Thomas Johnson | |
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 Title page of Johnson's 1633 edition of Gerard's Herball | |
| Born | 1595–1600 Selby, Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 1644 Hampshire |
| Occupation | apothecary, botanist |
| Nationality | English |
| Notable works | John Gerard's Herball, expanded |
Thomas Johnson (died 1644) was an English botanist, and a royalist colonel in the English Civil War. He has been called the "father of British field botany". [1]
Johnson was born at Selby in Yorkshire between 1595 and 1600. [2] He seems to have received a good education, and to have become an apothecary in London by 1626. Possibly before that he was living in Lincolnshire (Gerard, Herball, ed. 1633, p. 74). In 1629 he was in business on Snow Hill, city of London, where he had a physic-garden, and had become a prominent member of the Apothecaries' Company. [3]
On the outbreak of the civil war Johnson joined the royalists, and, partly for his learning, partly no doubt for his loyalty, was made a Bachelor of physic by the University of Oxford in 1642, and M.D. on 9 May 1643. Johnson took an active part in the defence of Basing House, becoming lieutenant-colonel to Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, the governor, and on 14 September 1644, during a skirmish with a detachment of Sir William Waller's troops under Colonel Richard Norton, he received a shot in the shoulder, "whereby contracting a feaver, he died a fortnight after" (Siege of Basing Castle, 1644). [3]
His first work was a short account of one of the herborising excursions which the company was in the habit of undertaking. This, the first local catalogue of plants published in England, was entitled "Iter Plantarum Investigationis ergo susceptum a decem Sociis in Agrum Cantianum, anno Dom. 1629, Julii 13" (London, 1629), and an appendix of three pages is headed "Ericetum Hamstedianum seu Plantarum ibi crescentium observatio habita anno eodem 1 Augusti." Johnson seems (Herball, p. 450) to have been in Kent in 1626, and to have revisited both that county and Hampstead Heath, as in 1632 he published an enlarged edition of both lists. The plants are named in them according to Lobel, Dodoens, and Gerard. [3] Anna Pavord provides an account of this expedition in her book, The Naming of Names [4] following Gilmour's translation (Gilmour 1972), stating that he was inspired in his explorations by one of the first descriptions of botanical exploration, that of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1557). [5]
In 1633 Johnson published his most important work, The Herball, … gathered by John Gerarde, … very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson, citizen and apothecary of London. So great had been the progress of botany in the thirty-six years since John Gerard's original publication (1597), that Johnson added over eight hundred new species to the list, and seven hundred figures, besides numerous corrections. The work, which contains about 2,850 descriptions, is commonly known by the name "Gerard emaculatus", given to it by Ray. Johnson seems, however, to have completed it in a year. It was reprinted in 1636 without alteration. Haller styles it "dignum opus, et totius rei herbariæ eo ævo notæ compendium". [3]
In 1634 Johnson published Mercurius Botanicus; sive Plantarum gratia suscepti itineris, anno 1634, descriptio, a description, in seventy-eight pages, of a twelve-day tour to Oxford, Bath, Bristol, Southampton, and the Isle of Wight, with English and Latin names of the plants observed. To this was added De Thermis Bathonicis … Tractatus, pp. 19, with plans of the baths. In 1641 he issued Mercurii Bot. pars altera, describing a visit to Wales and Snowdon, and the discovery of many new plants. [3] In 1643 he published a translation of the surgical works of Ambroise Paré from the French, which was reprinted in 1678.
Wood speaks of him as "the best herbalist of his age in England," and as "no less eminent in the garrison for his valour and conduct as a soldier." The minor botanical works of Johnson, which became very scarce, were collected and edited by T. S. Ralph in 1847, under the title of Opuscula omnia botanica Thomæ Johnsoni. Genera dedicated to his memory by Miller and by Adanson having become merged in the genera Callicarpa and Cedrela respectively, the name Johnsonia now belongs to a genus of Xanthorrhoeaceae named by Robert Brown. [3]
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature, also called binominal nomenclature or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name, a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name; more informally it is also historically called a Latin name.
Fritillaria (fritillaries) is a genus of spring flowering herbaceous bulbous perennial plants in the lily family (Liliaceae). The type species, Fritillaria meleagris, was first described in Europe in 1571, while other species from the Middle East and Asia were also introduced to Europe at that time. The genus has about 130–140 species divided among eight subgenera. The flowers are usually solitary, nodding and bell-shaped with bulbs that have fleshy scales, resembling those of lilies. They are known for their large genome size and genetically are very closely related to lilies. They are native to the temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere, from the Mediterranean and North Africa through Eurasia and southwest Asia to western North America. Many are endangered due to enthusiastic picking.
The Chelsea Physic Garden was established as the Apothecaries' Garden in London, England, in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to grow plants to be used as medicines. This four acre physic garden, the term here referring to the science of healing, is among the oldest botanical gardens in Britain, after the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. Its rock garden is the oldest in Europe devoted to alpine plants and Mediterranean plants. The largest fruiting olive tree in Britain is there, protected by the garden's heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is doubtless the world's northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors. Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, the garden became a registered charity in 1983 and was opened to the general public for the first time.
John Gerard was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, first published in 1597, became a popular gardening and herbal book in English in the 17th century. Except for some added plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard's Herbal is largely a plagiarized English translation of Rembert Dodoens's 1554 herbal, itself highly popular in Dutch, Latin, French and other English translations. Gerard's Herball drawings of plants and the printer's woodcuts are mainly derived from Continental European sources, but there is an original title page with a copperplate engraving by William Rogers. Two decades after Gerard's death, the book was corrected and expanded to about 1,700 pages.
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them. A herbal may also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, and sometimes include mineral and animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants. Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification.
Charles de l'Écluse,L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius, seigneur de Watènes, was an Artois doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.
Rembert Dodoens was a Flemish physician and botanist, also known under his Latinized name Rembertus Dodonaeus. He has been called the father of botany. The standard author abbreviation Dodoens is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Mathias de l'Obel, Mathias de Lobel or Matthaeus Lobelius was a Flemish physician and plant enthusiast who was born in Lille, Flanders, in what is now Hauts-de-France, France, and died at Highgate, London, England. He studied at the University of Montpellier and practiced medicine in the low countries and England, including positions as personal physicians to two monarchs. A member of the sixteenth-century Flemish School of Botany, he wrote a series of major treatises on plants in both Latin and Dutch. He was the first botanist to appreciate the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The Lobelia plant is named after him.
John Parkinson was the last of the great English herbalists and one of the first of the great English botanists. He was apothecary to James I and a founding member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in December 1617, and was later Royal Botanist to Charles I. He is known for two monumental works, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, which generally describes the proper cultivation of plants; and Theatrum Botanicum, the most complete and beautifully presented English treatise on plants of its time. One of the most eminent gardeners of his day, he kept a botanical garden at Long Acre in Covent Garden, today close to Trafalgar Square, and maintained close relations with other important English and Continental botanists, herbalists and plantsmen.
This article lists notable events in the history of botany in Britain.
John Goodyer (1592–1664) was a botanist who lived in south-east Hampshire, England, all his life. He amassed a large collection of botanical texts which were bequeathed to Magdalen College, Oxford, and translated a number of classical texts into English.
Paul Hermann was a German-born physician and botanist who for 15 years was director of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden.
Ornithogalum umbellatum, the garden star-of-Bethlehem, grass lily, nap-at-noon, or eleven-o'clock lady, a species of the genus Ornithogalum, is a perennial bulbous flowering plant in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae). O. umbellatum is a relatively short plant, occurring in tufts of basal linear leaves, producing conspicuous white flowers, in a stellate pattern, in mid to late spring. The flowers open late in the day, but when closed have a green stripe on the outside. It is native throughout most of southern and central Europe, and north-western Africa. O. umbellatum is often grown as a garden ornamental, but in North America and other areas it has escaped cultivation and can be found in many areas, where it may become an invasive noxious weed. Parts of the plant are considered poisonous, but are used in some regional cuisines. Essences are also sold as patent remedies. O. umbellatum has been depicted in art by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, and folklore has suggested it originally grew from fragments of the star of Bethlehem, hence its horticultural name.
A physic garden is a type of herb garden with medicinal plants. Botanical gardens developed from them.
The history of botany examines the human effort to understand life on Earth by tracing the historical development of the discipline of botany—that part of natural science dealing with organisms traditionally treated as plants.
Sir William Savile, 3rd Baronet of Thornhill was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1640 and 1642. He fought on the Royalist side in the English Civil War and was killed in action.
George Baker (1540–1600), was an English surgeon notable for writing and translating a number of early medical texts.
John Payne (1607–1647) was an English engraver, who was one of the earliest exponents of the art of engraving in England. His best work was the finest produced by a native-born engraver working during the reign of Charles I.
Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance. Theophrastus looks at plant structure, reproduction and growth; the varieties of plant around the world; wood; wild and cultivated plants; and their uses. Book 9 in particular, on the medicinal uses of plants, is one of the first herbals, describing juices, gums and resins extracted from plants, and how to gather them.
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