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Book Review
Andrea Wulf -
Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession
William Heinemann, 2008
Penguin Random House (Paperback) 2010
While I have learned plenty about the practicalities of growing plants in my lifetime, I have given scant attention to the courageous early explorers and travellers who first brought to our shores so many of the non-
Andrea Wulf, the author, was born in India and brought up in Germany. When she moved to London to train as a design historian at the Royal College of Art she was astonished to find that everyone she met appeared to be raving about gardening, so she thought she had better find out more about it herself, and that is how, as she puts it, her ‘horticultural journey began’.
As Wulf’s interest grew she visited Kew, and also the Chelsea Physic Garden where she learned about Philip Miller (1691-
Wulf also encountered Thomas Fairchild (1667-
John Bartram
Philip Miller’s portrait in the French edition of his Gardener’s Dictionary
Fairchild’s ‘mule’
In time the discovery of the ‘mule’ reached the ears of the President of the famed Royal Society and Fairchild was bidden to display a dried example of this plant. Sir Hans Sloane, then Secretary of the Royal Society, Physician to King George I, a knowledgeable and ardent collector of plants, antiquities, insects, butterflies, shells and fossils, presided over that meeting; he was thus able to appreciate Fairchild’s ground-
The Quaker merchant Peter Collinson was a rich Londoner who became consumed by his passion for plants. He was lucky enough to be able to indulge this passion thanks to his inheritance of a successful cloth business which he continued to expand to a ready market in North America and the West Indies. As he had access to American shipping he was able to import seeds from the New World as well as from other parts of Europe. On asking a fellow Quaker merchant how to obtain seeds from North America he was recommended to John Bartram; thus began a friendship that lasted for more than thirty years.
It was a rocky, frequently stormy, relationship: the insults that Collinson aimed at Bartram’s head from time to time were more than most mortal men would have stood for, but Bartram needed the money for his plant hunting. He was also fired with enthusiasm to seek out new and unusual plant species; his many excursions take up a good chapter of the book and are exciting reading. Collinson distributed his imported seeds to British gentry, nurserymen and natural scientists.
Phillip Miller in the meantime continued to expand the Chelsea Physic Garden and to update his Gardener’s Dictionary, the most innovative of its kind, supplemented with his own observations.
Frontispiece from the Gardener’s Dictionary
The Gardener’s Dictionary, eighth edition
In 1727 he travelled to Holland where he met Herman Boerhaave, professor of Medicine and Botany at Leiden. The fine botanic garden of Leiden encouraged Miller to introduce a huge array of new plants to Chelsea and to build one of the first greenhouse ‘tan-
Up till now this had been done in a haphazard fashion, each nurseryman describing a plant in his own words that varied from nurseryman to nurseryman, creating confusion. But who should arrive on the scene but a very opinionated young Swede called Carl Linnaeus (1707-
Statue of Carl Linnaeus as a university student
Lund, Sweden
Sir Hans Sloane by Stephen Slaughter, 1736
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Undaunted, Linnaeus visited Phillip Miller at Chelsea to try to persuade him to adopt his method but Miller too was dismissive of both Linnaeus and his ideas, although he finally mellowed somewhat to the smug and self-
From England Linnaeus returned to Holland, where he had been working before his visit to England and learned that his ideas were further ridiculed there; then the head of the botanic garden in St. Petersburg joined the argument, printing an attack on this sexually-
And he was not idle; he started his survey of every known plant which he produced in 1753 under the name of Species Plantarum. This was of such importance that it eclipsed his Systema Naturae which introduced for the first time his binominal nomenclature; that is to say, each plant was given a ‘surname’ – the genus – and a ‘Christian’ name – the species. However, like Linnaeus’s earlier work this too ran up against hot opposition from most of the botanists of the day – except in America where, as before, people were much more open-
In the meantime, American plants were arriving in England in huge numbers from John Bartram, and Collinson was introducing them to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, the Earl of Jersey at Middleton Park, the Duke of Richmond at Goodwood and, last but not least, ‘his most Valuable and Intimate Friend’ the 8th Baron Petre, the renowned horticulturalist, pioneer of hothouse ‘stoves’, creator of magnificent gardens and a keen planter of North American trees in particular. Collinson himself had now moved to Mill Hill where he greeted Solander and took an immediate liking to him, but Linnaeus’s pupil soon created problems for his mentor. He ran out of money, he did not keep Linnaeus informed of English news; finally, he stopped writing altogether and it was six years before Linnaeus heard from his pupil again.
There was a good reason for the silence as in 1768 Solander was invited to join the famous 100-
Dr Daniel Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Captain James Cook,
Dr John Hawkesworth and Earl Sandwich by John Hamilton Mortimer, 1771
The story of their three-
From England Linnaeus returned to Holland, where he had been working before his visit to England and learned that his ideas were further ridiculed there; then the head of the botanic garden in St. Petersburg joined the argument, printing an attack on this sexually-
Banks is also long remembered for promoting the voyage of the Bounty in 1787-
Blighia sapida, one of four species of a genus
named in William Bligh’s honour
Painting by Marianne North, Kew Gallery
Artocarpus altilis (Breadfruit)
Drawing by John Frederick Miller 1759 -
After the death of Carl Linnaeus Junior, Banks was offered in 1784 Linnaeus Senior’s entire collection of books, manuscripts and specimens. The Herbarium alone included 14,000 plants, and there were fish, shells and insects too. But Banks turned down the offer and instead it was purchased for £1000 by one of his former pupils, the distinguished botanist James Edward Smith who, with Banks, founded the Linnaean Society.
All England now appeared to embrace botany, the passion perhaps best summed up in 1791 by Erasmus Darwin (1731-
The Botanic Garden by Erasmus Darwin, 1791
Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus, 1736
English garden designs and styles now became widely adopted on the Continent and in North America. English garden books, notably Collinson’s dictionary and Darwin’s writings, were translated into Italian, French, German, Russian and Portuguese. Everyone clamoured to own a garden which could produce new and strange plants that had been imported from the New World. A new era of gardening was here to stay.
In her epilogue Wulf describes a visit to Worlitz near Dessau to trace the English influence there. She saw how her protagonists – to use her word – had influenced this landscape with American paper birches, kalmias, magnolias, catalpas and other North American plants. She also found this influence in plenty with little temples, and bridges dotted around different parts of the garden, but it was not, she said, ‘the real thing’ because it seemed to her so contrived, whereas such foreign additions in English gardens seemed to nestle comfortably into the landscape.
The glossary in Wulf ’s book is helpfully complete and informative, describing the origins of all the plants mentioned and many more; it is a great source of knowledge from which I, for one, have hugely benefited.
Review by Joanna Millar -
The images shown here are not in the book but have been gathered from the public domain by Marjorie Orr