Carolus Clusius

From Hispanopedia
Carolus Clusius
Carolus Clusius
BornFebruary 18, 1525
Arras
DiedApril 4, 1609, aged 84
Leiden
OccupationsPhysician, mycologist, botanist, horticulturist

Carolus Clusius (Arras, February 18, 1525 – Leiden, April 4, 1609) was a Flemish physician, mycologist and botanist, perhaps the most influential scientist and horticulturist of the 16th century.

Biography

Clusius created one of the first botanical gardens in Europe, in Leiden, and is considered one of the founders of horticulture. He was also one of the first to produce truly scientific descriptions of plants.[citation needed]

He studied in Ghent until he left for the University of Law of Leuven. In 1548 he went to Marburg, and in 1549 to Wittenburg to follow the teachings of Philip Melanchthon. On his advice, he abandoned the study of law to study medicine and botany. In 1551 he went to Montpellier to study botany under the direction of Guillaume Rondelet. There he became his secretary and lived for three years in his house.

He traveled through Switzerland and Germany and returned to the Low Countries, where he met Rembert Dodoens, whose Cruydeboeck he translated into French in 1557 under the title Histoire des plantes (1557).

After a brief stay in Paris, he became tutor to Jacob Fugger, son of a German banker who specialized in the trade of American products such as guaiacum. In 1564 Clusius accompanied him through Spain and Portugal and, in the course of that journey, discovered the work Coloquios dos simples by the Portuguese botanist Garcia de Orta, which impressed him so much with the novelties it contained about the flora of the Indies that he made a Latin translation of it titled Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud indos nascentium historia (1567).

He began a journey of almost two years through Castile (Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca, Alcalá), reached Madrid and continued through Toledo and Extremadura to Lisbon. He went on to Seville, Cádiz, Gibraltar, Málaga, Granada, Murcia and Valencia, where he stayed for three months and maintained a good relationship with the botanist Juan Plaza. He visited the main Spanish cities and was in contact with a select group of Spanish physicians and naturalists of the Court, of Seville and of Valencia, with whom he would later maintain an interesting correspondence devoted to the exchange of species and seeds, especially American ones. Among them were Simón de Tovar, Rodrigo Zamorano, Juan de Castañeda and the influential Benito Arias Montano. After his journey through the Iberian Peninsula, he settled in Bruges and in Mechelen while preparing a botanical atlas of the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1573 the Emperor Maximilian II of Habsburg appointed him court physician and head of the imperial garden. Thanks to this patronage he was able to travel throughout Europe, gathering numerous observations and collecting specimens of various plants, some of distant origin such as the tulip (which he introduced into Holland) or the potato. The death of his patron forced him to leave Vienna after having spent 14 years there.

In 1576 he published his first original book (Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia), which compiles the observations from his journey through Spain and constitutes the principal overview of the Spanish flora published in the 16th century.

In 1583 he published the description of the plants of Austria and the neighboring regions (Rariorum aliquot stirpium, per Pannoniam, Austriam, & vicinas quasdam provincias observatarum historia), followed by Rariorum plantarum historia (1601) and Exoticorum libri decem (1605). In all these works he included botanical materials provided by Spanish naturalists such as Juan Plaza and Simón de Tovar.

Illustration from Rariorum Plantarum Historia (1601).

In 1587 he founded a botanical garden (hortus botanicus), distinct from the "medicinal garden" (hortus medicus), at Leiden University. There he cultivated rare plants from southern Europe, Spain, Portugal and Hungary. At this same university he obtained the post of professor of botany in 1593, from which he promoted the complete edition of the Latin translations of Garcia de Orta, Nicolás Monardes and Cristóbal Acosta, which were printed in 1593

In 1601 he published an important treatise on botany, Rariorum plantarum historia, illustrated with more than a thousand engravings, in which he tried to group species by their affinity. His observations are remarkably precise. Clusius was undoubtedly the first botanist to make scientific descriptions. He was also the first to describe numerous species such as jasmine, the chestnut, the aralias, or the button mushroom.

In 1605 he published Exoticorum libri decem, in which he attempted to describe all the exotic species, animal or plant, that he could obtain. Living in Leiden, he was able to obtain specimens from the ships arriving in Holland. His book describes numerous new species such as the cassowary (genus Casuarius), the Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus), the quinaquina (Deroptyus accipitrinus), the chattering lory (Lorius garrulus), the scarlet ibis (Eudocimus ruber) and many others. He also described the great auk (Pinguinus impennis) from a specimen he received in 1604, along with other species, from Henrik Højer, who explored the Faroe Islands. Both works are still frequently consulted today.

Carolus Clusius died in Leiden on April 4, 1609, having bequeathed to posterity an extensive body of botanical and popular-science work, notable for his interest in American nature and his relationship with a select group of Spanish naturalists. His work on the Spanish flora is one of the first known books of a scientific character on the Spanish flora. He also contributed to the map of Spain by Abraham Ortelius.

Works

Legacy

Justus Lipsius said of Clusius that he was "the father of all the beautiful gardens of this country".

Eponyms

The botanist Charles Plumier (1646–1704) dedicated to him the genus Clusia (L.) Plum. of the family Clusiaceae.

Species

The standard author abbreviation Clus. is used to indicate Clusius as the author when citing a botanical name.

References

  • International Plant Names Index (IPNI): Carolus Clusius, author ID 17315-1.
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