ALBERTUS MAGNUS c.l200-1280
Dominican monk and writer who c.l256 produced De vegetabilibus. Like Aristotle, concerned about the notion of a soul, or psyche in living things. The first writer since Theophrastus to enquire into the nature of plants.
ALDROVANDI, ULYSSE 1522-1605
Italian plantsman, who studied under Luca Ghini. In 1550 founded a natural history museum in Bologna. In 1557, made a historic journey to the Sibylline mountains, the first expedition ever arranged with the specific purpose of collecting and recording the plants of a particular area. Curator of the botanic garden at Bologna and centre of a wide network of contacts, which included the Papal envoy, Bishop Rossano in Madrid. His letters to his contemporary, Mattioli, cover a span of twenty-two years.
ALPINO, PROSPERO 1553-1617
Italian doctor who accompanied Venetian consul to Egypt. First European to write of the coffee plant, which he had seen growing in Cairo. His De plantis Aegypti published 1592. Succeeded to chair of botany at Padua, created by Venetian republic in 1533. Introduced the fan palm (Chamaerops humilis) at Padua.
ANGUILLARA, LUIGI c.l512-1570
Studied under Luca Ghini. Travelled widely in the Levant, the Aegean and Crete. Custodian of the botanic garden in Padua. Subject of fierce attack by Mattioli, after he (Anguillara) had presumed to question some of his fellow Italian’s attributions. Eventually forced to resign his post at Padua and retreat to Ferrara.
ARISTOTLE 384 BC-322 BC
Greek philosopher who studied under Plato at the Academy. In 342 BC summoned to Macedonia to act as tutor to Alexander, later the Great. After Plato’s death, founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. Wrote the book on animals (Historia animalium) that inspired Theophrastus, his pupil, to produce a similar work on plants.
AVICENNA AD 980-1037
Personal physician to many rulers in the East. His Qanun, translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century, remained a standard medical textbook for 500 years after his death. It contained details of c.650 plants.
BARBARO, ERMOLAO 1453/4-1493
Teacher of rhetoric and poetics at Padua and Venice. Venetian ambassador to the Holy See. One of the first scholars to question the absolute authority of the classical authors such as Pliny and Dioscorides. His Castigationes Plinianae was published in 1492-3 and his Corollarium Dioscorides in 1516.
BAUHIN, GASPARD 1560-1624
The younger of the Swiss Bauhin brothers whose work gave Protestant Europe an overall view of the flora of Europe and the means to accurately identify plants. Gaspard, who studied medicine at Basel and Padua, was later appointed professor of medicine at the University of Basel. Described c.6,000 plants in his Pinax theatri botanici (1623).
BAUHIN, JEAN 1541-1613
Studied under Fuchs at Tubingen and Rondelet at Montpellier before becoming private physician to the Duke of Wurtemberg at Montbelliard. His Historia universalis plantarum (finished by 1613 but published posthumously in 1650-51) contained descrptions of c.5,000 plants but failed to build on Cesalpino’s profound thinking.
BELON, PIERRE 1517-1564
French nurseryman and traveller whose garden at Touvoie, near Le Mans, contained an important collection of foreign trees and shrubs, including the cedar of Lebanon and the first tobacco plants that anyone in France had ever seen. In 1546 he began a three-year journey through the Levant; his account Les Observations de Plusieurs Singularites (1553) provided a vivid first-hand account of his experiences.
BOBART, JACOB c.l599-1680
Gardener, then director (horti praefectus) of the botanic garden set up in Oxford in 1621. In 1648 he issued an important Catalogus plantarum listing the plants that grew in the garden, modelled on one that Jean Robin had prepared for Louis XIII.
BRASAVOLA, ANTONIO MUSA 1500-1555
Pioneering Italian scholar and plantsman whom William Turner acknowledged as ‘som tyme my master in Ferraria’. Personal physician to Duke Hercules II of Ferrara. His Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum (1536) a discourse on the identity of Dioscorides’s plants, is cast as a conversation between the author and two characters, whom he calls Senex and Herbarius. It was one of the most popular tracts of its day.
BRUNFELS, OTTO 1488-1534
Carthusian monk who converted to the Lutheran cause. Studied at University of Basel and practised as a doctor in Strasbourg. Author of Herbarum vivae eicones published 1530-36, but outshone by his illustrator, Hans Weiditz (q.v.).
BUSBECQ, OGIER GHISELIN DE 1521-1592
Ambassador sent by the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople. Avid collector of precious artefacts and plants, which he sent back to Europe. It was possibly he who brought Juliana’a precious book for the Imperial Library in Vienna. He was responsible, too, for introducing the tulip into Western Europe.
CAMERARIUS, JOACHIM 1500-1574
Taught at the University of Leipzig. One of the few people Leonhart Fuchs admired and trusted. ‘Would that such an adversary were my lot more often,’ he wrote to Camerarius in 1541-2, ‘one with whom I can argue about truth in a friendly and brotherly way’
CESALPINO, ANDREA 1519-1603
Brilliant Italian plantsman who studied under Luca Ghini at Bologna and later succeeded him as curator of the botanic garden at Pisa. Made a fine herbarium (1563) in which plants are laid out according to similarities in fruit and seed. His book De plantis libri xvi (1583) is the first serious attempt since Theophrastus to find a system of sorting and ordering plants in meaningful groups.
CLUSIUS, CAROLUS (Charles de I’Ecluse) 1526-1609
Studied briefly under Rondelet at Montpellier. Travelled widely in Spain and Portugal, describing the plants he had seen in his Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatorum historia (1576). Later travels took him to Germany, Austria and Hungary (1580). Professor of botany at University of Leiden (1593), where he brought his famed collection of plants and established a botanic garden.
CORDUS, EURICIUS 1486-1535
Born at Siemershausen, Hesse, the thirteenth child of a family of peasants. In 1521 studied medicine at Ferrara in Italy. From his base at the newly founded Lutheran university of Marburg, published a reforming Botanologicon (1534), prompted by his concern that ingredients in apothecaries’ shops, the raw materials of their medicines, were often wrongly labelled.
CORDUS, VALERIUS 1515-1544
Son of Euricius who ‘had reared the child even from the cradle in the midst of herbs and flowers’. Studied at Padua, Ferrara and Bologna where he met Luca Ghini. ‘While still a youth, explained to men the working of Nature and the powers of plants.’ Highly regarded by his contemporaries but was kicked by his horse and died of a fever in Rome before his potential could be realised. His Annotationes in pedacii Dioscoridis (1561) contained an account of c.500 plants.
COYS, WILLIAM c.l560-1627
Had a well-known garden with 342 different kinds of plant at Stubbers, North Ockendon, Essex, where in 1604 the yucca bloomed for the first time in England. Firmly stitched into the sixteenth-century network of plant enthusiasts, a correspondant of Goodyer and Lobelius. Had fruitful relationship with the plant collector William Boel who passed on specimens that he had found in Spain.
DIOSCORIDES, PEDANIOS AD 40–??
Greek physician and author, who studied in Alexandria before joining the Roman army as a doctor. Compiled medical treatise De materia medica [c. AD 77) which drew widely on local knowledge and traditions. For the next 1,500 years, widely regarded (with Pliny) as the ultimate authority on medicinal plants.
DODOENS, REMBERT 1517-1585
French physician and author. Studied medicine at Louvain, before visiting universities in Italy and Germany. Court physician to the Emperor Maximilian II at Vienna. Appointed to chair of medicine at Leiden (1582). His Cruydeboeck (1554) with 715 illustrations, was published in Flemish by Jan van der Loe of Antwerp.
DURER, ALBRECHT 1471-1528
Painter and master engraver of the German Renaissance. ‘Be guided by nature,’ he wrote. ‘Do not depart from it, thinking that you can do better yourself His piece of turf painted c.l 503, was the most extraordinary mirror of the natural world that any artist had ever produced.
FUCHS, LEONHART 1501-1566
Professor of medicine at the Protestant University at Tubingen, Germany. Author of De historia stirpium (1542), better written, but not so well illustrated as Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones published twelve years earlier. Splenetic, opinionated, he died before publishing the mammoth encyclopaedia that occupied the last twenty-four years of his life.
GALEN CLAUDIUS, AD 130-C.200
Greek author and physician, who studied at Alexandria and travelled in Asia Minor. Became personal physician to the emperor, Marcus Aurelius. The first man to arrange his written material in alphabetical order. But he made drugs, not plants, his starting point, so the order related to medicines, not the plants from which they were made.
GARRETT, JAMES fl. 1590s-1610
Apothecary and plantsman, one of the clever group of Flemish Huguenots who ‘came for religion’ and settled permanently in London. In his garden at London Wall, Garrett grew the first tulips seen in England. Warned printer John Norton of the many failings of Gerard’s Herball.
GERARD, JOHN 1545-1612
Describes himself as ‘master of Chirurgerie’; Warden of Company of Barber-Surgeons (1597) becoming Master in 1608. Had a garden in Holborn, London, ‘the little plot of myne own espe-ciall care and husbandry’; supervised Lord Burghley’s gardens in the Strand and was curator of the College of Physicians’ garden. Author of the famous, but flawed Herball (1597).
GESNER, CONRAD 1516-1565
Brilliant young Swiss scholar and encyclopaedist who was almost as familiar with Germany, France and Italy as with his homeland. Died before he could publish the monumental Historia plantarum which occupied the last ten years of his life. Amassed a collection of c.l,500 illustrations of plants, some executed by himself all heavily annotated with habitats, synonyms and detailed description. The greatest might-have-been of the naming of names.
GHINI, LUCA 1490-1556
Gifted teacher who inspired an entire generation of plantsmen. In 1544, moved from the university at Bologna to Pisa where he set up a botanic garden, a resource centre for the medical students of the Medici’s new university. Pioneered the preparation and use of the hortus siccus or herbarium as a tool for the better study of plants. Universally admired in the plant world - a rare trait.
GOODYER, JOHN 1592-1664
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and fine plantsman with a garden in Hampshire where he grew many exotics. Helped Johnson with a new edition of Gerard’s Herball. Made a painstaking interlinear translation of Dioscorides, the first version in English.
GREW, NEHEMIAH 1641-1712
A pioneer in the anatomy of plants and Secretary of the Royal Society 1677-9. Slightly younger than John Ray but equally committed to the idea of turning the study of plants into a scientific discipline. His seminal work Anatomy of Plants was published in 1682.
JOHNSON, THOMAS c.l600-1644
Pioneering apothecary with a shop on Snow Hill in the City of London. Arranged the earliest plant-hunting excursions ever made in England, a first step towards compiling a British flora. Edited a new edition of John Gerard’s flawed Herball. Died in the Civil War, fighting for the king.
JOSSELYN, JOHN fl. 1630s-1670s
An early emigrant from England to Massachussetts, arriving first in July 1638. His New England’s Rarities Discovered (1672) described the natural wonders of the New World for English readers.
LATIMER, HUGH c.l485-1555
English reformer and priest, whose sermons made Cambridge a pioneering centre of the Reformation in England. Twice sent to the Tower during Henry VIII’s reign and twice reprieved. Condemned as a heretic by Queen Mary and burned at the stake together with the Bishops Ridley and Cranmer.
LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519
Italian painter, sculptor, engineer and architect, enrolled in the Florence painters’ guild by the time he was twenty. Made some of the earliest physiotypes, coating the leaves of plants with the soot produced by a candle flame. Pressed on sheets of paper, they showed the leaf’s intricate structure of veins and supporting ribs.
LEONICENO, NICOLO 1428-1524
Professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara. In 1492, published Indications of Errors in Pliny and in Several other Authors who have Written on Medicinal Simples and so became the first man to cast doubt on the veracity of the classical canon.
LINNAEUS, CARL VON LINNE 1707-1778
Swedish naturalist and taxonomist, who successfully imposed a universal system on the nomenclature of plants, using a binomial system of genus followed by the species. Evidently unaware of the fact that, in the famous portrait of him in Lapland costume, he is wearing a woman’s dress.
LOBELIUS (MATTHIAS DE L’OBEL) 1538-1616
Flemish scholar and plantsman who, after studying under Rondelet at Montpellier, travelled in Europe with his friend Pierre Pena. Finally settled permanently in England, dedicating his Stirpium adversaria nova (1570) to Elizabeth I. Appointed superintendent of Edward Zouche’s garden in Hackney, then (in 1607) herbalist to James I.
LYTE, HENRY 1529-1607
English landowner (he lived at Lyte’s Cary, Somerset) and plantsman, one of a long line of British amateur botanists. Travelled on the continent and translated into English the French edition of Dodoens’s herbal. It appeared in 1578 as the Niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes.
MATTIOLI, PIER ANDREA 1501-1577
Unlike most other Italian scholars of the age, he never taught, but made the most of his prestigious position as personal physician to Emperor Ferdinand I. By nature a compiler, a recorder, not an original thinker. Nevertheless, his famous book, Commentarii in VI Libros Pedacii Dioscoridis was a wildly successful bestseller, appearing in sixty-one different editions.
MONARDES, NICOLAS 1493-1588
Spanish physician who, in his Dos libros (1569), provided the first detailed description of New World plants, including tobacco and coca. His work was translated into English by John Frampton as Joy full news out of the newe founde worlde (1577).
MORGAN, HUGH/7. 1540s-1613
Queen Elizabeth’s personal apothecary who between 1569 and 1587 had a well-known garden at Coleman Street in the City of London. ‘A curious conserver of simples’ wrote his contemporary, John Gerard. Kept in touch with the sea captains who brought their ships into the Port of London. Through them, he became better acquainted with plants of the West Indies than anyone else in Britain. Friend of Turner’s whose first sight of mistletoe was in Morgan’s shop.
MORGUES, JACQUES LE MOYNE DE c.l533-1588
Flemish Huguenot painter with a particular interest in plants. In 1564, as cartographer and artist-recorder, joined exploratory expedition to Florida. When Spaniards attacked the Huguenot colony there, de Morgues escaped and returned to France. Later settled in London, part of the large Huguenot influx.
MORISON, ROBERT 1620-1683
First professor of res herbaria at Oxford (1669) having previously gardened for Gaston d’Orleans at Blois (1650-60). His Plantarum umbelliferarum (1672), planned as the first monograph on a specific group of plants, failed to find sufficient subscribers and was never completed. Knocked down by a coach in the Strand, London and died of his wounds.
ORTA, GARCIA DE c. 1490-1570
Portuguese physician who in 1534 sailed for Goa, where he stayed for more than thirty years. His Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas medicinais da India (1563) is an account of the plants and medicines he discovered there. Translated by Clusius fom Portuguese into Latin (1567).
PARKINSON, JOHN 1567-1650
Apothecary to James I, with a garden in Long Acre, London. His Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (1629) with its punning Park-in-sun title, was followed by the Theatrum botanicum (1640). This ‘Theater of Plants … distributed into sundry classes or Tribes’ contained descriptions of 3,800 plants, twice as many as Gerard had included in his Herball. Parkinson’s book marked the end of the herbal tradition.
PLANTIN, CHRISTOPHE c.l520-1589
Emigrated from Touraine to Antwerp, where he established himself as the most successful printer of the age. Amassed vast collection of woodblock illustrations of plants. Published many of the important plant books produced in the second half of the sixteenth century, written by French and Flemish authors such as Dodoens, Clusius, and Lobelius.
PLATTER, FELIX 1536-1614
Left a vivid account of his years as a medical student at Montpellier, at a time of religious upheaval in the Languedoc. Studied under Rondelet and became a renowned physician in his home town, Basel. In later life, acquired the drawings that Hans Weiditz had made for Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones.
PLINY THE ELDER AD 23-79
Roman soldier, cavalry commander and author (c. AD 77) of a Historia naturalis, an encyclopaedic ragbag of information about science, art, plants, animals with digressions on human inventions and institutions. Throughout the Middle Ages it remained an important, over-valued source. Pliny died investigating the eruption of Vesuvius at Pompeii.
RAY, JOHN 1627-1705
Produced a British flora, published finally in 1670 as Catalogus plantarum Angliae. Studies in the field encouraged by Royal Society, newly set up in 1660. Made several long trips to Europe with his friend Sir Francis Willughby. Strove (in parallel with Tournefort in France) to create a watertight system of nomenclature for plants. His Synopsis methodica of 1690 was the distillation of a lifetime’s search for order in the natural world.
RIDLEY, NICHOLAS c.l500-1555
Bishop of London and martyr, an important member of the group of Cambridge reformers who met regularly at the White Horse Inn to argue about religion. Tutor to William Turner to whom he taught Greek, tennis and archery. Believed in justice, reason and the church’s duty to defend the oppressed. Argued against the superstition and nepotism of the Catholic Church. Burned at the stake by order of Mary, Queen of Scots.
ROBIN, JEAN 1550-1629
Arboriste et simpliciste to Henri III of France. Directed gardens at the Louvre and established network of useful contacts in England, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Established a fine collection of plants in his garden on the lie de la Cite, ‘at the signe of the blacke head in the street called Du Bout du Monde’.
RONDELET, GUILLAUME 1507-1566
Practised as a doctor in the Auvergne before his appointment to the medical faculty at the University of Montpellier in the Languedoc. Like Ghini, a charismatic teacher, gathering around him a clutch of brilliant students. Many of them were Protestants, unable to study in Paris or at other Catholic-controlled universities.
TEODORO OF GAZA C.1398-C.1478
A native of Thessalonica who opened a school in Constantinople c. 1422. Fled to Italy as Sultan Murad II laid siege to the city. Called to Rome to assist in the translation of ancient texts in the Vatican Library. Spent five years working on Aristotle’s treatise on animals and Theophrastus’s on plants. The translation was finally published in Treviso in 1483.
THEOPHRASTUS c.372 BC-287 BC
Greek philosopher, who studied under Aristotle. After Aristotle’s death he took over as head of the Peripatetic School at the Lyceum in Athens. The first person to write down descriptions of plants in terms of their similarities and differences. His Historia plantarum and Causae plantarum were translated in 1916 by Sir Arthur Hort as Enquiry into Plants.
TOURNEFORT, JOSEPH PITTON DE 1656-1708
Studied at Montpellier under Pierre Magnol and then travelled widely in Spain and the Pyrenees. Professor of res herbaria in Paris by 1683. His Elemens de botanique (1694) classifies plants according to the form of the corolla. The system prevailed, until superceded by Linnaeus’s arrangement.
TURNER, WILLIAM c.l508-1568
Cleric and plantsman, called ‘the father of English botany’ because he was the first Englishman to write (in English) a decent book on plants. His Names of Herbes (1548) was followed by a New Herball (1551-64). Fiercely Protestant and twice forced to flee England on account of his religious views, always trenchantly expressed.
WEIDITZ, HANS before 1500-C.1536
Draughtsman and engraver. Studied under Albrecht Dürer and, with his illustrations for Otto Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones, produced the first lifelike portraits of plants to appear in a printed book.