Historia naturalis palmarum
Encyclopedia
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
book of palms
Arecaceae
Arecaceae or Palmae , are a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales. There are roughly 202 currently known genera with around 2600 species, most of which are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates...
(Arecaceae) by German botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was a German botanist and explorer.Martius was born at Erlangen, where he graduated M.D. in 1814, publishing as his thesis a critical catalogue of plants in the botanic garden of the university...
. The work is in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and was published in imperial folio
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
format in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
(Lipsiae) by T.O. Weigel, volume one in 1823 and the final volume in 1850. It includes more than 550 pages of text and 240 chromolithographs
Chromolithography
Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is frequently used...
, including views of habitats and botanical dissections.
Historia naturalis palmarum was based on Martius' travels in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
with zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix
Johann Baptist von Spix
Dr. Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix was a German naturalist.Spix was born in Höchstadt, Middle Franconia, as the seventh of eleven children. His boyhood home is the site of the Spix Museum , opened to the public in 2004...
from 9 December 1817 to 1820. Their expedition was sponsored by the King of Bavaria
King of Bavaria
King of Bavaria was a title held by the hereditary Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria in the state known as the Kingdom of Bavaria from 1805 until 1918, when the kingdom was abolished...
, Maximilian I, with instructions to investigate natural history and tribal Indians. The pair travelled over 2,250 km (1,400 mi) throughout the Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
, the most species-rich palm region in the world, collecting and sketching specimens. They began in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
and São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
before making their way north and inland. They became the first non-Portuguese Europeans to obtain permission to visit the Brazilian Amazon.
On their return to Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, the King awarded both men knighthoods and lifetime pensions.
In the first volume, Martius outlined the modern classification of palms and prepared the first maps of palm biogeography
Biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...
. The second volume described the palms of Brazil, and in the third, known as Expositio Systematica, he systematically described all known genera
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
of the palm family, based on his own work and that of others.
The majority of drawings of palms for the second volume, dedicated to Brazilian palms, were credited to Martius, with just a few landscapes, representing areas not travelled by Martius, taken from works by Frans Post
Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post was a Dutch painter. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of America. In 1636 he traveled to Dutch Brazil at the invitation of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen.- Biography :...
and Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas , was a German painter, famous for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic subjects in several countries in the Americas, in the first half of the 19th century....
.
The book was reprinted in two volumes in 1971.
Other works by Martius based on the expedition were Reise in Brasilien (Journey in Brazil), published in three volumes in 1823, 1828 and 1831, and the massive 40-volume monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
Flora Brasiliensis
Flora Brasiliensis
Flora Brasiliensis is a book published between 1840 and 1906 by the editors Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, August Wilhelm Eichler, Ignatz Urban and many others...
which was completed by others in 1906.
E. J. H. Corner
E. J. H. Corner
Edred John Henry Corner FRS was a botanist who occupied the posts of assistant director at the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Professor of Tropical Botany at the University of Cambridge...
(1966) described the book as "the most magnificent treatment of palms that has been produced" Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
said of the work and author: "For as long as palms are named and known, the name of Martius will be famous."