Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719)

Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719) was born in Oxford, the eldest son of Jacob Bobart the Elder and his first wife, Mary (d.1655). Having worked for his father at the Physic Garden until he was 38 years old, Bobart the Younger succeed to his father’s position as superintendent of the Garden in 1679. By 1691, Bobart was getting restless in Oxford, making overtures to take up a position at Chelsea Physic Garden, but naught came of it.
 
The younger Bobart was widely travelled and highly respected by scholars and gardeners in Britain and Europe, where he maintained a wide circle of correspondents. In 1659, the 18-year-old Bobart the Younger was sufficiently well regarded to add his signature to a petition urging publication of John Evelyn’s Elysium Britannicum. One visitor to the Garden thought his appearance accorded with neither his horticultural nor his academic reputations: ‘an unusually pointed and very long nose, small eyes deeply set in his head, a wry mouth with scarcely any upper lip, a large and deep scar on one cheek, and his whole face and hands as black and coarse as those of the meanest gardener or labourer’ (von Uffenbach, 1754: 161-162). The portrait shown, which is assumed to be of Bobart the Younger, shows a man which is at odds von Uffenbach’s caricature. As a practical joker, he (in)famously fashioned a rat’s corpse into a dragon (Butler, 1744: 119).
 
Many of Bobart the Younger's interests were horticultural, perhaps with one eye on being able to supply the gardens of the wealthy with novel plants. In March 1694, following a visit he made to Mary Somerset (1630-1715), Duchess of Beaufort's celebrated gardens, Bobart the Younger tried to sell her some plants: ‘I send now a packet of such seeds as to me seem hopefull ... I send allsoe Madam a note of such good plants as I do not remember to have seen in yr Graces plantations’ (Sloane MS 3343, f.37; British Library). In the Garden he grew a white-fruited bramble he spotted near Oxford, a stripe-leaved sycamore from Magdalen College and variegated privet (Miller, 1768: RUB; Plot, 1677: 172; Stephens and Browne, 1658: 104).
 
Bobart the Younger also made observations relevant to one of the central botanical issues of the day, the sex lives of plants, although he never formalised any conclusions. He found a white campion with flowers that lacked male parts (Miller, 1768: GEN; Blair, 1720: 272). He is credited with the discovery of the London plane, which he described as intermediate between the occidental and oriental planes. Whilst to maintain his relationship with James Petiver (c.1665-1718), Queen Anne’s botanist at the Chelsea Physic Garden, Bobart the Younger was even prepared to sacrifice part of his own herbarium.
 
When Morison was killed in 1683, Bobart took on his teaching and academic duties but not the professorial title. Like his father, Bobart the Younger was never formally part of the University. During the 1680s, Bobart fostered a life-long friendship with the young William Sherard; he was crucial in developing the Sherard’s botanical interests. In 1699, Bobart completed Part 3 of Morison’s Historia. Months before Bobart’s death, Sherard complained about the University’s treatment of a faithful servant: ‘they [the University] ought to have let him spend the short remainder of his time in the Garden’.
 
The Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) commemorated Bobart, together with his father Jacob, in the generic name Bobartia, a group of South African plants in the iris family.
 

References

Blair P 1720. Botanick essays. London, printed by Williams and John Innys.

Butler S 1744. Hudibras, in three parts, written in the time of the late wars: corrected and amended. With large annotations, and a preface, by Zachary Grey, Vol. 1. Dublin, printed for Robert Owen and William Briln.

Miller P 1768. The gardeners dictionary: containing the best and newest methods pf cultivating and improving the kitchen, fruit, flower garden and nursery. London, printed for the Author.

Plot R 1677. The natural history of Oxford-shire, being an essay toward the natural history of England. Oxford, printed at the Theater.

Stephens P and Browne W 1658. Catalogus Horti Botanici Oxoniensis. Oxonii, Typis Gulielmi Hall.

von Uffenbach ZC 1754. Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland, Dritter Theil. Ulm, auf Rosten der Baumischen Handlung.