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Brad Potts (right), Siobhan Gaskell (centre;
Director of the State Library of Tasmania) and Gintaras Kantvilas
(left; Head of the Tasmanian Herbarium) view the Sertum
Anglicum. Brad and Gintaras had provided advice on the
botanical significance of the book that has been of great
importance to Tasmanian and Australian natural history. They
were delighted to finally see a copy of the rare book in
Tasmania.
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The cover page of the rare book that contains
the first description a eucalypt species.
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Tasmania now has its very own copy of the original publication of
the type description of the genus
Eucalyptus which dates
back to 1788 (photo 1). The first formal description of a eucalypt
was by the French botanist Charles-Louis L'Héritier de
Brutelle and was published in his book
Sertum Anglicum, seu
plantae rariores quas in hortis juxta Londinum. A rare
copy of the original book, with its magnificent engraved plates by
James Sowerby and Pierre-Joseph Redoute, has been purchased by
The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
which is housed in the
State Library of Tasmania in
Hobart.
Although published in Paris, the
Sertum Anglicum has a
special place in Tasmanian history because the eucalypt specimen
described was collected from Adventure Bay on Bruny Island
(
Potts and Reid
1997). This specimen of
Eucalyptus obliqua (below,
left) was the first eucalypt to be formally described, making it
the "type specimen" of the genus.
Eucalyptus obliqua is
commonly known as stringy bark (Tasmania) or messmate (mainland)
and is the dominant species of Tasmania’s production forests.
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The first eucalypt specimen to be described was
Eucalyptus obliqua L'Hérit. from Adventure Bay on
Bruny Island, Tasmania. The specimen, lodged at Kew
Herbarium, London, is the "type specimen" for the genus
Eucalyptus.
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The E. obliqua specimen described in the book was
collected by William Anderson and his assistant David Nelson when
Captain James Cooks' two ships (Resolution and
Discovery) anchored at Adventure Bay from 26th to 30th
January 1777 (Cook's ill-fated third voyage). Anderson, a
surgeon, was the botanist and naturalist on the Resolution and had
accompanied Cook on his previous voyage to the Pacific. He
was interested in fragrant plants and was probably the first person
to make detailed observations on the eucalypts, recording the
possible presence of two species at Adventure Bay. He died in
the Behring Strait in 1778 and it was Nelson, the gardener and
collector on the Discovery, who then became responsible for the
plants and the return of the collections to England. Nelson
was based at Kew Gardens in London and was sponsored by Sir Joseph
Banks, who was by then director of Kew Gardens, the world's key
botanical centre at the time. The eucalypt specimens from
this voyage were lodged at Kew Gardens but, along with specimens of
previous voyages, remained undescribed for nearly a decade.
It was the French botanist Charles-Louis L'Héritier de
Brutelle who finally described one of the specimens in 1788.
L'Héritier was a self-taught botanist with a particular
interest in trees. He was a magistrate by profession and an
aristocratic supporter of the concept of the French
Revolution. It was during his visit to London in 1786-87 that
he worked on the large herbarium collection held by Banks and
recognized the new genus. L'Héritier was mysteriously
murdered one night in the streets of Paris in 1800.
Biobuzz issue fifteen, December 2011
