Schunambu-valli Lat. Pars 7 Tab: 11.

Title

Schunambu-valli Lat. Pars 7 Tab: 11.

Description

Illustration of a Malaysian shunambu-válli branch with heart-shaped leaves, small fruits and seeds. From the work Hortus Indicus Malabaricus. A comprehensive printed work on South Asian botany for botanists of the early modern period. European scientists, including Carl Linnaeus, borrowed from the Hortus Malabaricus. Scholars and doctors in Malabar sketched and described the local flora. Their illustrations were then executed in copperplate engravings and accompanied by the plant names transcribed in Arabic script in Latin, Malayalam, Konkani and Malay. Published by Joannis van Someren.

ca. 1678

Artist

Rheede tot Draakenstein van (1636-1692)

Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Draakenstein (1636 - 1691) was governor of Cochin and author of the work Hortus Malabaricus. Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede was born in 1636 in the province of Utrecht as the son of Ernst van Rheede and Elisabeth van Utenhove. In 1656 he entered the service of the Dutch East India Company, where he quickly made his career. In November 1662 he was provisionally appointed captain. Under Rijklof van Goens he took part in the capture of Cochin (January 7, 1663) and Fort Cananoor (February 15, 1663) on the Malabar Coast. In 1671 he was appointed Commander of the Malabar Coast and in 1677 an Extraordinary Councilor. Van Rheede was fascinated by the diverse flora of the Malabar Coast and spent 30 years collecting a wealth of information about the native plants. In 1678 he returned to the Netherlands for six years. In the same year the first part of Hortus Malabaricus was published in Amsterdam. This first part has a length of 110 pages and contains 57 drawings depicting over 300 plants and fruits. The work comprises a total of 12 volumes, which appeared gradually until 1703 and were edited by Jan Commelin. The Dutch East India Company appointed Van Rheede general commissioner (commissaris-generaal) in 1684. After a stay in the Cape Colony he returned to India via Ceylon. He died during a voyage from Cochin to Surat on board the ship Drogterland off the coast of Bombay and was buried in Surat in January 1692. His elaborately designed tomb is located in the city's Dutch cemetery.

Historical Description

Plant science, or botany, deals in detail with the diversity of the plant world and tries to bring it into a system. The plants are examined in terms of structure, growth, life cycle, reproduction, metabolism and chemical properties. Plant science is one of the oldest sciences: people have been studying the effects of certain plants since early on. What was of interest was whether these were edible or of a healing nature. Today, five sub-areas make up botany. Plant morphology studies plant structure and form. This includes the internal and external structure as well as the structure of the plant cell. Plant physiology examines functional processes such as metabolism. Plant systematics brings order to the plant world. It describes precisely the different types of plants. Geobotany deals with the location of the plants. This includes the interaction between the plant and its environment. Ecophysiology explores to what extent and why plants have adapted to their environment in the past. This is particularly interesting because this also happens in environments with hostile conditions.