TY - JOUR
T1 - Apricots, Plums, and Garden Beans
T2 - Reassembling Nehemiah Grew's Collection of Plants
AU - Eriksen, Christoffer Basse
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Nehemiah Grew is rightly lauded as one of the first and most sophisticated promoters of the discipline of plant anatomy—the observation and representation of the insides of plants. Overlooked so far, though, are his activities as a plant collector. In this paper, I reconstruct Grew's plant-collection practices from his first medical garden, through his incorporation of specimens from the Royal Society's repository, and to its expansion through his support of intercontinental plant-gathering missions. These activities gave Grew access both to fresh, local plant samples, which he could observe again and again, as well as to foreign specimens that exhibited some of the more curious variations of nature. I argue that these different plant-collecting strategies reflected his overarching ambitions with his plant anatomy, which was to construct an idealised model of plant formation, generation, and growth. In order to do this, Grew pieced together his observations of individual specimens into one generalised model through the method of collation. While not offering concrete advice on how to grow plants more efficiently, I argue that Grew's idealised representation of the processes of plant life was offered as a framework for further botanical experimentation.
AB - Nehemiah Grew is rightly lauded as one of the first and most sophisticated promoters of the discipline of plant anatomy—the observation and representation of the insides of plants. Overlooked so far, though, are his activities as a plant collector. In this paper, I reconstruct Grew's plant-collection practices from his first medical garden, through his incorporation of specimens from the Royal Society's repository, and to its expansion through his support of intercontinental plant-gathering missions. These activities gave Grew access both to fresh, local plant samples, which he could observe again and again, as well as to foreign specimens that exhibited some of the more curious variations of nature. I argue that these different plant-collecting strategies reflected his overarching ambitions with his plant anatomy, which was to construct an idealised model of plant formation, generation, and growth. In order to do this, Grew pieced together his observations of individual specimens into one generalised model through the method of collation. While not offering concrete advice on how to grow plants more efficiently, I argue that Grew's idealised representation of the processes of plant life was offered as a framework for further botanical experimentation.
KW - 17th and 18th Century
KW - Classification
KW - Colonial Science
KW - History of Botany
KW - Natural History
KW - Plant Collection
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85217174311&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1484/J.CNT.5.141777
DO - 10.1484/J.CNT.5.141777
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85217174311
SN - 0008-8994
VL - 65
SP - 767
EP - 791
JO - Centaurus
JF - Centaurus
IS - 4
ER -