Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:39:27.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Humboldtian plant geography after Humboldt: the link to ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Malcolm Nicolson
Malcolm Nicolson
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 5University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his classic textbook, The History of Biology, Erik Nordenskiöld suggested that there had existed, throughout the nineteenth century, not one but two distinct forms of plant geography. He designated one of these traditions of inquiry ‘floristic’ plant geography, tracing its origins back to the work of Carl Linnaeus on species and their distributions. The second form Nordenskiöld termed ‘morphological’, by which he meant that its practitioners concentrated upon the study of vegetation rather than flora. He located the origins of this tradition of inquiry within the botanical work of Alexander von Humboldt.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 289 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Nordenskiöld, E., The History of Biology, New York, 1928, 560–1.Google Scholar

2 The flora of a given region consists of the plant species which grow there. Students of floristics may make generalizations about the character of a region's flora as a whole, but the level of analysis on which their scientific practice is based is essentially that of the individual species or genera. Vegetation is a collective phenomenon produced by many species together. The characteristics of vegetation are produced not only by the presence or absence of particular species, but also by their different growth forms and relative abundances. For a precise elucidation of the distinction between the study of flora and vegetation, see Egler, F. E., ‘Vegetation as an object of study’, Philosophy of Science (1942), 9, 245–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Nicolson, M., ‘Alexander von Humboldt, Humboldtian science, and the origins of the study of vegetation’, History of Science (1987), 25, 169–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also note 5 below.

4 von Humboldt, A., Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent 1799–1804 (tr. Williams, H. M.), 6 vols., London, 1821–1825, i, p. iii.Google Scholar

5 See Nicolson, M., ‘Alexander von Humboldt and the geography of vegetation’, in Romanticism and the Sciences (ed. Jardine, N. and Cunningham, A.), Cambridge, 1990, 169–88Google Scholar; also Nicolson, M., ‘Historical introduction’, in Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels (tr. Wilson, J.), London, 1995Google Scholar; and Bowen, M. J., Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon to Alexander von Humboldt, Cambridge, 1981.Google Scholar

6 I have, unfortunately, been unable to investigate the presence or otherwise of Humboldtian traditions in other areas where distinctive schools of plant sociology developed, for example the Netherlands and, notably, Eastern Europe.

7 The term ‘self-conscious’ to distinguish the science of ecology, so-called, from pre-existing knowledge and investigations of the environmental relations and interactions of plants and animals, is taken from Allee, W. C., Emerson, A., Park, T., Park, O. and Schmidt, K., Principles of Animal Ecology, Philadelphia, 1949, 1–59Google Scholar. For other discussions of the place of Humboldt's plant geography within the development of ecology, see Acot, P., Histoire de l'écologie, Paris, 1988Google Scholar, and Drouin, J., Réinventer la nature: L'écologie et son histoire, Paris, 1991.Google Scholar

8 See May, J. A., Kant's Concept of Geography, Toronto, 1970.Google Scholar

9 von Humboldt, A., Flora Fribergensis specimen, Berlin, 1793, 9–10Google Scholar. The translation is from Hartshorne, R., ‘The concept of geography as a science of space, from Kant and Humboldt to Hettner’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1958), 48, 97–108, on 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 von Humboldt, A., Essai sur la géographie des plantes, Paris, 1807.Google Scholar

11 For the instrumental nature of Humboldtian science, see Cannon, S. F., ‘Humboldtian science’, in Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period, New York, 1978, 73–110.Google Scholar

12 Humboldt, , op. cit. (4), i, 158.Google Scholar

13 von Humboldt, A., ‘Ideas for a physiognomy of plants’, in Views of Nature or Contemplations on the Sublime Phenomena of Creation (tr. Otto, E. C. and Bohn, H. G.), London, 1850, 220–1.Google Scholar

14 Humboldt, , op. cit. (10), 30–1Google Scholar. All translations from this work are my own.

15 Humboldt, , op. cit. (13), 217.Google Scholar

16 See Braun, E. R., Alexander von Humboldt: Patron of Science, Madison, 1954Google Scholar; and Jahn, I., ‘The influence of Alexander von Humboldt on young biologists and biological thinking during the 19th century’, Actes du XIe Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences, Warsaw, 6 vols., Warsaw, 1965, v, 81–6.Google Scholar

17 See Beck, H., Gespräche Alexander von Humboldt, Berlin, 1959.Google Scholar

18 Sanders, A. P. M., ‘Schouw, Joachim Frederik’, DSB, xii, 214–15.Google Scholar

19 Schouw, J. F., ‘Einige Bemerkungen über zwei, die Pflanzengeographie betreffende Werke des Herrn von Humboldt’, Jahrbücher der Gewächskunde (1818), 1, 6–56.Google Scholar

20 Schouw, J. F., Tableau du climat et de la végétation de l'Italie, Copenhagen, 1839, p. viiiGoogle Scholar. I have been unable to trace the second and third volumes of this work.

21 Schouw, , op. cit. (20).Google Scholar

22 Schouw, , op. cit. (20), p. ix.Google Scholar

23 Humboldt, , op. cit. (10), 17.Google Scholar

24 This argument is set out in more detail in Nicolson, M., ‘The Development of Plant Ecology, 1790–1960’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1984, 50–1.Google Scholar

25 Schouw, J. F., Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Pflanzengeographie, Berlin, 1823, 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The nomenclature was apparently first proposed in an earlier (1822) Danish edition of this work, see Whittaker, R. H., ‘Classification of natural communities’, Botanical Gazette (1962), 28, 1–239, on 9.Google Scholar

26 See Jahn, , op. cit. (16).Google Scholar

27 Meyen, F. J. F.'s text was translated into English as Outlines of the Geography of Plants (tr. Johnston, M.), London, 1846.Google Scholar

28 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 3.Google Scholar

29 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 27.Google Scholar

30 See Robinson, A. H. and Wallis, H. M., ‘Humboldt's map of isothermal lines: a milestone in thematic cartography’, Cartographic Journal (1967), 5, 119–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 8.Google Scholar

32 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 98.Google Scholar

33 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 98.Google Scholar

34 Meyen, , op. cit. (27), 1.Google Scholar

35 The best biographical source for Grisebach in English is Stearn, W. T., ‘Grisebach's Flora of the British West Indian Islands: a biographical and bibliographical introduction’, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum (1965), 46, 243–85Google Scholar; see also Balfour, T. A. C., ‘August Heinrich Rudolph Grisebach’, Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh (1882), 14, 13–20.Google Scholar

36 For Kunth and his association with Humboldt, see Stearn, W. T., ‘Carl Sigismund Kunth’, in Humboldt, Bonpland, Kunth and Tropical American Botany (ed. Stearn, W. T.), Lehre, 1968.Google Scholar

37 Grisebach, A. H. R., Riese durch Rumeliaen und nach Brussa im Jahre 1839, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1843–1846.Google Scholar

38 Grisebach, A. H. R., ‘Ueber den Einfluss des Climas auf die Begränzung der natürlichen Floren’, Linnaea (1838), 12, 159–200, on 160Google Scholar. The translation is from Clements, F. E., Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation, Washington, DC, 1916, 116–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Grisebach, A. H. R., ‘Report on the contribution to botanical geography during the year 1842’, Reports and Papers on Botany, Ray Society (1846), 57–122, on 96.Google Scholar

40 Grisebach, A. H. R., ‘Report on the contribution to botanical geography during the year 1843’, Reports and Papers on Botany, Ray Society (1846), 125–212, on 132–3.Google Scholar

41 Grisebach, , op. cit. (40), 135.Google Scholar

42 Grisebach, A. H. R., Die Vegetation der Erde nach ihrer klimatischen Anordnung, Leipzig, 1872.Google Scholar

43 Grisebach, A. H. R., ‘Pflanzengeographie und Botanik’, in A. von Humboldt: Eine wissenschaftliche Biographie (ed. Bruhns, K.), 3 vols., Leipzig, 1872, iii, 233–68.Google Scholar

44 For biographical details of Kerner von Marilaun, see Kronfeld, E. M., Anton Kerner von Marilaun: Leben und Arbeit, Leipzig, 1908.Google Scholar

45 von Marilaun, A. Kerner, Das Pflanzenleben der Donauländer, Innsbruck, 1863Google Scholar. I have used Conard, H. C.'s translation, The Background of Plant Ecology: A Translation from the German of ‘The Plant Life of the Danube Basin’, Ames, 1951, 5.Google Scholar

46 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), 10.Google Scholar

47 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), p. v.Google Scholar

48 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), 4–5.Google Scholar

49 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), 3.Google Scholar

50 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), 10.Google Scholar

51 Von Marilaun, , op. cit. (45), 196–205.Google Scholar

52 There is, however, a short description of the vegetation of the British Isles, more or less along the lines of the Continental model, within the floristic text: Watson, H. C., Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of the British Plants, London, 1835, 34–60.Google Scholar

53 It is instructive that, for example, Janet Browne, in her history of biogeography, concerns herself only with studies of the distribution of species and mentions no Continental biogeographer after Alphonse de Candolle; Browne, J., The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography, New Haven, 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The insularity of British biogeography after 1840 has been noted by Nelson, G., ‘From Candolle to Croizat: comments on the history of biogeography’, Journal of the History of Biology (1978), 9, 269–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Strangely, however, Nelson is unable to specify precisely what British biogeography was isolated from. It may be worth investigating whether it was isolated from a distinct Continental tradition of Humboldtian biogeography. See also Browne, J., ‘A science of empire: British biogeography before Darwin’, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences (1992), 45, 453–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 For biographical details of Heer, see Anon., ‘Obituary – Dr Oswald Heer’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (1883–1886), 84.Google Scholar

55 Hinds, R. B., The Regions of Vegetation: Being an Analysis of the Distribution of Vegetable Forms over the Surface of the Globe, London, 1843.Google Scholar

56 Heer, O., Beiträge zur Pflanzengeographie, Zurich, 1835, 1Google Scholar. The last sentence quoted is from a footnote on the same page.

57 For discussions of Linnaeus's ‘ecological’ writings, see, for example, Du Rietz, G. E., ‘Linneaus as a phytogeographer’, Vegetatio (1957), 7, 161–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Egerton, F. N., ‘Changing concepts of the balance of nature’, Quarterly Review of Biology (1973), 48, 322–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stauffer, R., ‘Ecology in the long manuscript of Darwin's “Origin of Species” and Linnaeus's “Oeconomy of Nature”’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1960), 104, 235–41Google Scholar. For an account of Wahlenberg's distinctive programme of researches, see Söderqvist, T., The Ecologists: From Merry Naturalists to Saviours of the Nation, Stockholm, 1986, 20Google Scholar. The Ecologists is a valuable source for the history of Scandinavian natural history and ecology generally.

58 Thurmann, J., Essai de phytostatique appliquée à la chaîne du Jura et aux contrées voisines, Berne, 1849, 22Google Scholar, my translation. Thurmann is also briefly discussed by Duff, A. G., ‘The Institutionalisation of Ecology in Britain and the United States, 1890–1918’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1980, 26Google Scholar, and by Drouin, , op. cit. (7), 64–5.Google Scholar

59 For biographical details of Lecoq, see Chassagne, M., ‘Le professeur Henri Lecoq, 1807–71’, Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France (1928), 75, 662–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Lecoq, H., Études sur la géographie botanique de l'Europe, 9 vols., Paris, 1854, i, p. v.Google Scholar

61 Lecoq, , op. cit. (60), i, 7.Google Scholar

62 Lecoq, , op. cit. (60), i, p. viiGoogle Scholar. This passage resonates with later debates about the relative merits of floristic criteria in the classification of vegetation; see, for example, Nicolson, M., ‘National styles, divergent classifications: a comparative case study from the history of French and American plant ecology’, in Knowledge and Society: Studies in Sociology of Science, Past and Present (ed. Hargens, L., Jones, R. A. and Pickering, A. R.), Greenwich, CT, 1989, 8, 139–86.Google Scholar

63 Lecoq, , op. cit. (60), iv, 58–90.Google Scholar

64 Lecoq, , op. cit. (60), i, 134Google Scholar; see also Drouin, , op. cit. (7), 71–2.Google Scholar

65 de Candolle, A., Géographie botanique raisonnée: Ou exposition des fails principaux et des lois concernant la distribution géographique des plantes de l'époque actuelle, 2 vols., Paris, 1855, i, p. v.Google Scholar

66 De Candolle, , op. cit. (65), i, 419fGoogle Scholar; see also ii, 1175–6.

67 De Candolle, , op. cit. (65), i, 419Google Scholar. Ronald Tobey has argued that de Candolle denied the possibility of the study of vegetation. But, as this passage indicates, de Candolle acknowledged the existence of a distinctive vegetation science, while himself following another tradition of botanical practice. See Tobey, R. C., Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955, Berkeley, 1981, 100Google Scholar. For further comment on Tobey's account of the origins of plant ecology, see Nicolson, M., ‘No longer a stranger? A decade in the history of ecology’, History of Science (1988), 26, 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 von Post, H., Försök till en systematisk uppställning av vexställena i mellersta Sverige, Stockholm, 1862Google Scholar. I am greatly indebted to Sigridur Oladottir for making this text accessible to me and for providing me with a translation of the passages quoted from Ragnar Hult. For an account of von Post, see Söderqvist, , op. cit. (57), 24–9.Google Scholar

69 See Whittaker, , op. cit. (25), 23.Google Scholar

70 Hult, R., ‘Försök till analytisk behandling av växtformationerna’, Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica Meddelanden (1881), 8, 1–155, on 1Google Scholar. See note 68 above.

71 Hult, , op. cit. (70), on 1.Google Scholar

72 Whittaker, , op. cit. (25), 23–4Google Scholar

73 Hult, , op. cit. (70), 9.Google Scholar

74 See Moss, C. E., ‘The fundamental unit of vegetation’, New Phytologist (1910), 9, 18–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whittaker, , op. cit. (25).Google Scholar

75 Warming, E., Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzen-geographie: Eine Einf¨hrung in die Kenntnis der Pflanzenvereine, Berlin, 1896Google Scholar; Drude, O., Deutschlands Pflanzengeographie: Ein geographisches Charakterbild der Flora von Deutschland und den angrenzenden Alpen-Sowie Karparthenländern, Stuttgart, 1896Google Scholar; Schimper, A. F. W., Pflanzengeographie auf physiologischer Grundlage, Jena, 1898Google Scholar. Warming's text was originally published in Danish, as Plantesamfund: Grundtraek af den Økologiske plantegeografi, Copenhagen, 1895.Google Scholar

76 Tansley, A. G., ‘The early history of modern plant ecology’, Journal of Ecology (1947), 35, 130–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worster, D., Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Cambridge, 1985, 207Google Scholar; Adams, C. and Fuller, G. D., ‘Henry Chandler Cowles, physiographic plant ecologist’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1940), 30, 39–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 For a discussion of the nature of H. C. Cowles's debt to Warming, see Nicolson, M., ‘Henry Allan Gleason and the individualistic hypothesis of the plant community: the structure of a botanist's career’, Botanical Review (1990), 56, 91–161, on 97–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Worster, , op. cit. (76), 198.Google Scholar

79 Goodland, R. J., ‘The tropical origin of ecology: Eugen Warming's jubilee’, Oikos (1975), 26, 240–5, on 241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Godwin, H., ‘Sir Arthur Tansley: the man and the subject’, Journal of Ecology (1977), 65, 1–26 on 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 Rübel, E., ‘Uber die Entwicklung der Gesellschaftmorphologie’, Journal of Ecology (1921), 8, 18–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also idem, ‘Ecology, plant geography and geobotany: their history and aim’, Botanical Gazette (1927), 84, 428–39.Google Scholar

82 See also Becking, R. W., ‘The Zurich-Montpellier school of phytosociology’, Botanical Review (1957), 23, 412–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Godwin, , op. cit. (80), 8Google Scholar. See also Söderqvist, , op. cit. (57), 87–9.Google Scholar

84 Zaunick, R., ‘Drude, Carl Georg Oscar, Botaniker’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, iv, 138.Google Scholar

85 Drude, O.'s Handbuch der Pflanzengeographie, Stuttgart, 1890Google Scholar, is dedicated to Grisebach; see also p. ix.

86 Pound, R. and Clements, F. E., The Phytogeography of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, 1900.Google Scholar

87 Hagen, J. B., An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology, New Brunswick, 1992Google Scholar; Nicolson, , op. cit. (62)Google Scholar; Tobey, , op. cit. (67).Google Scholar

88 Schimper, A. F. W., Plant Geography upon a Physiological Basis (tr. Fisher, W. R., ed. Groom, P. and Balfour, I. Bayley), Oxford, 1903, 162.Google Scholar

89 Schimper, , op. cit. (88), 161Google Scholar. For a detailed comparison of the work of Schimper and Grisebach, see Cittadino, E., Nature as the Laboratory: Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire, 1880–1900, Cambridge, 1990, 112–15.Google Scholar

90 This point is well made by Cittadino, , op. cit. (89).Google Scholar

91 Cittadino, , op. cit. (89), 60.Google Scholar

92 Schimper, , op. cit. (88), p. vi.Google Scholar

93 Cittadino, E., ‘Plant Adaption and Natural Selection after Darwin: Physiological Plant Ecology 1880–1900’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1981, 151.Google Scholar

94 Schimper, , op. cit. (88), p. vi.Google Scholar

95 Warming, E., Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant Communities, Oxford, 1909, 2–3Google Scholar, emphasis in the original.

96 Tobey, , op. cit. (67), 104Google Scholar claims that the English translation ‘introduced a Humboldtian nuance into [Warming's] Darwinian theory’. Thus, Tobey argues, it cannot be said that Warming supported the idea of definite communities in the Humboldtian sense. But see Müller, O., ‘Warming, Eugen’, DSB, xiv, 181–2Google Scholar, for evidence to the contrary, drawn from the original Danish Plantesamfund, Warming, , op. cit. (75)Google Scholar. For instances of Warming employing the concept of the plant community in the characterization of vegetation in the field, see Warming, E., ‘Om Grønlands vegetation’, Meddelanden om Grønland (1888), 12, 1–245Google Scholar (French summary). See also note 67 above.

97 This would probably also have been Grisebach's view on the origin of plant form. Tobey has argued that Warming's ‘Darwinian’ concept of a competitive struggle for survival distinguishes him from the ‘idealistic’ tradition of Humboldt and Drude. Warming was certainly interested in evolution and the origin of adaptation. But he, unlike Schimper, was not a Darwinian in the sense that he favoured the mechanism of natural selection. In fact, like many early ecologists, he was famous for his eclectic Neo-Lamarckianism. The Humboldtian research tradition was sufficiently diverse to allow plant communities to be conceived of in a variety of different ways but there is no evidence in Warming's work that he did not allow the existence of, to use Tobey's terminology, ‘functioning communities of ontological status’. See also notes 67 and 96 above.

98 For the identification of Humboldt with epistemic change in Michel Foucault's sense, see Nicolson, , op. cit. (3)Google Scholar; also Nicolson, M., ‘Was there a Linnean ecology?’Google Scholar, unpublished paper, copies available from the author; and Acot, , op. cit. (7).Google Scholar

99 Cannon, , op. cit. (11).Google Scholar

100 The allusion is to the title of Humboldt's most ambitious text: von Humboldt, A., Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, 5 vols., Stuttgart and Tuebingen, 1845–1862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 Some of the consequences of this changing context for Humboldtian science have been explored by Cannon, , op. cit. (11).Google Scholar

102 McIntosh, R. P., The Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory, Cambridge, 1985, 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

103 Cittadino, , op. cit. (89)Google Scholar; Coleman, W., ‘Evolution into ecology? The strategy of Warming's oecological plant geography’, Journal of the History of Biology (1986), 19, 181–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104 Drouin, , op. cit. (7), 73–80.Google Scholar