto del prefetto del dipartimento

di Daniele Vergari-Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani-Volume 95 (2019) TARGIONI TOZZETTI, Ottaviano.-Nacque a Firenze il 10 febbraio 1755, primo figlio di Giovanni (v. la voce in questo Dizionario), medico e scienziato, e di Maria Brigida Dandini. Dopo aver frequentato il liceo Cicognini a Prato, seguì le orme paterne laureandosi a Pisa in medicina e fisica nel 1776. Tornato a Firenze, prese servizio all'ospedale di S. Maria Nuova e fu allievo di Giovanni Lapi, lettore di botanica presso lo Studio fiorentino o presso la scuola di farmacia annessa al nosocomio fiorentino. Gli interessi di Targioni Tozzetti si orientarono rapidamente verso la botanica occupandosi della cura dell'orto di S. Maria Nuova. Alla morte del padre, nel 1783, si trovò a gestire il grande archivio familiare, con le carte e l'erbario di Pier Antonio Micheli, gli appunti e le carte del padre, e la vasta raccolta di minerali, fossili e altri oggetti di storia naturale che componevano il Museo targioniano-oggi in gran parte raccolti e conservati nelle varie sezioni del Museo di storia naturale dell'Università di Firenze. Le difficoltà economiche che il giovane Targioni Tozzetti doveva affrontare per mantenere l'enorme patrimonio paterno lo spinsero, come suggerito dal tutore dei figli del granduca, Sigismondo di Hochenwart, a richiedere di subentrare a tutti gli uffici del padre tranne quello di bibliotecario della Magliabechiana e l'incarico ufficiale di soprintendente di Lapi al giardino di S. Maria Nuova.

di Daniele Vergari-Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani-Volume 95 (2019) TARGIONI TOZZETTI, Adolfo.-Nacque a Firenze il 13 febbraio 1823 da Giovanni, secondogenito di Ottaviano e fratello di Antonio, e da Elena Ferrati. Il padre, avvocato e magistrato, lo avviò agli studi scientifici presso l'Università di Pisa dove si laureò in medicina nel 1848, frequentando le lezioni di botanica e quelle di anatomia comparata tenute prima da Gaetano Savi e poi da Paolo e Pietro Savi. Il giovane Targioni Tozzetti trovò nello studio della botanica e della fisiologia un campo di interessi particolarmente stimolante tanto che, appena ventenne, partecipò alla Riunione degli scienziati italiani di Lucca (1843), tenendo una relazione sulla fronda dei pini e una sull'organo femminile del genere Citrus. Nel 1845 prese parte anche al Congresso di Napoli, sempre in compagnia dello zio Antonio con il quale ebbe sempre uno stretto rapporto di amicizia e confidenza, e nel quale ebbe un maestro e una guida sicura per affermarsi nel mondo scientifico italiano. Tornato a Firenze nel 1848, iniziò a esercitare medicina presso l'arcispedale di S. Maria nuova, ma l'attività di medico, ormai consolidata tradizione familiare da più di un secolo, non fu per Adolfo particolarmente coinvolgente. Dopo pochi anni, alcuni dei quali passati a fare il medico condotto-e nei quali segnaliamo l'attività in occasione del colera del 1854-55 nella zona di Viareggio-, abbandonò la professione per dedicarsi all'insegnamento e allo studio. Lo zio Antonio, per problemi di salute,

This is a pdf of the whole monograph.
The World of Carolus Clusius. Natural History in the Making, 1550-1610 explores how natural history in Europe, and in particular the knowledge of plants, was transformed during the late 16th and very early 17th centuries into a field of professional expertise, a budding scientific discipline. This book presents not a history of ideas, publications or institutions, however, but a cultural and social history of people’s fascination with nature and the transformation of knowledge during this period. The formation of expertise is studied through its practical manifestations – gardening, collecting plants and animals, botanical field research, and exchanging knowledge – and the personalities involved in them.

In the 16 th century the arrival of new exotic plants from the Americas and the Orient enriched the panorama of medicines that were sold by the Italian pharmacies. The increase of knowledge on the therapeutic virtues of new foreign plants suggested to the contemporaries great caution before adding them to the classical texts of Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen and the Arab medieval authors. In the 17 th century we witnessed a further increase in the use of these plants and the pharmacopoeias, which contained many medicinal preparations based on exotic plants, absent in the classical texts. However, the scientific paradigm in which European medicine operated remained throughout this period linked to the classic environment, and thus, medicine was unable to face the causes of major epidemics that afflicted the populations in those two centuries. The plague, syphilis, pneumonia, smallpox and infections were to go on being the scourges that could not be fought other than in a marginal way. Only for malaria, a new plant arriving from South America had an important impact: the Cinchona tree. Too little for a period that was full of progress in science.

The plants individually described in Manuscript MS408 have all been identified as species from the environs of the Mediterranean Basin, in accordance with the location of origin for the manuscript. This series of papers presents each plant species separately with a translation of its accompanying text and any relevant cross-reference information. In addition to the linguistic value, there is plenty of historical, cultural and scientific knowledge to be gleaned from each of these manuscript pages, so they will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines.