A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth Century

About this book

A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth Century is the fifth volume in the six-volume set, A Cultural History of Plants, covering the period from 1800 to 1920, a time of astonishing growth in industrialisation, urbanization, migration, population growth, colonial possessions, and developments in scientific knowledge. As European modes of civilisation and cultivation were exported worldwide, botanical study was revolutionised – through the work of Charles Darwin and many others – and the new science of biology was born, based on cells, nuclei and molecules. As Darwinism took hold, plants came to be seen as a way of thinking about the connectivity of nature and life itself.

The six-volume set of the Cultural History of Plants presents the first comprehensive history of the uses and meanings of plants from prehistory to today. The themes covered in each volume are plants as staple foods; plants as luxury foods; trade and exploration; plant technology and science; plants and medicine; plants in culture; plants as natural ornaments; the representation of plants.

Contents

Series Preface
List of Figures

Introduction, David Mabberley

1. Plants as Staple Foods, Claudia Ciotir
2. Plants as Luxury Foods, Patrick Hunt
3. Trade and Exploration, Mark Nesbitt
4. Plant Technology and Science, Anne Osbourn
5. Plants and Medicine, Monique Simmonds
6. Plants in Culture, Roy Vickery
7. Plants as Natural Ornaments, Clemens Alexander Wimmer
8. The Representation of Plants, H. Walter Lack
Notes
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

David J. Mabberley AM, DSc is Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK. He was, consecutively, Director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, Seattle, USA; Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; Executive Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. He held a chair in the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, for twenty-three years and has had visiting posts in the University of Paris; Kuwait University; Universities of Peradeniya and Sri Jawarardenepura, Sri Lanka; University of Sydney; Western Sydney University; and Macquarie University, where he is Adjunct Professor. He has over three hundred publications, ranging from plant ecology and systematics to the history of science and botanical illustration. His most recent books include Botanical Revelation (2019); Mabberley's Plant-book: A Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses (2017); Painting by Numbers: The Life and Art of Ferdinand Bauer (2017); and Sir Joseph Banks' Florilegium (2017).