Pictures of Plants Illustrating Exotic Collections

Pictures of Plants Illustrating Exotic CollectionsAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 129-144Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/532149 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 08:30

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Royal Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes and Records ofthe Royal Society of London.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.44 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:30:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rsl

http://www.jstor.org/stable/532149?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 55 (1), 129-144 (2001)

PICTURES OF PLANTS ILLUSTRATING EXOTIC COLLECTIONS

by

SIR ALAN COOK, ER.S.

8 Wootton Way, Cambridge CB3 9LX, UK ([email protected])

The study of plants was nothing new when The Royal Society was founded, but some of our earliest Fellows changed it drastically. Perhaps they did not do this as suddenly or as completely as did Newton for dynamics, but in the long run they had at least as great an influence on views of the natural world and how to study it. Did God create all the great variety of plants no one (in Europe) had ever seen before, and if so why? Plants brought back by explorers, especially from North America, and plants looked at in the microscope, together with the taxonomic system constructed by Linnaeus, replaced the plants grown in monastic gardens and their successors in public botanic gardens, and the study of plants for purely medicinal uses.

John Ray, F.R.S., while still a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, collected plants around Cambridge, and compiled a catalogue of them. A keen traveller, he later extended his investigations around the whole country. Finally, after resigning his fellowship at Trinity, he accompanied his patron, Francis Willughby, on an extensive tour of Europe, from the Low Countries through German lands to Switzerland, then into Italy, and finally the south of France. In his account of his travels, he listed all the plants he had found, but did not illustrate them. He was also interested in the universities he visited and gave particulars of their courses and professors. Unfortunately, his stay in Montpellier was cut short when Louis XIV gave English people two months to leave France, so he has left us no account of the university at Montpellier, but only a list of plants he collected in that region.'

As adventurers and settlers travelled to India, the Indies, China, the East and West Indies, and North America, they brought back a great range of hitherto unknown plants as dried specimen and seeds. The Royal Society had from the first close connections with the colonies in North America, with Mathers and Winthrops among the early Fellows. It happens that explorations of the English settlements in North America, such as the Carolinas and Maryland, began more or less at the time of the foundation of The Royal Society, and plant collecting was promoted by early Fellows, especially Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane himself began his collections when, as a young physician, he went in the service of the Duke of Albermarle to Jamaica. From then on he took every opportunity to enlarge his collections, and after his death his plants came to the British Museum, and thence to the Natural History Museum and Kew. Plants from many of the seeds were propagated at the Chelsea gardens.

British associations with American botany declined after the War of Independence, but members of the Federal Government of the United States encouraged plant collecting in the course of expeditions to the West, and some of our garden flowers

129

© 2001 The Royal Society



Sir Alan Cook

today recall explorers. For example, Lewisia is named for Lewis, of Lewis and Clarke, and Fremontodendron, which bears its brilliant yellow flowers so well in Cambridge, for Fremont of California.2

The growth of collections was matched by the publication of splendid books of pictures of the newly discovered plants, and the Society's Library has some fine ones. We reproduce a few illustrations to demonstrate the Society's connection with the florescene of botany, especially from the New World of North America.

Mark Catesby, F.R.S., was himself an active traveller and collector, and he published his own Hortus Europeae Americanus3 from which his plates, number 2 from Pennsylvania, 35-38 from Virginia and 84 from Maryland, are reproduced.

Plants from Virginia, Maryland and Carolina, many collected by Catesby, are shown in the Historia Plantarum Rariorum of Martyn.4 Martyn's book was licensed by The Royal Society 'Imprimatur, Sir Hans Sloane', and many of the plates were apparently paid for by subscribers, among them Boerhaave, Stephen Hales and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Fine books were also published in Europe, and the Library has a splendid example from Nuremberg, the Plantae selectae of C.J. Trews,5 the title page of which is reproduced. The illustrations are by the noted artist, Giorgio Dionysius Ehret. Whole plants are not common in these illustrated books and the cedar (Plate LXI) is a magnificent exception.

Last, the Library has in its manuscript collection (MS 668) a set of illustrations by Ehret and Van Huysum, of unknown provenance.

NOTES

1 J. Ray, Observations Topographical, Moral, Physiological, Made in a Journey Through the Low Countries ... With a Catalogue of Plants (London, John Martyn, 1673).

2 J. L. Reveal, America s Botanical Beauty, Illustrations from the Library of Congress (Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO, 1996).

3 M. Catesby, Hortus Europeae Americanus (London, J. Millan, 1767). 4 J. Martyn, Historia Plantarum Rariorum (London, Reily, 1728). 5 C.J. Trews, Plantae Selectae (Norimbergensis, 1750).

130



Plants illustrating exotic collections

j,/ . I P i a ,L:,.

131

T04 , -i9S,,,

*1

0,

"'

Figure 1. Magnoliaflore albo, of Pennsylvania. Plate 2 of Mark Catesby's Hortus Europeae Americanus (1767). (Royal Society Library.)

tyS9^ K:-^ :f .9 j ! ; . , - .. lw I 4 _ -

Figure 2. Plates 35-38 of Mark Catesby's Hortus Europeae Americanus. Plate 35 (top right), The Rock Rose of Pennsylvania. Plate 36 (top left), The Ivy-Tree. Plate 37 (bottom right). The Pellitory,

or Tooth-ach-tree. Plate 38 (bottom left), Anonafructu lutescente. (Royal Society Library.)



Sir Alan Cook

Figure 3. Palmeto-Tree, Carolina. Plate 84 of Mark Catesby's Hortus Europeae Americanus. (Royal Society Library.)

132

*4

' M.




z It, vi.tMtani t, / ratntm?b * /e4r, >, wts y { ' , prt f: At /w frZ4cir I A

Figure 4. Aster virginianus, Virginia, collected by Mark Catesby. Plate facing p. 19 of Joannes Martyn's Historia Plantarum Rariorum (1728), subscriber Francis Lister.

(Royal Society Library.)

133



134 Sir Alan Cook

-

' t . W. , Af ^

Figure 5. Corona solis Caroliniana, collected by Catesby. Plate facing p. 20 of Joannes Martyn's Historia Plantarum Rariorum, subscriber Stephen Hales. (Royal Society Library.)




v* /t01/u@ /f4/44 /l t . lt.tiy ' , /n b //t..fw/ f ' W l t4tf tv/I. /twyww.

'"

^'n w 4" //4hIz 1 P V4Mia

* r ~iiset 8tc9St 4} *%Y~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 1o*MdI/XAk/I/Mtt ihO'/ 41v4/W^ -?ft M -

:/

. 4/,

It

I:i ;e"'/' / ,' '

- .'' '.- ... .. .

;

Y;

f, q | !a | t:t ( Yli /l

bw t 'n h fe4 s A t 4AiW f c 1wr., / a , / / //^#t flt 41 t/f* IAU^ ̂ i S/ i^ U t 7 ? d A t

/W5?W'1"""1- ^" '

.~ZNA4^f-

I{22/^j#Xt}0 W/ . ff I ) 8 # AI I' I ,

. A4. SA P

Figure 6. Amanita. Plate facing p. 31 of Martyn's Historia Plantarum Rariorum, Decas III, subscriber Georgio Clifford. (Royal Society Library.)

135

©

do .S.,,

> . t *,.+,G ?' , Q

x~~~; gt> 2S ; tS.

n :P

9: ~ ·~;~~: C~ ~:. 2c.:..

,~~~~~~~~~~~:'i't :iV^~ ....

: / I/'



Sir Alan Cook

PLANTAE SELECTAE QNARA LnCAGINT,S

AD EXPLARIA NATVSRALIA

LO)NNI IN HORTIS CVRIOSORVA NVTRITA

MANV AR 'L CIOSA DOCTAQVE PINXIT

GEORGIVS DIONYSIVS LHRET

GERM31ANXVS OCCASIONE F^LWD V\WLGCARI (OLLE(Tar

NOMINIBS PROPRIIS NOTISQVE VE SVIIE ILL'BTITIT

ET PVBLICO VSYI DICAVIT

D.CHRISTOPHOKVS IACOBVS TRlNVV

3]EDICVS NOR1IBERGENSIS IN AES INCIDIT

ET N'VIS COLORIBVrS REPRLESENTAVIT

IOAN'NES IACOBVS'4 HAID)

PICTOR ET CH^ALCO(GRAPIW Aiv-'STAVS

DECWRIA I A.R.S. 2WDCCL.

Figure 7. Title page from Plantae Selectae (1750) by Trew. (Royal Society Library.)

136




,5 rr

F NdNAS am4iitms, ' I i;,, (IY l

Figure 8. Ananas aculeatus. Plate II of Trew's Plantae Selectae, Decuria I. (Royal Society Library.)

137

r



138 ~~~~~~Sir Alan Cook

-J IT

Nll

Figure 9. Ananas folio vix serrato. Plate III of Trew's Plantae Selectae, Decuria I. (Royal Society Library.)

138



Plants illustrating exotic collections 139

0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?- ~,'.k

_~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~_w. ~:D

~~~~~i~~~~ K- t

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~., .. ...', :'~ |SE

.~;.w X =s

2X

C)



140 Sir Alan Cook

p ;:: :00C) ) X / X t T ^ t t X

S:9 iit

:

....'» ' t r.. t

a. te XI oTe a a , D feua I I

.

aFit 1X .S.A 4 Hu, T'b .

<wA_ 1fft_,# t //_ { < F ¢tt * W c~# /_ o*A,,wt .XXZm ^e/iww twY Av'

J'A A S:' . .

Figure 11. Magnolia. Plate XXXIII of Trew's Plantae Selectae, Decuria III. Fig. 1, Hurae, Tab.

XXXIVfloris fructusque partes. Fig. 2, Magnoliae Tab. XXXIII floris fructusque partes. (Royal Society Library.)



Plants illustrating exotic collections 141

,a .' y,I I-W.

tv&ews e£'tt ia. //^ usa,*.: m fjzje4~c' .4.t, ?At sitR M"41 pan -fx/itMfu,^sf,*,»^"A d.tAm .-A& ; r&,(4/ . n 6fM^tii j.«% li'l. M'* t.I tAwv4 sQWtiA'e i 7 .o A ''+

q#;gM)6WdP f S [r^ wd{.H£g#*MwiVJ-i6*/i io.2 s t*F_+.,titft>w.> *w.

Figure 12. Cedrusfoliis rigidis acutis. Plate LXI of Trew's Plantae Selectae, Decuria VII. (Royal Society Library.)

i J S j

i I

:#

10ir

t

i1



Sir Alan Cook

,c2'y/ ~tff/k ,"~ ?t nita .3 [t[ 1 e 4t i! ftta iIf¥1

gri:f- Alcfflcml

.fictrisLAwrwa nf Im//t'6 e*2 /

pa/ate cc~iriu/wt~a $trr~klf Irr6~#t% * n*$7

Figure 13. Symphytum S. Pulmonaria non maculata. Page 1 from Drawings ofplants (MS 668) by G.D. Ehret. (Royal Society Library.)

142




N ,

//Y>,if

Figure 14. Aloe Africana. Page 8, from Drawings ofplants (MS 668) by G.D. Ehret. (Royal Society Library.)

143



Sir Alan Cook

.^ ffk nA~ tUW il i I ff W w^t Iw ddI-fSIAV H'A-

,P°r

7

0»

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i. '1 li I C_ ~ ~~~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~ ";'t / F

,

I

Figure 15. Aloe Africana. Page 9, from Drawings ofplants (MS 668) by Van Huysum. (Royal Society Library.)

144

i



Documents

Pictures of Plants Illustrating Exotic Collections