Carl Linnaeus, the 'Father of Botany' (part I)

This year marks the 300-year birth date celebration of the man responsible for turning around the plant world with his systematic classification of plants and giving them botanical Latin names that are still in use today.

Carl Linnaeus, or Carl von Linnaeus, as he later was called, was born on May 23, 1707, in the province of Småland in southern Sweden. His father, Nils Linnaeus, was a priest who enjoyed gardening and dabbled a bit in basic botany as well.

His parents decided early on that their son Carl would became a priest also, for that profession had stability, usually a house attached to the parish, and he could carry on his father’s devotion to the church.

But young Carl was not interested and preferred to spend his time out in nature, wandering the fields in the countryside. His interests leaned toward plants and botany and it became infectious when, at the age of 5, he had his own garden with potatoes, beets, carrots, dill, strawberries and assorted herbs and flowers from the fields and woodlands surrounding his tiny village.

He was not very successful in school and his teachers advised his parents that because of his keen interest in nature that perhaps the medical world, with all the new medicinal plants of that time, might be a future path for him.

Carl began his education at the University of Lund in Sweden, but after a year he wanted more exposure to the plant kingdom and higher learning and transferred to the University of Uppsala, which was at that time one of Europe’s top academic education centers.

His training in botany was part of the medical curriculum that every doctor had in order to prepare and prescribe drugs derived from medicinal plants found in nature.

Despite being in hard financial straits, Linnaeus mounted an adventurous botanical and ethnographical expedition to the northern part of Sweden in Lapland, below the Arctic Circle. There he studied his flora findings and documented these botanical treasures in the famous “Flora Lapponica.”

He made other excursions in Sweden to study the land where natural resources existed and where he discovered various minerals and ores. Part of the exploration’s goal was to aid in the development of the country and establish some income for the national economy which was governed by a fairly poor monarchy at that time.

He finally received his doctorate from the University of Harderwijk and went on to continue his studies in Holland. That same year, Linnaeus published the first edition of his classification of living things in the “Systema Naturae.” It was this avant-garde system and the classifying of plants that he became famous for and that is still in existence in modern day botanical nomenclature of the 21st century.

Before his organization of the Linnaeus species, naming practices varied wildly. Many biologists of the time gave the species they described long, unwieldy Latin names, which could be altered at will, so that a scientist comparing two descriptions of species might not be able to tell which organisms were being referred to.

For instance, the common wild briar rose was referred to by different botanists under two independent names, which was totally confusing, but Linnaeus’ binomial taxonomy and organizing of plants into class, genus, species and family gave order to all that confusion.

He returned home to Sweden, became engaged and started working as a doctor in Stockholm, eventually becoming the royal physician to the monarchy and court.

His findings and literary papers started a stir in the botanical quarters of Europe and many young students came to the University of Uppsala to study under his tutelage. He was instrumental in arranging to have his students sent out on trade and exploration voyages to all parts of the world. Nineteen of Linnaeus’ students set out to discover new horizons in the plant and animal kingdom.

Ships traveled the seas, bringing back curiosities that had never been seen before. From a few hundred known species, there were now several thousand. Zoologists, botanists and mineralogists were ecstatic with these findings from around the world.

So it became apparent that a global common identification system should be established and Carl Linnaeus was the person who started it, with help from others, and began putting one of nature’s giant puzzles together in an orderly manner.

One of his famous students was Daniel Solander, the naturalist on Captain James Cook’s first ’round-the-world voyage who brought back the first plant collections from Australia and Tahiti.

Another student, Pehr Kalm, traveled in the northeastern American colonies for three years studying American plants.

Many other elite young botanists traveled to South America, southeast Asia, Africa, Japan, China and the Middle East; some returned but many died on their expeditions in uncharted lands and foreign cultures.

Join me next month when I describe some of the exciting botanical explorations out to the new world and more fascinating facts on Carl von Linnaeus, the Father of Botany.

A landscape designer, Roger Boddaert creates sustainable Mediterranean and water-wise landscapes for Southern California gardens. He can be reached for design and consultations at (760) 728-4297.