The web presentation of Flora Brasiliensis is a class act on all fronts.
It shows the crowning achievement of the career of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, who was chosen by the Austrian Emperor, Franz I, as one of the members of a team that accompanied the Archduchess Leopoldine to Brazil in 1817.
Martius was only 23 at the time, and the work he set in progress is still used as the principal reference work for Brasilian flora today.
Indians circling a gigantic tree.
Under the watchful eye of fully clothed Europeans.
He travelled in Brazil for three years, accompanied by the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, covering c. 10,000 km between Rio de Janeiro and the upper Amazon, on horseback, on foot or in a canoe.
Martius collected c. 20,000 specimens of plants and dedicated the rest of his life to his Brazilian botanical collections.
In the classic Nova Genera et Species Plantarum Brasiliensis c. 70 new genera and 400 new species were described.
Martius had a particular passion for palms and over a period of thirty years described hundreds of new species in the three volumes of Historia Naturalis Palmarum (1823-1853).He was also interested in the medicinal plants used by the natives, in Indian languages, in Brazilian music and culture, and was responsible for the first phytosociological classification of Brazilian vegetation, which is still accepted today.
Martius died in Munich at age 74; his coffin was covered with palm fronds.
Guadua paraguayana.
Flora brasiliensis was published between 1840 and 1906 by the editors Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, August Wilhelm Eichler, and Ignatz Urban, with the participation of 65 specialists from various countries.
It contains taxonomic treatments of 22.767 species, the majority being Brazilian angiosperms, held in 15 volumes, divided in 40 parts, with a total of 10.367 pages.
Besides taxonomic descriptions in Latin, Flora brasiliensis also has 3.811 high quality litographies, very rich in details that are of great help in the identification of species
You can browse through the hundreds of illustrations on the site, or use the Search box if you have a smattering of Botanical Latin.
Either way, you will be rewarded with high resolution images that you can download as Acrobat .PDF files.
Chusquea fasiculata
Equisetum martii
(This plant was named after Martius)
Quinine, originally an ingredient of tonic water.
I have no idea what this is!.
High resolution documents are available for download.
The whole Brazilian adventure must have been mind-blowing for these botanic explorers, and we have to admire the discipline with which they tackled the accurate drawings of so many new species.
Passion Flowers.
Unknown (to me).
Link to the front page.
Link to the artist’s biographies.
Link to the description of the work.
