Plate I
Robert Morison (Robertus Morison)
Quæ Morisone viro potuit contingere major
Gloria, Pæonium quam superasse genus?
Ipse tibi palmam Phœbus concedit Apollo,
Laureaque est capiti quælibit herba tuo.
Archibaldi Pitcairne M.D.
It may seem, at first sight, singular that a lecture purporting to discuss the state of systematic botany in England during the 17th century should begin with a reference to the botany of the Greeks. The explanation is that the elementary classification introduced by Theophrastus persisted throughout the 17th century; the use of the groups Trees, Shrubs, and Herbs came to an end only in the 18th century, with the advent of Linnaeus. It seems almost incredible, but it is a fact, that the lapse of the nearly 2000 years that separated Theophrastus from Morison marked no material advance in the science of classification. Botanical works, when they were something more than commentaries on Theophrastus or Dioscorides, took cognizance of little else than the properties, medicinal or otherwise, of plants, and their economic uses.
A growing perception of the essential resemblances observable among plants can be traced, however, in the later Herbals, as they became less medical and economic and more definitely botanical. Thus, in the well-known work of Leonhard Fuchs (Fuchsius), De Historia Stirpium Commentarii, 1542, the plants are described in alphabetical order, without any reference to their mutual relation. But in Kyber's edition of Jerome Bock's (Tragus) De Stirpium Nomenclatura, etc., Commentariorum Libri Tres, published in 1552 (with a preface by Conrad Gesner), there is an attempt at a grouping of plants, though no principles are enunciated and no names are given to the groups, which resulted in the bringing together of labiate, leguminous, gramineous and umbelliferous herbs. The Cruydtboeck of Rembert Dodoens (Dodonaeus), 1554, marks much the same stage of progress, whereas the Nova Stirpium Adversaria of Pierre Pena and Matthias de l'Obel (Lobelius), issued in 1570, is a distinct step in advance. Here some idea is incidentally given of the principles that have been followed in the arrangement of the plants, but still no name is attached, as a rule, to the resulting groups. The work begins with an account of the herbaceous plants which, in modern terminology, are monocotyledonous: and at the end of the section (p. 65) de l'Obel thus explains what he has done:—"Hactenus comparendo quot potuimus plantarum genera, quarum effigies et naturae ordinis consequutione ita sibi mutuo haererent, ut et facillime noscerentur et memoriae mandarentur, a Gramineis, Segetibus, Harundinibus, ad Acoros, Irides, Cyperos, hincque Asphodelos bulborum tuniceorum Caepaceorumve naturam praetervecti sumus." Cruciferous, caryophyllaceous, labiate and umbelliferous herbs are also segregated to some extent in the course of the work: and the leguminous herbs are brought together into a definite group, "Alterum Frugum genus nempe graminis Trifolii et Leguminum," which is really the origin of the modern N. O. Leguminosae: though a few altogether foreign species, such as species of Oxalis, Anemone Hepatica, Jasminum fruticans L., and species of Thalictrum, are included among the trifoliate forms, and Dictamnus Fraxinella among the "Leguminosa." The Stirpium Historiae Pemptades Sex sive Libri XXX of Dodoens, published in 1583, shows considerable progress in classification as compared with his Cruydtboeck of 1554, more particularly in the recognition, apparently for the first time, of umbelliferous plants as a distinct group in a chapter headed De Umbelliferis Herbis.
Possibly these attempts to introduce some sort of system into Botany may have been inspired by the teachings of Conrad Gesner, that universal genius, who lived about this time (1516-1565). Though but fragments of his botanical writings have survived, it is clear from the much-quoted passage in a letter of his dated Nov. 26, 1565 (Epistolae Medicae, 1577, p. 113) that he too was seeking for the basis of a natural system of classification and that he thought he had found it in the flower and the fruit:—"Ex his enim notis (a fructu, semine and flore) potius quam foliis, stirpium naturae et cognationes apparent."