Flora Brasiliensis: How a 19th-Century Flora Continues to Inspire
Posted in Science on May 2 2013, by Scott Mori
Scott A. Mori is the Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany at the The New York Botanical Garden. His research interests are the ecology, classification, and conservation of tropical rain forest trees. His most recent book is Tropical Plant Collecting: From the Field to the Internet.
Botanist Alex Popovkin was inspired to carry on the tradition of botanical field work–photographing and collecting plants in Brazil–by one magnificent book , Flora Brasiliensis.
In 1817, the German botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius traveled to Brazil with zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix as part of the wedding party of the Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria. The Archduchess had married the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro I, and the naturalists attached to her party were part of her dowry arrangement. Martius and Spix started their natural history explorations in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro and traveled some 10,000 kilometers in Brazil.