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The original drawings and published works by the botanical artist - really illustrator - Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770 - upper, left) consistently are among the most prized items of any library or bibliophil. Ehret was born in German and eventually migrated to England, after a stop in Holland where he worked with Carl Linnaeus at Georg Clifford's estate in 1735-1736. The Clifford estate, De Hartecamp, located south of Haarlem near Bennebroek, was richly adorned with botanical curiosities from around the world. As a wealthy Dutch banker and governor of the Dutch East Indian Company, Clifford had the income to attract the talents of botanists such as Linnaeus and artists like Ehret. Together they produced Hortus cliffortianus in 1738, a masterpiece of early botanical literature.
In England, Ehret illustrated many of the more spectacular plants that were in cultivation. He produced a body of original art work that today may be found at The Natural History Museum in London, the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, The Royal Society, London, the Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at the University Library of Erlangen. His published illustrations may be seen in several works, among them are Hortus nitidissimis (in 3 volumes, 1750-1786) and Plantae selectae by Christoph Jakob Trew; Hortus kewensis by William Aiton (in 3 volumes, 1789); and in Patrick Browne's spectacular The civil and natural history of Jamaica in three parts published in 1756.
The three illustrations shown here are from Ehret's own Plantae et papiliones rariores. This was published in parts from 1748 until 1759 in folio. The fifteen plates were engraved and hand-colored by Ehret himself. Three additional plates (16-18) were published in 1761 and 1762 but few libraries have all eighteen plates (e.g., the Arnold Arboretum copy at the Library of the Harvard University Herbaria). Each of the illustrations is dated and some bear dedications. Most, like that of Plumeria rosea (above, right) display a combination of one or more species of plants and of butterflies. Others, like that of the Calycanthus floridus (bottom left) and Gardenia jasminoides (bottom right) are more akin to botanical illustrations with written diagnoses and critical dissections.
Plumeria was named formally by Linnaeus in 1753 for Charles Plumier (1646-1704), a French missionary who lived and collected plants in the West Indies in 1689, 1693 and in 1695. Plumier prepared a detailed manuscript of his botanical discoveries and made some 6000 original field sketches and drawings. These are now housed at the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Linnaeus examined a set of copies made by Claude Aubriet which are now in the University Library at Groningen. These copies were also used by Johannes Burman who prepared and published 262 plates in Plantarum americanarum from 1755 until 1760. Plumier himself published three important pre-1753 works which were used by Linnaeus to understand tropical American plants: Description des plantes de l'Amérique (1693), Nova plantarum americanarum genera (1703), and Traité des fougères de l'Amerique (1705). The latter was particularly important in Linnaeus's treatment of American ferns.
The seventeen species of the genus Plumeria are found only in tropical America. In the wild these are pachycaulous trees and shrubs. Plumeria rubra is widely cultivated as a flowering shrub especially in the warmer regions of the world. The genus belongs to the dogbane family, Apocynaceae Adans. The genus is the type of a large and complex tropical subfamily frequently termed Plumerioideae Leurss. (1882), although the correct name for the assembly is subf. Rauvolfioideae Kostel. (1834). The taxon is sometimes separated as its own family, Plumeriaceae Horan.
Calycanthus florida was not named by Linnaeus until 1759 and his understanding of the species was based, in part, on the Ehret illustration. This plate (lower left) was the thirteenth plate in Ehret's original set of fifteen. It was published in 1755 under the generic name Beureria. At approximately the same time, Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau, a French botanist and forester, proposed Butneria in his Traité des arbres et arbustes. In December of 1755, the famed English gardener Philip Miller proposed Basteria in his Figures of the most beautiful, useful, and uncommon plants described in the Gardeners Dictionary. For technical nomenclatural reasons, all of these names have been rejected in favor of Calycanthus, the Linnaean name established in 1759.
Ehret, Duhamel du Monceau and Miller all produced magnificent illustrations of Calycanthus florida, but none was the first to illustrate this American shrub. That honor goes to the English naturalist Mark Catesby who figured the species in his two volume work The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. His illustration was published in 1730 (t. 46). Catesby returned to Europe with dried specimens that may now be seen in the Sloane and the Dale herbaria at The Natural History Museum in London and in the Sherardian Herbarium at the University of Oxford. It is possible Linnaeus saw the Virginia specimen now in the Dale Herbarium as the collection was at the Apothecary Society's Chelsea Physic Garden in 1736 under the care of Philip Miller. He may also have seen the Catesby collection at Oxford when Linnaeus visited Jacob J. Dillenius, the first Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford. If so, Linnaeus failed to recognize the plant as a new and distinct genus.
The impetus for the sudden interest in this species was the arrival in England of seeds or cuttings sent from South Carolina by Alexander Garden (1730-1791). Living plants were soon sent to the continent for others to enjoy, and dried specimens made by Garden from live plants near Charleston eventually reached Linnaeus in Sweden. Even though, as noted above, others had proposed new generic names for the plant, Linnaeus rejected all of them and imposed his own name, Calycanthus. The specimen seen today in the Linnaean Herbarium at the Linnean Society of London, and used by him to augment the illustrations, was probably collected by Alexander Garden.
The genus Calycanthus is one of three genera in the strawberry-shrub family, Calycanthaceae Lindl. The genus consists of only two species, both restricted to the United States: C. floridus of eastern North America (New York to Florida) and C. occidentalis Hook. & Arn. of California.
It is only fitting to end this discussion of Georg Ehret with his elegant depiction of Gardenia jasmanoides. Alexander Garden was a careful and talented observer of plants. He was a native of England but resided in Charleston (then Charles Town), South Carolina, where he was a physcian and a most eligible bachelor. He was constantly frustrated by Linnaeus' seemingly lack of understanding of American genera and species. In a long series of letters to John Ellis, a frequent correspondent of Linnaeus', Garden heaped criticism after criticism upon Linnaeus, augmenting his remarks with detailed descriptions and both dried and living specimens. Ellis, an Irish-born merchant of considerable importance and influence in London, was sympathetic especially to Garden's complaint that Linnaeus basically ignored him.
Garden was sending Ellis, for ultimate transmission to Linnaeus, specimens and notes on plants and animals he felt represented new genera and species. He finally conveninced Linnaeus to transfer his Lonicera marilandica (Caprifoliaceae) to a different genus (Spigelia, Spigeliaceae) and to describe and name the snow drop tree (Halesia, Styracaceae) for Stephen Hales, an early plant physiologist. Still, he could not move Linnaeus to describe the American snowbell, a tree that is now know as Styrax americana Lam. (Styracaceae). Ellis was promoting Garden's ideas as best he could and even suggested that Linnaeus should name a new genus for him. Finally, partially in frustration, Ellis proposed Gardenia (Philos. Trans. 51: 935. t. 23. 1761), establishing the name not for an American plant, but for the newly arrived Chinese shrub that was causing such a stir in English horticultural circles.
Alexander Garden would eventually see living specimens of the plant named for him. Ill and nearing death, Garden returned to England where he died in 1791. He saw the plant while he lived in London, and in his honor, the sweet, fragrant flowers filled the hall at his funeral.
The genus Gardenia is composed of perhaps 200 species scattered throughout the Old World tropics and warmer regions of Asia. Many are cultivated. Some are used medicinally and as a scent for tea. A few species are trees and are actually cut for their timber. Gardenia is a member of the madder family, Rubiaceae Durandé. The genus is the type of the tribe Gardenieae A. Rich. ex DC. (Prodr. 4: 342, 367. late Sep 1830).
