Plant hunters
Back when we made long treks from Asia to the Fertile Crescent without GPS or Rand-McNally atlases, we got hungry along the way, so we learned about local food plants. On our way home, we brought along peas, dates, lettuce, wheat, pomegranates, figs and barley because no one in our neighborhood knew about them. Everybody loved us for it and fixed our supper.
We also brought back daffodils, tulips, roses and herbs such as coriander and dill. Also aloe vera. We also brought back knowledge because we wanted to be useful.
Nowadays, plants from around the world can be found around the world, which is not always a good thing but not always a nuisance either. I acknowledge certain introduced plants can become invasive, but I appreciate learning about vegetables and herbs from Africa and Asia, which are easy to obtain because intrepid plant hunters in days of yore gyrated their way through brambles, trudged through marshes, survived mountain pathways into unexplored terrains, and not just for me but for many reasons.
Carl Linnaeus, for example, caught the botany bug early in rural Sweden. He became a professor of botany and medicine which led to being assigned the task of wandering through the fields and forests of Sweden to identify and classify flora and fauna (can I help?) Most of us have encountered his official standardized taxicological structure for naming living beings – Pisum sativum for pea and Sanguisorba minor for salad burnet. He changed plant study for everyone.
Linnaeus called Jon Bartram, botanist from Philadelphia, “greatest natural botanist in the world.” Bartram and esteemed plant enthusiasts in Europe (including Linnaeus) swapped plants and seeds. That’s how we got witch hazel, irises, and hydrangeas among others. I wonder if that’s how we got chickweed. His renown comes from exploring the eastern part of our continent during the decades before the American Revolution. That means hundreds of miles on horseback plus many on foot. He collected specimens along the way and eventually established an eight-acre garden outside Philadelphia. He is known as the father of American botany.
During those same years across the pond, Philibert Commerson was roaming all over France risking his life on cliffsides and enduring prickly vines to find plants. So when the king wanted to send out an expedition to discover something plus bring back some botany, Commerson was hired as royal botanist. The French Navy did not allow women on their ships, but Commerson arranged for his housekeeper (girlfriend) Jeanne Berat to disguise herself as his male attendant.
The plan worked for a while. Together they found a flowering vine in Rio de Janeiro that Commerson named Bouganvillea in honor of the ship’s captain. Commerson and Berat stayed behind when the ship left the island of Mauritius in the Pacific probably because her identity was suspected. Until he died, they continued hunting for new plants on Pacific islands, including Madagascar. She eventually returned to France thereby becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Solanum baretiae is named for her.
Professor Edwin B. Smith taught botany at the University of Arkansas. He assembled decades of meticulous field work identifying plants in every county in the state into An Atlas and Annotated List of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas. His impressive tome was impressively illustrated by Kent Bonar. As curator of the UofA Herbarium, Smith added almost 50,000 specimens to its collection.
Steven Foster taught himself enough about the uses of herbal plants to be asked to lead plant walks on five continents and author or co-author 19 books on herbs and medicinal plants. Thank you, Steven.
A friend of mine captures striking photos of flowers on hikes. Another friend searches for mother trees. Plants have a way of pulling us in. I went plant hunting in my yard, and my phone told me I have dittany, rabbit tobacco, a wild grape, heal all and Mimosa strigillosa, known to most as sunshine mimosa. Not everybody likes it. It’s okay.