Plant hunter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plant hunters (from English plant hunter ) or plant collectors were explorers who brought ornamental and useful plants from America , Asia and Australia to Europe , especially in the 17th , 18th and 19th centuries . There the plants were cared for and researched in botanical gardens and often found their way into local gardens .

history

Most of our indoor and ornamental plants come from far away regions . The first collecting trip to import exotic plants was the expedition of Pharaoh Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC to the land of Punt , from where incense was brought in the form of potted plants. In the late Middle Ages , plants like horse chestnuts and tulips came to Europe from the Orient ; the latter triggered the so-called tulip fever in the Netherlands in the 1630s .

The 18th century

In the 18th century, the colonial power of England in particular collected plants and animals and expanded Kew Garden into a research garden .

1766–1768, on the first French circumnavigation of the world under Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville , the botanist Philibert Commerson who was traveling with him discovered, among other things, the bougainvillea , a container plant that is still popular today. This trip also shaped the European image of the South Seas as an untouched natural paradise.

On his first circumnavigation of the world, Captain James Cook was accompanied by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander . Their main collection area south of present-day Sydney is still called Botany Bay . Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798) and his son Georg (1754–1794) explored South Africa , New Zealand and the South Seas on Captain James Cook's second circumnavigation. Among other things, they imported the “magic myrtle” ( Manuka , Leptospermum scoparium ). Joseph Banks, in turn, set up his own business as an organizer of plant expeditions and sent Francis Masson to South Africa, from where he brought 50 different geraniums with him. We owe the Chilean araucaria ( Araucaria araucana ) to Archibald Menzies .

The reports of these trips became popular reading, and botany became a popular hobby among the upper classes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote ten botanical lesson letters to the little daughter of a friend, in which he describes the basics of collecting plants and herbarizing .

Curtis' Botanical Magazine was published for the first time in 1787 and dealt exclusively with exotic plants and their adventurous origins.

The 19th and 20th centuries

In the 19th century, plant hunters increasingly became a professional title, and the discovery of new species became commercialized.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) traveled to Central and South America and was interested in the connection between tropical habitats. He brought the cardinal lobelia ( Lobelia cardinalis ) and the dahlia to Europe.

Adelbert von Chamisso , poet and naturalist, accompanied the Rumjanzewsche Rurik expedition across the Arctic Ocean to the South Pacific and introduced the California poppy ( Eschscholzia californica ).

David Douglas (1799-1834) collected for the Royal Horticultural Society between 1823 and 1834 in New England the Douglas fir ( Pseudotsuga menziesii ), Mahonia aquifolium , the currant and the multi-leaved lupine ( Lupinus polyphyllus ) as well as species of fir ( coastal fir Abies grandis , silver fir ) Abies procera ). He died in Hawaii when he was killed in an animal trap by an angry bull .

Only a few of the collected plants arrived alive, sometimes only one in a thousand. From 1834, the Ward 's box, a kind of small greenhouse, developed by the English doctor Nathaniel Ward was used . There was a closed water cycle inside the glass box , and it was now possible to transport more sensitive plants such as ferns or orchids , which soon became a main field of activity in plant hunting.

Collective expeditions in Japan and China also became increasingly possible, especially with the end of the Opium Wars .

Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866) traveled on behalf of the Dutch between 1823 and 1829 to Japan, which is difficult to access. He described numerous Japanese plant species, including several hydrangeas . The garden hydrangea , of which he described several varieties, had already been described by his predecessor Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) as the first.

Robert Fortune , a Scot , spent 19 years collecting plants for the Royal Horticultural Society in China such as winter jasmine ( Jasminum nudiflorum ), bleeding heart ( Dicentra spectabilis ), mahonia , forsythia , rhododendrons and conifers such as the crescent fir ( Cryptomeria japonica ) and today False cypresses ( Chamaecyparis spp. ) popular in the garden

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) sparked a craze for rhododendrons in England after collecting in the Darjiling area .

Carl Albert Purpus (1851–1941) was a professional hunter and gatherer at a time when the growing need for garden plants meant that the original stocks were already threatened with extinction. He worked in Mexico and, among other things, sent a Queen of the Night , who has survived there to this day, to the Darmstadt Botanical Garden .

Ernest Wilson (1876–1930) was sent to China to look for the pigeon tree ( Davidia involucrata ); He had no more than an oral description and a very simple map on battered paper. When he finally found the place described, there was a newly built wooden house and the stump of a tree. He finally found one by chance, and the bamboo umbrella ( Fargesia murielae ) and the royal lily ( Lilium regale ) as well.

Frank Kingdon Ward (1885–1958) traveled through the Himalayas and brought rhododendrons, camellias , primroses and irises with him.

The Chinese plants soon drove the American flora out of our gardens because, unlike them, the Asian plants were hardy.

The explorers of England were mostly sent on the royal order (Royal Horticultural Society), in Germany that was not so easy. The Hamburg company Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn hired explorers from 1860 to 1878 in order to equip their own Godeffroy Museum with collectibles from the South Seas and to trade in the duplicates. Among the explorers was a woman, Amalie Dietrich . Sometimes stock associations such as the " Württemberg Natural History Travel Association " were founded; the dividend consisted of parts of the collection, so it was literally paid out in kind. Some German-speaking plant collectors, such as Carl Ludwig Blume , Ferdinand von Mueller , Friedrich Welwitsch or Berthold Carl Seemann , entered the service of various European colonial powers. It was not until 1891 that the Botanische Centralstelle for the colonies was founded in Berlin , which scientifically researched plants from Africa. For example, the African violet ( Saintpaulia ionantha ) was found there.

There are still expeditions today, for example the New Ornamental Plants working group of the Central Horticultural Association was founded in the 1980s . This was mainly dedicated to the flora of Australia. The aim was less to rediscover species than to rediscover plants that lie dormant in the botanical archives and that have never been tested for their cultural properties. For example, the blue daisy ( Brachyscome iberidifolia ) was created as a popular bedding and balcony plant from collected wild material at the Geisenheim research institute involved . There is also a need in the medical field for new, previously unexplored medicinal plants .

literature

chronologically

  • Kej Hilscher & Renate Hücking: Plant hunters . In distant worlds in search of paradise. Piper, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-492-24163-8 .
  • Green gold. Adventure plant hunting. Booklet accompanying the exhibition of the same name in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt am Main, 2001, ISBN 3-931621-11-1 .
  • Toby Musgrave, Chris Gardner, Will Musgrave: Plant collectors and discoverers. Two hundred years of adventurous expeditions. Christian Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-88472-377-4 .
  • Tyler Whittle: Plant Hunter. The adventurous search for green gold. Prestel, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-7913-0009-1 .
  • A list of (around 360) travelers and collectors can be found in the Hamburger Garten- und Blumenzeitung (No. 25, 1870, pp. 407 ff.).

Web links