People That Changed the Plant World You May Ever Have Heard.

Most gardeners do not think about the background of their favorite plants have little idea who named it originally. While there are many individuals in history who made significant impact into the world of Botany, I wanted to learn more about the people who were not really made commercial or publicized. I adore flipping thru Taxonomy books and botany dictionaries. It is individuals like these that paved the way and set the original rules.

Edmund Albius

1829 –1880 Horticulturist

During the middle of the nineteenth century, the manufacture of vanilla was limited almost exclusively due to the difficulty of pollinating and propagating the plant in any zone outside of its home region in the Americas. It was not until a twelve-year-old French-owned slave by the name of Edmond Albius had a moment of genius that the production of vanilla was opened up into other regions, and vanilla became affordable to the average consumer. He invented a method for pollinating vanilla orchids quickly and profitably.

Prior to Albius’ discovery, export of vanilla on his home island of Bourbon (modern day Reunion) was limited to fifty kilos. A little over thirty years later, export was in excess of 200 tons.

George Washington Carver

1864 –1943 Agricultural scientist and inventor

One of the most famous botanists in history, George Washington Carver, was born, enslaved, in Missouri sometime in the 1860s – the exact date is unknown. Soon after the abolishment of slavery, he pursued an education. Although he didn’t strictly study botany, he became one of the most important agricultural scientists of all time.

Carver is most famous for his various methods of farming and preparing peanuts, but his contributions to the plant sciences were so much more. For one, he developed various methods of crop rotation, which boost soil fertility and increase both production and sustainability of farms. During his time as a student, Carver studied plant pathogens and advanced the fields of botany and mycology at the very same time.

Carl Linnaeus

1707- 1778 botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician

Often regarded as the father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus is certainly one of the most famous botanists in history. He may perhaps be one of the most famous scientists, period. Born in Sweden, Linnaeus went on to study botany at Uppsala University. Linnaeus later began to develop the system of binomial nomenclature, the foundation of taxonomy. While he started with plants, he went on to name a variety of organisms, including humans! Without Carl Linnaeus, plants, animals, and fungi would likely have very different names, and we would not be known as Homo sapiens.

Alexander von Humboldt

1769 –1859 German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science.

Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most important plant explorers of all time. He was also a polymath – someone whose knowledge spans various subjects and disciplines. Many of his findings have become part of our collective consciousness of how the planet works. While von Humboldt isn’t directly cited as a botanist, he clearly had an affinity for plants. Botany was a cornerstone of his many fields of study. The plants he collected from explorations through South America helped lay the foundations of biogeography and natural history. He had such an impact during his studies that many natural things were named after him. Even more, he was a huge influence on other great naturalists including Charles Darwin and the geologist Charles Lyell.

Luther Burbank

1849-1926 Horticulturist, Geneticist, Botanist, Gardener, Academic, Non-fiction writer

Luther Burbank was an American horticulturist and botanist. A pioneer in agricultural science, Luther Burbank developed over 800 varieties of plants and strains in an illustrious career that spanned 55 years. He is also credited with developing a spineless cactus that served as cattle feed. In 1986, Luther Burbank was made an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Joseph Dalton Hooker

1817-1911 Botanist

British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker is remembered as one of Charles Darwin’s greatest supporters. The man who is known as the pioneer of geographical botany, Hooker followed in the footsteps of his botanist father.

Hooker’s personal publications were numerous, including the stunning illustrations of Rhododendrons of Sikkim Himalaya; Colonial floras of New Zealand and British India; and several reputable articles on the relationship of American and Asian floras, prompted by his experiences in the Rocky Mountains. Hooker and co-author George Bentham collaborated over more than 25 years to publish The Genera Plantarum (1883). With its own model of classification, it has been called most outstanding botanical work of the century and describes 7,500 genera and nearly 100,000 species.

Jan Ingenhousz

1730 -1799 Botanist, Physician, Physicist

Jan Ingenhousz was born in the Netherlands. He discovered photosynthesis. Ingenhousz correctly identified that sunlight causes plants to release oxygen from the undersides of their leaves. He carried out his experiments by placing leaves in water and collecting the gas bubbles they released. He tested a large number of different plants, including aquatic plants, which he found to be exceptionally good at generating oxygen.

Soon after his discovery that in sunlight green plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, he found that in darkness or heavy shade, they do the opposite: like animals, they take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Overall, the rate that plants make oxygen in sunlight is much greater than the rate they consume it in darkness.

John Gerard

1545 -1612 Botanist

British herbalist John Gerard is best remembered for his iconic book The Herball, known as the first catalogue for plants. However, experts feel it was mostly plagiarized from a similar collection by Flemish botanist Rembert Dodoens. The Herball was immensely popular. It provided in more than 800 chapters information on species as they were then understood, common and botanical names, descriptions of habitats, time of flowering, and the “virtues,” or uses, of plants of the entire plant kingdom.

Philip Miller

1691 – 1771 Botanist

The son of a gardener, Philip Miller followed in his father’s footsteps and devoted 50 years of his life to the Chelsea Physic Garden as its chief gardener. The Gardeners Dictionary, penned by him, became a gardener’s Bible. He was also named a Fellow of The Royal Society.

Leonhart Fuchs

1501-1566, Physican

Sixteenth-century German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs is best known for his extensive research on the medicinal properties of plants and herbs. His work Historia Stirpium is an invaluable treatise on the history of plants. The plant Fuchsia found in the Caribbean was named in his honor.

Carl Peter Thunberg

1743-1828 Botanist

Carl Peter Thunberg was a Swedish naturalist best remembered as one of the apostles of Carl Linnaeus. Along with other students of Linnaeus, Thunberg spent seven years in Asia and southern Africa, gathering and describing animals and plants new to European science. Thanks to his extensive research on plants, Thunberg is referred to as the father of South African botany.      

Nehemiah Grew

1641-1712 Botanist

English botanist Nehemiah Grew is considered a pioneer of plant anatomy, along with Italian biologist and physician Marcello Malpighi. Initially a physician, he later penned iconic books on botany, such as The Anatomy of Plants. He also made pioneering studies in finger-print patterns. A genus of trees has been named after him

Heinrich Anton de Bary

1831-1888 Botanist

German surgeon and botanist Heinrich Anton de Bary is regarded as the pioneer of plant pathology and mycology. Apart from teaching botany, he chalked the life cycles of many fungi and also coined the term symbiosis to explain the mutually beneficial co-existence of many organisms, such as fungi and algae.

John Lindley

1799-1865 Botanist

The son of a nurseryman, British botanist John Lindley revolutionized the plant classification system by introducing a method of considering all characters of plants. Known for his iconic work The Vegetable Kingdom, he also had a wide collection of orchids, which eventually found a place at the Kew Gardens.

Ledyard Stebbins

1906-2000 Botanist

G. Ledyard Stebbins was an American geneticist and botanist. He is considered one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists. Stebbins is credited with writing Variation and Evolution in Plants, which describes plant speciation and is considered his most important publication. For his contributions to science, G. Ledyard Stebbins received many awards including the prestigious National Medal of Science.

Erich von Tschermak

1871-1962 Agronomist

Austrian botanist and agronomist Erich von Tschermak is remembered for his research on seed breeding and his illustrious teaching career at the Academy of Agriculture. He studied the garden pea extensively and developed disease-resistant variants of wheat and oats. He was also part of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture.

Theophrastus

371 BC – 287 BC, Scientist

Theophrastus was born in Eresus, Lesvos, an island in the Aegean. Known as the father of Botany. As a pioneer ecologist and naturalist, Theophrastus compiled some of his botanical research into his book Enquiry into Plants. These books were first translated from ancient Greek in the Middle Ages into Latin and eventually into modern English. Theophrastus’ classification and exacting descriptions of trees, shrubs, undershrub and herbs became a manual that pioneered science, providing insight into how plants were cultivated, their reproduction and botanical structures, their ecological settings and habitats, and their uses in contemporary society.

Ibn al-Baitar

1188-1248

Arab botanist and pharmacist whose works included botanical and pharmaceutical encyclopedias. Ibn al-Baitar spent his early career in Spain before embarking in 1219 on an expedition across the North African coast, where he collected a number of herbs and medicinal plants. In 1224 he became chief herbalist for al-Kamil, governor of Egypt, whose conquest of Syria three years later made it possible for Ibn al-Baitar to collect plant specimens there as well. His Kitab al-jami fi al-adwiya al-mufrada, which remained in wide use until the late eighteenth century, discusses some 1,400 medicinal plants, more than 200 of which had not been previously identified.

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