Carolus Clusius
OSGF
In honor of our exciting new digitization project, we’re kicking things off by sharing a work by Flemish botanist, Carolus Clusius, whose birthday also just so happens to be today. Clusius is regarded as one of the most influential botanists of pre-Linnaean times, having contributed nearly 600 descriptions of plants and overseeing the formation of one of Europe's first botanical gardens, Hortus Botanicus Leiden. Read on to learn more about Clusius’s life, his early works, and to access our first fully online text from the Oak Spring Garden Library collection.
Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) was born on this day in 1526 in the city of Arras, present-day France. The year 1526 was a significant time for many reasons, Clusius’s birth year being just one. At this time Europe was entering a period sometimes dubbed as the ‘Botanical Revolution’. The period reached its height around the 16th century and faded out at the turn of the 18th century. During this scientific renaissance more and more interest was being given to the discipline of natural history, and in particular botany. Influenced first by the Greek and Roman thinkers like Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder, this period saw a surge of botanists whose focus was on categorizing plants with deeper, more detailed descriptions.
Contemporaries of the 16th century included Pier Andrea Mattioli (1501-1577) and Basilius Besler (1561–1629). Within the herbals published by these early botanists, a shift began to occur with more descriptive botany taking precedence and shedding its ties to medicine. Of course, medicinal botany was not erased altogether, but this period saw European scholars paying greater attention to physical characteristics and locality, not just necessarily the cures a plant could provide. For Carolus Clusius, his career path followed not only the larger trends of the 16th century but set him apart as one of the most influential pre-Linnaean botanists of the period.
Roaming interests and studies led Clusius first to the Collegium Trilingue in Louvain where he built a foundation on studying foreign languages. Then he transitioned to the University in Wittenberg where he took classes in botany and medicine. His last stop on the university train was at the University of Montpellier, around 1551. It was here that he studied the lectures of Italian naturalist Guillaume Rondelet which cemented his interests in botany. He also assisted Rondelet in assembling a book on natural history.
Following this Clusius moved north to live with his friend, Jean de Brancion in Malines, Belgium. It was here that he was introduced to several key figures who would remain collaborators and aid in Clusius’s future works. One being Benito Arias Montano who introduced Clusius to the flora of Spain and Portugal, the other being Chrisotpher Plantin who was responsible for printing Clusius’s works. He remained in Malines for several more years before traveling to Vienna upon invitation from the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. Between 1573 and 1577, Clusius laid out a medical garden per the Emperors’ instruction. In this timeframe too Clusius published his first ‘flora’, Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia. This work outlines Clusisus’s observations on the plants of Spain and Portugal which includes the first European instance of the tulip (Tulipa sp.)
Another species Clusius later introduces to parts of Europe is the sweet potato (Ipomea batatas).
It should be noted that given tulips native range in both eastern Europe and central Asia, the earliest documentation of tulips supersedes Clusius’s description by several hundred years. In fact, it's believed that the earliest known recording happened between the late 11th century or early 12th century in ‘Umdat al-tabib (written as ‘Umda’s) which is attributed to being authored by agronomist Abu I-Jayr.
Tulips reappear later on in Clusisus’s life when he is appointed the prefect (director) botanic garden at Leiden university in 1593. Clusius and head gardener Dirck Cluyt established the garden (now known as one of the earliest gardens in Europe) using the bulbs, seeds, and cuttings Clusius collected on his travels throughout Europe. Just one year later, in the botanic garden, the very first tulip flowered in the Netherlands. It’s through this early flowering that Clusius also observed the instance of what would later become known as tulip breaking virus. The striking petals caused by the virus combined with Clusius’s keen interest in them paved the way for tulip mania which took the country by storm. Today Clusius’s staggering influence on the horticulture industry is reflected in the botanical name of the lady tulip, Tulipa clusiana.
Being that Clusius was now positioned near the Dutch East India Company, he was able to get his hands on ‘new’ species collection during the expanse of European colonization. He also relied heavily on the word and specimens from his collaborators in other parts of Europe, who were making their own travels abroad. A prime example of this can be seen in Clusius’s work, Caroli Clusii Atreb.
Clusius never once traveled outside of Europe but like many botanists of that time, he was drawn to the travels of others. In Caroli Clusii Atreb Clusius documents the plants taken during the travels of navigator Sir Frances Drake. Drake is credited as being the first person of English descent to circumnavigate the globe in a single expedition, lasting from 1577 to 1580.
The three-year expedition wasn’t done all on his own. Sailing along with Drake was naturalist Lawrence Eliot, and captain John Winter amongst others in the 5-ship fleet. Upon learning of the completed expedition, Clusius traveled to London one year after its completion in 1581 to connect with Drake, Eliot and Winter. When there he obtained the specimens, which were collected during the three-year period and stored on the Elizabeth and the Golden Hind. Through these physical specimens and relaying of information from Eliot primarily, Clusius was able to compile these accounts into Caroli Clusii Atreb. This was the first recorded account of Drake’s circumnavigation and is regarded as the first botanical work centered around a transatlantic voyage making it incredibly rare.
Clusius begins on page 4 however by first adding his observations to complement the work of Portuguese naturalist Garcia da Orta (Coloquios dos simples…). The second section, which begins on page 24 describes the plants, seeds and bark taken during the Drake expedition. Some notable mentions include cacao seeds, depicted on page 29. Caroli Clusii Atreb was printed by frequent collaborator Christopher Plantin.
Over the course of Clusius’s career, he added more than 600 species to the understood flora in Europe through his precise botanical descriptions and keen oversight of their illustrations. Clusius also used his educational foundations in foreign languages to translate botanical texts into Latin, making them more accessible to European scholars. Clusius’s works would continue to set the standard for emerging botanists of the scientific revolution and inspire not only botanists but other artists and creatives.
References:
Arthur MacGregor, Carolus Clusius. Towards a Cultural History of a Renaissance Naturalist, Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 20, Issue 1, May 2008. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhn005
Bermejo, J. Esteban Hernández, and Expiración García Sánchez. Tulips: An Ornamental Crop in the Andalusian Middle Ages. Economic Botany, vol. 63, no. 1, 2009, pp. 60–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40390435.
Boran, E., & Lawlor, E. (n.d.). Carolus clusius. Botany at the Worth Library. https://botany.edwardworthlibrary.ie/herbals/seventeenth-century/carolus-clusius/
Correll, Donovan S. Vanilla: Its Botany, History, Cultivation and Economic Import. Economic Botany, vol. 7, no. 4, 1953, pp. 291–358. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4287786.
Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia and Tony Willis. An Oak Spring Herbaria: Herbs and Herbals from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries: A Selection of the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art in the Collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon. Edited by Mark Argetsinger, Yale University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvckq9s9.
Ommen, K. van. The Exotic World of Carolus Clusius 1526-1609. Catalogue of an exhibition on the quatercentenary of Clusius' death, 4 April 2009. With an introductory essay by Florike Egmond. Leiden: Leiden University Library. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/14064
Turner, M. The Drake Exploration Society. The Drake Exploration Society - Some Botanical Discoveries Made on Francis Drake’s World Voyage. https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/Society/Research/botanical.htm