Herb Harvest Fall Festival
October 6, 7, and 8, 2016
Kathleen Connole
The Plant Explorers of South America – Intrepid Adventurers
The story begins with the very familiar tales of the first Europeans venturing across the sea in search of spices and
riches. Columbus did not find the pepper, Piper nigrum, of the Malabar Coast that he was in search of, but
introduced the world to what has become today the most popular spice, Capsicum. The trading powerhouses of the
day, Spain and Portugal, were granted possession of the New World by the Pope, the effective ruler over all of
Europe in 1494, in the Treaty of Tordesillas. The dividing line awarded much of Brazil, all of Africa, and “the
Spiceries”1 to Portugal. The rest of South America went to Spain, along with Mexico, Central America, the
southwest and central United States, the West Indies, southern Florida, and eventually the Philippines and other
south Pacific islands. The rest of Europe would be shut out of “this wonderful terra incognita called America”2, for
over two hundred years.
The list of familiar explorers looking for a new route west to the land of spices, and conquistadors in search of gold
and silver followed: Vespucci, Balboa, Magellan, Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto, Cabot, and Raleigh. Many others not so
well-known had varying degrees of success. There were countless ways to meet an untimely end – shipwreck,
disease, starvation, poisonous fruit and creatures, and death in battle with hostile natives (many of whom were
cannibals). The myths of El Dorado, The White King, and The Enchanted City of the Caesars kept these seekers of
wealth searching endlessly until the end of the 16th century. Often the natives encouraged these false stories, to keep
the explorers moving on and out of their homelands. Not all of the natives were hostile and many times they kept the
strangers from starvation by giving them food. All too often the story was one of plunder and slaughter. (The only
interest in plant life would be if it was something that could be eaten for survival, or bring wealth to the discoverers
and their kings.)
The 17th century could be called “the golden age of missions” in South America. Members of the Franciscan and
Jesuit orders in search of souls to save not only followed the trails of the conquistadors; they explored and
established missions in areas further into the interior where no Europeans had ever been. Although their main
objective was to convert the natives, these missionaries were schooled in the sciences and became the “first
naturalists, the first anthropologists, the first geographers, and the first cartographers of the interior of the
continent.”3 Some of the missions were instrumental in the survival of the natives that they sheltered and protected
from being captured as slaves by the “bandeirantes”, troops of ruthless soldiers, often including “mamelucos”, a
mixed race of European, native South American, and/or African. The indigenous people actually did not make good
slaves; many perished when taken out of their homelands, or escaped and disappeared back into the forest. By the
mid 1600’s these mercenaries instead turned their attention to a quest for precious stones and metals.
The 18th century ushered in a new era of exploration of the continent of South America. In 1734 an expedition was
organized to settle the controversy over the shape of the earth. Sir Isaac Newton maintained that it was slightly
flattened at the poles; the other theory was that it was slightly elongated at the poles and constricted slightly at the
equator. Two locations for the experiment were chosen: Lapland and Quito in the Viceroyalty of Peru. CharlesMarie de La Condamine, mathematician, geodesist, and friend of Voltaire was selected to go to Peru. His team
included talented men of many scientific disciplines – astronomer, mathematician, botanist, marine engineer,
draftsman, physician, and watchmaker and instrument technician. Permission was granted by the King of Spain –
these were the first outsiders to be permitted into Spain’s New World Empire. La Condamine did not complete this
project until 1743, and he confirmed the accuracy of the Newtonian theory. He then rafted down the great Amazon
1
Goodman, E.J.
2
Von Hagen, V.W.
3
Goodman, E.J.
Herb Harvest Fall Festival
October 6, 7, and 8, 2016
Kathleen Connole
River to its mouth, giving the first scientific account of the geography, astronomy, biology, and ethnography of the
region.
Following La Condamine were the first explorations of the New World purely for the sake of botanical studies. This
was “the Golden Age of Botany”, and “Linnaeus considered the plant life of the Spanish Empire extraordinarily rich
and quite unknown.” 4 King Carlos III founded the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid in 1774, and sent plant
collectors across the Atlantic to supply the garden with new specimens, especially medicinal plants. Notable among
these explorers were Father José Celestino Mutis, priest-physician-naturalist, who went to Neuva Granada
(Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama), 1761-1781; and botanists Joseph Dombey of France, accompanying
Spaniards Hipólito Ruiz and José Pavón, who went to the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1777-1788. These men sent extensive
collections to Madrid. Mutis corresponded with Linneaus during his years away, until receiving word of his death in
1778. Dombey, Ruiz and Pavón were accompanied by artists, and much of their very valuable work in recording the
plants that were collected can be viewed to this day (thanks to the wonders of modern technology and the internet).
In 1789 the government of Spain sent an expedition which was to circumnavigate the globe. Thaddeus Peregrinus
Haenke, celebrated naturalist of Bohemia, received permission from his country to take part in the journey. He
traveled to Madrid, missing the departure by hours, found another passage on a ship bound for Buenos Aires, was
shipwrecked but “managed to swim to shore, carrying his copy of Linnaeus and his papers in his nightcap.”5 Haenke
then became the first botanist to cross the pampa, collecting 1,400 plants along the way. He spent the rest of his life
botanizing in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, never returning to his homeland of Bohemia.
The next great explorers of the rivers and mountains of South America were Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Heinrich
Alexander von Humboldt, of Prussia, “linguist, biologist, astronomer, geologist, and explorer”, accompanied by
French botanist Aimé Bonpland, during the years 1799-1804. Alexander Humboldt, as he preferred to be called, and
Aimé Bonpland traversed almost two thousand leagues by land and water and were the first to explore many
unknown areas. To paraphrase Newton, who paraphrased someone else before him, “We see further by standing on
the shoulders of giants.”6 Even though there are numerous geographical and astronomical features, towns, streets,
parks, schools and ships named after Humboldt in the Americas and all over the world, today he has all but been
forgotten by history, it seems. Yet, a long list of important and well-known scientists, environmentalists,
philosophers, writers, and artists were influenced by this one man. Charles Darwin carried Humboldt’s Personal
Narrative with him on the Beagle.7 The good news is that there are several excellent, recent works about
Humboldt’s life and accomplishments, and new English translations of his own writings, that are more in keeping
with his spirit than those previously published long ago.
“Humboldt’s journeys marked a watershed in the history of the exploration of South America.” The 1800’s could be
called the “Age of the Naturalist”, the “Great Age of Scientific Exploration”. There are so many stories of these
naturalists, “bringing to the museums of Europe and the United States thousands of specimens of the lush plant life,
the insects, carnivores, amphibians, reptiles, and fishes of this beautiful continent.” 8 The story of one of these
individuals leads the reader to the story of another, and on and on – but a few stand out and will be considered here.
Of course the most well-known to all is Charles Darwin, whose observations of nature on the equatorial Galápagos
Islands off the coast of South America led to his world-changing publication, The Origin of Species.
During the 1800’s there were several government sponsored expeditions in the interest of furthering the scientific
knowledge of South America. Three Bavarian men of science, zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, botanist Karl
Friedrich Philipp von Martius, and botanist Johann Natterer were sent by their king to Brazil to study flora and
fauna, indigenous peoples – their languages, methods of cultivation and materia medica, geography, climate, and
geology. They explored from 1817 through 1820. In 1851 the United States Navy sent Lieutenants Lardner Gibbon
and William Lewis Herndon to the Amazon to gather seeds and plants that could be introduced in the U.S.
4
Goodman, A.J.
5
Goodman, A.J.
6
Walls, L.D.
7
Walls, L.D.
8
Goodman, A.J.
Herb Harvest Fall Festival
October 6, 7, and 8, 2016
Kathleen Connole
A fascinating tale of adventure and discovery involves the newly crowned Queen Victoria of England, “The Age of
Flowers”, an unknown German surveyor and self-taught botanist named Robert Hermann Schomburgk, and the
fantastic Victoria regia lily. In 1835 Schomburgk was sent by the Royal Geographical Society to survey the British
Empire’s newly acquired colony of British Guiana; while there exploring the upper reaches of its wild rivers he
stumbled upon the giant lily. The ripple effect of this discovery included the design and construction of the famous
Crystal Palace, and advances in the technology of building hothouses or “stoves” in which the wealthy could house
the exotic tropicals flooding in from all parts of the world.9
An amateur American naturalist, William H. Edwards, explored the lower Amazon and published his story in 1847,
A Voyage up the River Amazon. This rather romanticized work in turn inspired the great British naturalists, Alfred
Russel Wallace and Henry W. Bates, to venture into the heart of the great Amazonian rainforest in 1848. These
individuals were a new breed of explorer, men of simple means and self-taught, but with tremendous passion for the
study of nature. They were contemporaries of Darwin, and interested in the theories about the origin of species.
They hoped to finance their explorations by selling specimens to British museums and collectors. Bates’ area of
specialization was entomology, and Wallace’s botany.
Wallace and Bates were joined in 1849 by fellow Englishman Richard Spruce; Spruce was an experienced botanist
but of a similar background. “All three wanted to earn a living by doing what they loved most.” Spruce had been
collecting and botanizing since he was a boy wandering the Yorkshire moors. He had become well-known by the
leading botanists of the day as an authority on mosses and hepatics – his life-long passion. Spruce came to the
attention of Sir William Hooker and his associate George Bentham, who at the time were working to establish the
Kew as the greatest botanical garden in the world. They sent Spruce on a plant-hunting expedition to the Pyrenees
Mountains, and upon his successful return with a well-received collection of alpine plants, suggested that his next
journey should be nothing less than “the botanical exploration of the Amazon valley”. George Bentham would
receive all the plant specimens that Spruce sent from Amazonia, classify and name each one, keeping one of each
complete “set”, send the rest on to a group of ‘subscribers’ throughout Europe, and send the proceeds to Spruce in
Brazil.10
The three British “Naturalists in Paradise”, as they were named by the wonderful author John Hemming, spent years
going up and down the Amazon and its tributaries, sending thousands of specimens back to European collectors.
Sometimes they crossed paths, often they barely missed each other. They experienced similar hardships common to
all of the explorers of this great wild place – disease, infection, hunger, poisonous plants and serpents, plagues of
ferocious biting insects, pounding thunderstorms, flash floods, swamped boats, extremely treacherous rapids and
waterfalls, deceitful and sometimes murderous natives. (Many died, some went back to their homeland, their health
forever compromised; some lived long lives writing about their adventures, and some stayed in South America for
the remainder of their lives.)
The early plant explorers were only able to send back to Europe dried specimens to fill herbariums for study and
classification – and even that was not an easy task in the tropics. Since the most frequent mode of transportation
was on the rivers, everything that was needed for collecting had to be taken in the canoe. Then they had to
overcome the conditions of constant humidity, frequent deluges of rain, devouring insects, inattentive crew
members, and accidents causing boxes to be lost overboard. Finally they had to coordinate getting their precious
cargo on board a ship bound for home and hope that it arrived safely.
There were many creative techniques for trying to get seeds and sometimes even living plants packaged in such a
way that they would remain viable for the long journey across the sea, often unsuccessful. The invention of the
Wardian case in 1829 was ground-breaking and made possible the transport of healthy plants and seedlings from
their origins to the plantations of the great colonial empires. This “closed case” also allowed tender and exotic
tropicals to be sent to the avid botanists and gardeners, both professional and amateur, of the Victorian Era. There
were great and prosperous nurserymen who successfully marketed these new plants and published horticultural
9
Holway, T.
10
Hemming, J.
Herb Harvest Fall Festival
October 6, 7, and 8, 2016
Kathleen Connole
journals instructing the public on the cultivation of their new introductions. These nurseries became the sponsors of
many an adventurous new plant collector.
There are an amazing amount of books, journals, and articles available on the subject of plant exploration. Not only
are the actual words of the explorers available to be read, there are also excellent authors on the topic, who have read
the often very lengthy and detailed journals, and woven them into wonderful true stories of adventure and discovery.
Even though the stories are sometimes hundreds of years old, there is much that can be learned and applied to the
world we live in now. In an age when there were no cameras, thanks to the naturalist’s pencils and the artist’s paint,
the sketches and drawings of the plants and people that they encountered are forever preserved for us to appreciate
and marvel at today. The principles that Humboldt spoke of are as true and relevant in our modern world as they
were then, or even more so.