by Jane Goodall
And while I still envy the early explorers in a way, the more I read of the lives of the plant hunters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the more I realize that I could not possibly have endured the kind of hardships they endured, at least not for long. For those plant hunters were, without doubt, among the most fearless—and the most crazy—of all the explorers.
I did not know much about them until I read The Plant Hunters by Michael Tyler-Whittle and became utterly fascinated by the tales of those extraordinary men of a bygone era, when the mania for collecting plants spread across Europe. Their travels took place during the years when the British empire was being built, when France and Holland, Spain and Portugal, were also sending out expeditions to discover and lay claim to the various islands, territories, and whole countries that would become their colonies overseas.
Those expeditions gave many of the early plant hunters their opportunity to collect (or “hunt”) plants abroad when they were appointed as botanist to some of the great sailing vessels. They went off, for years at a time, to bring some of our best-loved flowers and trees to the gardens of Europe and North America. The accounts of the dangers they faced and overcame seem almost unbelievable to us today, in this era of mechanized transport and sophisticated navigational tools.
No wonder Carl Linnaeus, in 1737, wrote, “Good God! when I consider the melancholy fate of so many of botany’s votaries, I am tempted to ask whether men are in their right mind who so desperately risk life and everything else through the love of collecting plants.”
Linnaeus himself was a plant hunter. He walked, always alone and carrying the minimum of equipment, for hundreds of miles through unmapped territory in Lapland, discovering over one hundred new plants. But he is best known, of course, for the truly mammoth task he set himself—that of sorting out the mess and muddle that prevailed at the time regarding the scientific naming of plant and animal species.
His classification—into kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera, and species—standardized nomenclature forever. Two hundred and sixty years have gone by since he published the results of his long deliberations in 1753, and his name is still revered. Truly, he was a giant among scientists. He also instilled the love of plants into his students, and took some two hundred of them, from different countries around the world, on his famous field trips.
I am still in awe of the fact that I was honored with one of the special Linnaeus medals given in commemoration of the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth. I felt humbled. We visited the house where he had ended his days, in Uppsala, Sweden, and I stood by myself for a short time in one of the small rooms and looked at the plant sketches on the walls, trying to imagine myself back in that long-ago time. Then we walked through some of the countryside where Linnaeus himself had walked, and I marveled, as he had done, at the amazing, inspirational diversity of plant life.
Linnaeus’s life and the lives of the other plant hunters inspire me to this day, and I’ve picked out just a few of their stories to share with you.
John Bartram (1699–1777)—The Father of American Botany
A nineteenth-century wood engraving of John Bartram (1699–1777), the Father of American Botany. Carl Linnaeus himself called him “the greatest natural botanist in the world.” (CREDIT: HOWARD PYLE, PUBLISHED IN HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1880)
One person who was greatly influenced by Linnaeus was the third-generation Quaker John Bartram, who was raised on a farm outside Philadelphia. At the time, theirs was the only house there. Bartram thus began his life as a farmer, but became increasingly fascinated by plants. So fascinated that he eventually hired a teacher so that he could learn Latin in order to understand Linnaeus’s classifications. He went on to become the Father of American Botany and to create the first botanical garden in America—Bartram’s Garden, which is still open in Philadelphia. His name is revered among plant collectors, and Linnaeus himself called Bartram the “greatest natural botanist in the world.”
How fortunate that he was “discovered” by a wealthy British businessman and amateur botanist, Peter Collinson. At Collinson’s behest, Bartram hunted for new plant species over a period of thirty-three years, traveling, always alone, throughout the eastern colonies of North America, where he became a legend, recklessly setting off into “wild Indian country.” He was the first white man to go to many of the places he hunted.
As live plants seldom survived overseas travel at that time, Bartram filled his boxes with seeds and sent them to Peter Collinson to spread across Europe. With Collinson’s help, some two hundred new plants and trees were introduced to the Old World, including witch hazel, magnolia, hydrangea, phlox, iris, and several varieties of lily. Collinson remained enthusiastic to the end, and even became so excited when a specimen of Lilium superbum bloomed for the first time in his garden that his family was actually alarmed for his health! Is it not amazing to think that so many of the plants that are so common today in European gardens are actually descendants of seeds from the carefully packed boxes of John Bartram?
Philibert Commerson (1727–73)—A Crazed Botomaniac and the Herb Woman He Loved
The French botanist Philibert Commerson was even more reckless than Bartram. Indeed most people considered him crazy—brilliant but crazy. He himself admitted to “botomania.”
As a young man he collected plants in different parts of France. Again and again he risked his life climbing mountains that others considered inaccessible. One biography describes his collecting adventures like this: “He would return home sick, scarred with wounds, shaken by falls and accidents of all kinds, as well as utterly worn out by his exertions and by the violence of his own enthusiasm.”
Once, when he was scrambling down a steep valley, his hair got caught up in a bush (like Absalom). He was able to free himself by cutting off his hair, but then nearly drowned when he crashed down into a swollen stream that raced between steep banks. Another time, plant hunting high in the mountains, he heard the roar of an avalanche above him. He escaped by instantly drawing up his knees to his chin and clasping his legs close, forming himself into a human ball that rolled at breakneck speed down a fiercely steep gradient. He suffered gashes and bruising—but he avoided the avalanche.
Despite these narrow escapes he became increasingly passionate about his collecting—obsessed by it, in fact. He showed scant regard for law and order, and frequently stole bulbs, cuttings, or seeds from smallholders in the neighborhood, and even from the botanical garden of his university. Once, he was caught by the professor of botany himself, and temporarily banned from entering the garden. But he had such a strong belief in the importance of his work that he truly considered himself victimized—after all, if he could not obtain the specimens legally, how else was he to acquire them?!
In the mid-1760s the king of France sent out an expedition, the main purpose of which, apparently, was to try to gain the kind of glory already achieved by Great Britain. Commerson was appointed royal botanist. The ship, La Boudeuse, was to sail to the East Indies and from thence to become the first French ship to circumnavigate the globe, giving Commerson a fantastic opportunity to collect in many different countries.
By this time Commerson, often in poor health, had secretly developed a liaison with his nurse and housekeeper, Jeanne Baret—a botanist in her own right. According to Glynis Ridley, author of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, the two of them were very passionate lovers. Baret was known as an “herb woman,” wise in folk-medicine plant lore. Her extensive wisdom, which had been passed down orally through generations of such women, greatly impressed Commerson, whose own botanical knowledge was limited by the restraints of academic teachings. The invitation to go around the world was the opportunity of a lifetime for Commerson—but he wanted Baret with him, and women were strictly prohibited from traveling on French naval ships. And so they decided that Baret would disguise herself as a man and accompany Commerson as his manservant. For a while the plan was successful, and Baret assisted her “e
mployer” on his plant-collecting expeditions, doing much of the hard work on account of his continuing poor health.
In the mid-1760s Jeanne Baret, a botanist in her own right, disguised herself as a man to accompany plant hunter Philibert Commerson on his journey around the world. They were traveling on a French naval ship, where women were strictly not allowed. (CREDIT: MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NSW: 980C0122A2)
Eventually her true identity was discovered, although sources differ on how and when. What is known is that when she returned to France years later, the Ministry of Marine arranged a yearly stipend in recognition of her scientific contribution—and hardships—on the voyage. The ship’s captain, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, was likely her advocate at the Ministry.
In his lifetime, Commerson identified some sixty new genera of plants and an astonishing three thousand new species. He and Baret never returned to their native France together—when the ship left the island of Mauritius, they remained together, collecting there for the rest of Commerson’s life. Ironically, just one week after his death, at the age of only forty-six, he was unanimously elected to the prestigious Academy of France, the only member to be elected in absentia—and certainly the only one to be elected after his death—though of course the academy did not know he had died.
He is still considered the most prolific of all plant hunters, having collected thousands of specimens, the majority of which are stored in herbariums in France. Baret returned to France, where she was praised for her services to botany and acclaimed as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
Kew’s Collectors—Surviving Pirates, Shipwrecks, and Chain Gangs
About a year after Commerson set off on his expedition, another passionate amateur botanist, Joseph Banks (1743–1820), was appointed naturalist on the British ship Endeavour on the first of Captain Cook’s great expeditions. For four years they voyaged, first to South America, then via Tahiti to New Zealand, and finally to Australia, where they landed at Botany Bay, so named for its wealth and diversity of plant life. That expedition resulted, among other things, in the British laying claim to eastern Australia.
Banks went on other voyages and discovered many new plants—seventy-five of which are named for him. He faced many dangers—including occasions when there was the possibility of shipwreck and once when Endeavour was actually wrecked crossing the Great Barrier Reef. He commented in his 1769 journal, “The almost certainty of being eaten as soon as you come ashore adds not a little to the terrors of shipwreck.”
In the early 1800s his health began to fail. He got gout in the winter, and by 1805 was confined to a wheelchair. Nevertheless, his mind was active and he continued to exert huge influence on science and politics for the rest of his life. And as unofficial director of England’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he hired, groomed, and inspired some of the most successful plant hunters of his day. He always warned them of the hardships and dangers they would face—and they respected him because they knew he had faced and survived the dangers he spoke of. Two of his most successful protégés were David Nelson and Francis Masson.
Banks’s protégé David Nelson (birth date unknown–death 1789) actually had to witness a human sacrifice in Tahiti. Moreover, he was in the group attacked by natives on the beach of Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, and watched, with horror, as Captain Cook, revered as the greatest sailor and navigator of the day, was stabbed to death and cut into small pieces. Somehow he and at least some of the group escaped, and their ship, HMS Resolution, made its way home on a long and arduous journey without the guidance of Cook. Nelson was also unfortunate enough to be a botanist on the HMS Bounty when the famous mutiny took place.
One of Banks’s most famous protégés was Francis Masson (1741–1805). He was sent first to South Africa, where he made many journeys deep into the unknown interior, sending back great quantities of new plants, many of which are now popular gardening plants, including Livingstone daisies, pansies, lobelia, heaths, Cape pelargoniums that gave rise to the garden geraniums, and the spectacular bird-of-paradise flower.
During his expeditions, Masson survived a number of potentially dangerous encounters with wild animals, and he was repeatedly confronted by hostile Africans. One of his most terrifying experiences was when he was almost captured by a chain gang of escaped convicts, who chased him through the African bush, wanting him as hostage to barter for their freedom. He hid all night in some vegetation, fearing for his life. It was fortunate indeed—for him—that they were chained. Yet despite his fear of many of those he encountered, he could never forget—or forgive—the white farmers’ ill treatment of the Africans. Much later, when collecting in the West Indies, he was forced into the local militia and then captured as a prisoner of the French army in Grenada, an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life.
Like many of the explorer plant hunters of his day, Masson couldn’t simply settle down to a safer job at Kew, preferring to continue his adventurous work until the day he died. All in all Masson offered thirty-three years of courageous service to Kew, and was lauded by Banks as a committed and indefatigable collector—meaningful praise from one who was himself considered indefatigable. It is believed that Masson froze to death in Canada on Christmas Day in 1805.
David Douglas (1799–1834)
The Scotsman David Douglas is legendary among botanists, one of the greatest plant hunters ever known. As a child growing up in the village of Scone, he was a rebel. They did their best to discipline him at school, but he seemed impervious to the typical punishment of the day—severe beating. It appeared to make no difference. He left school when he was ten years old, much to everyone’s relief.
How fortunate that on his very doorstep was the Scone Palace, where he managed to get a job tending its magnificent gardens. Suddenly everything changed, and the formerly delinquent boy became passionately interested in plants. Seven years later he was working for Glasgow Botanic Gardens, and there he formed a friendship with one of the most eminent botanists of his time, William Hooker (who would become the first official director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). They spent hours talking about plants, and went on many collecting trips together in the Scottish Highland. Hooker recommended his young protégé to the Royal Horticultural Society, and at the age of twenty-four Douglas was sent to collect in North America.
The tales of his travels in what was then a mostly unexplored land, and the courage and stoicism with which he faced and overcame the multitude of dangers along the way, have made him a truly heroic, legendary figure.
He had many encounters with hostile “Indians” in North America, who were, at that time, largely unknown to the white man. Once, he was surrounded by a war party of eight and only escaped by a combination of coolness and bravado.
Not all “Indians” were hostile. On one occasion, after falling into a deep gulley, Douglas lay unconscious for over five hours until he was rescued by friendly Indians. He suffered severe chest pains as a result of the fall—which he treated by bleeding himself, then bathing in an ice-cold river! He was tough as nails, surviving several of the fevers that killed so many Europeans and Indians. But he was weakened by them, and his eyes became irritated to the point where it became hard for him to see.
Douglas often traveled by boat. He survived rapids, floods, and rocks hidden under the surface that destroyed his canoe several times and caused the loss of valuable collections of plants. Once, while walking in the Rockies, he had to cross a racing mountain river fourteen times in one day, wading up to his waist in freezing water! He describes how he was often wet and desperately cold for days and nights on end.
Pack rats ate his seeds and gnawed through his dried plants, and he was plagued by insects. He endured periods of extreme hunger, when he was reduced to eating roots and not only the seeds and berries from his collections but even the dried skins of animal specimens and—on two separate occasions—his packhorse.
His first expedition to the US Pacific Coast lasted three years, aft
er which he returned to England. But it was not a happy time for him—he did not fit into the civilized world, and he was soon back at work in America. He brought his faithful companion Billy, a little Yorkshire terrier, on this trip. Billy remained at his side during the last years of his life, when he collected in what is now California, and later in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).
David Douglas (1799–1834), one of the greatest plant hunters ever known. He felt out of place during the periods he returned to English society, much preferring the freedom of wild places. I’ ll bet he hated having to wear these clothes demanded in polite society. (CREDIT: CURTIS’S BOTANICAL MAGAZINE, 1834)
Douglas and Billy were on their way back to England when their ship stopped in Hawaii, and it was there, when Douglas was only thirty-five years old, that he met an untimely end. He had gone off to meet a friend, accompanied by Billy. But he never showed up. One account of the tragedy assumes that he fell into a pit trap. The sounds of a trapped animal alerted two natives, and when they got to the trap, they found a bull, terrified and trying to escape, and under him the gored body of a man—David Douglas.
But there was also the distinct possibility, although never proven, of foul play: Billy, the one witness who saw what happened, could not tell what he knew. He was found guarding his master’s possessions and howling as if his heart would break.
The bounty of plants that David Douglas introduced into cultivation is astounding, including his most famous contribution, in 1827—the Douglas fir. Many popular gardening plants—such as the lupin, the California bluebell, and the wild heliotrope—were initially introduced by Douglas. As were many of our favorite trees, such as Sitka spruce, the noble fir, and, of course, the Douglas fir. These trees as well as other species he collected had a significant impact on the landscape of Great Britain.