From the Bobarts' Herbaria to Morison's Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis (1699)

Commentary
From the Bobarts' Herbaria to Morison's Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis (1699)

Proposal for enhancement

Despite the liminal position of the first keepers of the Physic Garden, the contribution of the Bobarts to the development of botany in Oxford was enormous and the materials for exploring that contribution are very rich. Putting this material to pedagogical use is an obvious desideratum of The Medical Cabinet project.

Image 1. Herbarium of Jacob Bobart the Elder

Within this gigantic volume, Bobart the Elder compiled a 'hortus siccus' or 'herbarium', that is, a collection of dried and pressed botanical specimens, mostly from the University's gardens.  The volume is still preserved he Department of Plant Sciences in Oxford and merits fresh photography.

Image 2. Herbarium of Jacob Bobart the Younger

Bobart the Younger continued this practice on a grand scale.  His library catalogue mentions two herbaria.  The mixed Horti Sicci in eight volumes remains relatively little studied.  In the Hortus Siccus of 38 volumes, Bobart jr. typically mounted a single variety per sheet, as in the examples here, labelling them in Latin and English.    

Image 3. Bobart's herbarium digitized

The Bobarts' herbaria, preserved in Oxford's Department of Plant Sciences, remain an important research resource today.  As one of the oldest and most extensive herbaria extant, they are an important source of data regarding the distribution and variation of species over nearly four centuries. The 38 volumes of younger Bobart's hortus siccus has been cut up and the sheets are now stored separately for ease of reference. More recently, the thousands of individual pages have been digitized and published on an open-access, searchable interface.  A useful brief account of 'Bobart's Hortus siccus' forms the introduction a digitized gallery of the entire collection available here. Click on 'Images' , double-click and image, and open in a new window to view in high resolution.   

Image 4. Portrait of Robert Morison (1620-83)

The 38-volume Hortus Siccus of the younger Bobart is frequently referred to as 'Morison's Herbarium' because it is closely associated with the published Plantarum Historiae Universalis Oxoniensis of the professor of botany, Robert Morison, which the younger Bobart helped to complete after Morison's death.

Image 5. Plate from Morison’s Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis.

Narrating this transition, and illustrating it with parallel images from the herbarium and the historia will help illustrate the continuity between the artisanal labours of the gardeners and the academic endeavours of the professor. No digital facsimile of the first edition of Morison's work appears to be available on the internet. This image comes from the second edition, as digitised by the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid.

Further resources 

The Bobarts' hortus siccus is described in detail in S.H. Vines and G.C. Druce, An account of the Morisonian herbarium in the possession of the University of Oxford, together with biographical and critical sketches of Morison and the two Bobarts and their works and the early history of the Physic garden, 1619-1720 (Oxford, 1914).

On Morison, see Scott Mandelbrote in ODNB; idem, 'Robert Morison’s Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis, in The History of Oxford University Press. Volume I: Beginnings to 1780, ed. Ian Gadd (Oxford, 2013), online; idem, 'The Publication and Illustration of Robert Morison's Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis', Huntington Library Quarterly, 78.2 (2015), 349-379.

A digital copy of Morison’s Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1699), part 3 is available from Google Books.