John Parkinson's 'Theatrum botanicum' (1640)

Commentary
John Parkinson's 'Theatrum botanicum' (1640)

The multifarious origins of plants of commerce and cultivation are vividly revealed on the title page to John Parkinson’s Theatrum botanicum (1640). The subtitle, An universall and compleate Herball, emphasised Parkinson’s view that the Theatrum contained all of the plants known from the four continents of the known world, the division of which is clearly displayed. The Tetragrammaton, the Hebraic name of God, appears at the top of the page with a portrait of John Parkinson at the bottom. In his hand, Parkinson holds a flowerhead of leopard’s bane.

On the left of the title is Adam, with a seventeenth-century spade, on the right is Solomon and the association with wisdom. The quarters of the page are arranged (top left, clockwise) as Asia, Europe, Americas and Africa. This title page reveals much about seventeenth-century English perceptions of other peoples and the limitations of botanical knowledge. Each quarter includes a selection of plants assumed to be associated with that continent and a woman on a mode of transport: Asia is mounted on a rhinoceros, based on the image by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528); Europe is resplendent in a horse-drawn carriage; America straddles a lop-eared llama; and Africa sits back-to-front on a zebra.

In Asia, the mythical vegetable lamb appears, together with the clove (above the rhinoceros’ ears). In the mid-seventeenth century, cloves were found only on one of the islands in the Moluccas and was very valuable as a spice – England fought with Holland for control of the clove trade. The Asian quarter also shows an ear of maize, taking up Jean Ruel’s claim from 1536 that maize was of Turkish origin. Maize is an American plant but the confusion over its origin extends into the late twentieth century. In the seventeenth century, the confusion stemmed from all maize seen in Europe coming from trade routes associated with Constantinople – hence the names ‘Indian corn’, ‘Turkish wheat’ or ‘Frumentum Turcicum’.

In Europe, familiar fruits such as lemon (Asian origin; extreme left at the top of the column), pomegranate (right of lemon), almond (tip of Europa’s sword) and grape (extreme right above cornucopia) dominate the space. The tulip is one of the few ornamental plants shown; ‘tulipomania’ was a 1630s Dutch phenomenon.

The Americas are sparsely populated with plants, perhaps a reflection of the poverty of knowledge about the continent. However, all the plants are correctly placed, including the sunflower (‘flos solis’; left of America’s bow), the passionflower (at the spear tip) and pineapple (lower left).

Africa is similarly depleted of plants; the dragon tree (top right) and date palm (top left) are both copied from Gerard’s Herball (1597). In this period, plants were not believed to reproduce sexually, the exception was the date palm which was accepted as having separate male and female plants. The process of date pollination was well known but dismissed by European scholars as an aberration – it did not violate the rule that flowering plant reproduction was non-sexual.