Before the eighteenth century, botany was merely a branch of medicine. Until then, mostly doctors and surgeons studied herbs. Attempts had been made by others to classify plant species into groups, but the breakthrough came with the work of Carl Linnaeus. Showing how plants were related was a complex and strange thing before Linnaeus developed his system. The idea to give each species two names was not new, but names were not truly fixed and accepted. Some scientists classified plants into herbs and trees, or according to the shape of the fruit, or whether they had flowers or not. But Linnaeus' idea of grouping plants in families was unique. In his system the identification of different species was based on the arrangement of the male and female organs in the flowers. As a result, fruits such as peaches and pears are in fact related, although they are different at first sight.
Linnaeus' system soon conquered the world. In 1759, Linnaeus' student, Daniel Solander, traveled to England to promote the new system. In London, Solander developed a lifelong friendship with Joseph Banks, who would later ask him to join his team of botanical explorers on the Endeavour in 1768.
Born into a life of privilege, Joseph Banks was the son of a wealthy family. When his father died in 1761, Banks was only eighteen years old. Many young men in his position would lead a cosy life, but young Banks had an appetite for knowledge. Despite his wealth, he worked to make a career in science. He made a first journey to study wild plants in 1766. His next expedition was the great voyage with James Cook to Oceania.
In 1768, the Royal Navy appointed James Cook as the commander of the Endeavour to take members of the Royal Society on an expedition to Tahiti. According to the instructions given to Captain Cook, the expedition had three goals. The primary goal was to study the passing of the planet Venus across the sun. This would give astronomers a chance to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun. Secondly, the purpose of the expedition was to record, classify and describe all plant and animal life observed during the trip. Thirdly, Captain Cook received secret instructions to search for an unknown southern continent.
As astronomy was one of the most important branches of science, it was the British government that paid for all the equipment and expenses for that part of the expedition. Since the government would not pay for such a new field of science as botany, Joseph Banks, at the age of 25, had to supply about ￡10,000 of his own money to equip the expedition.
On their three-year voyage, Joseph Banks not only studied and described new plants he found, but also looked out for new economic species: plants that could be grown in England or other parts of the world to produce crops that could be sold. Banks was the first to move crops from one continent to another on a large scale, helping to develop local economies with these new imports. Some plants that were spread over the globe in this way include cocoa, hemp and tea.
The Endeavourretumed to England in 1771. The voyage had been a great success. Wonderful discoveries had been made of strange new lands, cultures, animals and plants. After that Captain Cook made two more voyages around the world, but Joseph Banks never undertook another. From behind his desk, however, he was involved in enterprises such as the exploration of Africa and the settlement of Australia. In 1778, Banks was elected president of the Royal Society, a position he held for 42 years. During these years Banks helped to develop the royal gardens at Kew into one of the greatest botanical gardens in the world. He accumulated a great deal of knowledge about plants and agriculture. In growing strawberries Banks went back to the abandoned practice of spreading straw under the fruit to reduce the necessary amount of watering. He also built a greenhouse to experiment with growing pineapples. It was Joseph Banks who made Kew a centre of scientific and economic research. |