Chinese Plants

The different culture of the Orient has fascinated the western world since its exposure to it via the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. Through much of the following period the influence of the Orient was transmitted via traffic with the Near East, a process which accelerated with the crusades. Direct contact between Europe and the Far East - apart from the Mongol invasions - did not really begin until the voyage of Marco Polo from 1266 to 1295 (if it actually took place). It was not until the sixteenth century Portuguese expeditions to India, Malaysia, China and Japan that the more rapid dissemination of Oriental culture and objects began.

The Orient was also to provide a new source of ornamental, useful, and exotic plants. The great European trading companies began their collection and plant hunters employed by the great nurseries and botanical gardens expanded on the earlier efforts of the merchants and missionaries. China has been an especially prolific source of plants thanks to plant hunters such as E. H. "Chinese" Wilson who noted this fact in the title of one of his books, China: Mother of Gardens. Its continued importance as a source of new plants is recognized at The Holden Arboretum by the ongoing participation of various members of its horticultural staff in joint expeditions to China.

Historically, much of the early Far East missionary efforts were conducted by the Jesuits under St. Francis Xavier. Our first item on display, the first flora of China to be published in Europe, is the work of one of his missionaries, Michael Boym, a Polish priest who served in India and China from 1643 to 1652 and from 1656 until his death in 1659. The Flora Sinensis, published in Vienna in 1656, despite its title, also includes birds and animals, not all of which are native to China. The anonymous hand-colored woodcut on display is of Litchi chinensis, better known to the West as the lychee or lichee. Although limited to southern China by its growing requirements, it remains perhaps the best known of the Chinese fruit trees and has been in constant cultivation since the first century B. C.

Pierre Joseph Buc'hoz's Collection Precieuse et Enluminée des Fleurs is a two volume work published in 1776 and 1779 featuring hand-colored anonymous woodcuts of plants without text done in a stylized Chinese manner. The first volume features Chinese plants while the second features other ornamental plants found in European gardens of the time regardless of their country of origin. The plant illustration on display is that of what is today known as Magnolia liliiflora which Buc'hoz called Lassonia quinquepeta and which was known to the Chinese as the Mu-lan or woody orchid. Cultivated as early as the eleventh century it was used medicinally.

China has been long known for its early use of paper for writing and printing. In China there are several plants which have been used since antiquity to make paper - two of which are portrayed in the next two illustrations on display. The first is Tetrapanax papyriferus, formerly known as Aralia papyrifera, a small evergreen shrub, the pith of the stems of which supply the substance from which so-called rice paper is made. It is shown here in a color lithograph from volume 8 of Flore des Serres des Jardins de L'Europe published in Belgium from 1852 to1855.

The second plant is Broussonetia papyrifera, also known as the paper mulberry. Known since the time of Marco Polo as a source of paper, it is also the source of the tapa cloth used throughout Polynesia. It is shown here in a hand-colored stipple engraving by Giraud after an original by Pierre Jean François Turpin in volume 7 of J. L. M. Poiret's Flore Medicale published in 1819, where it is used to illustrate one of the classes in Jussieu's natural system of plant classification.

Two of the more prominent plants found in Chinese paintings are flowering crabapples and tree peonies - which provide the subjects for the next two works on display. Malus spectabilis, grown for over a thousand years, is thought to be the first crabapple in cultivation. It is shown here in a color stipple engraving by Dubreuil after Pancrace Bessa in volume 6 of the so-called second edition of Duhamel du Monceau's Traité des Arbres et Arbustes que l'on Cultive en France published in 1815.

Henry Andrews provides the hand-colored engraving of Paeonia suffruticosa from volume 7 (1807) of his Botanists Repository. One of the most highly regarded flowering plants by the Chinese, it is considered a symbol of masculinity and the yang principle. It has been prized and cultivated since the fourth century A. D., which is fortunate since the wild population has at times been decimated by root collectors gathering its roots for their medicinal properties.

Although not generally planted for its beauty, Cunninghamia lanceolata is widely planted in central and southern China as a timber tree used in house and ship building. The image, here labeled Pinus lanceolata, is a hand-colored stipple engraving by Warner after Ferdinand Bauer based on s specimen in the Banksian herbaria that was brought to England by Sir George Leonard Staunton. It is from volume 3 of the second edition Aylmer Bourke Lambert's A Description of the Genus Pinus published in 1828.

In terms of beauty and novelty, one of the most celebrated Chinese trees is the Davidia involucrata or dove tree, so named for its large white flowers, which resemble doves. It was described and introduced into the West by Abbé Jean Pierre Armand David in 1869, which led to its being named after him by Baillon. It was not until 1897, however, that it was introduced into cultivation in the West thanks to the efforts of Père Farges. The image on display is a hand-colored lithograph by John Nugent Fitch after Matilda Smith from vol. 138 of Curtis's Botanical Magazine published in 1912.

Another handsome woody ornamental plant is Wisteria sinensis, a vine cultivated in Chinese gardens. It is said to have been introduced to England and the West through the efforts of John Reeves in 1816. The image on display is a hand-colored original engraving by William Clark from Richard Morris's Flora conspicua (1826), where it is called Glycine sinensis.

Our final image is that of Buddleia officinalis, a shrub native to northern and central China. Its discovery by a European is credited to Dr. Piasezki who brought back the specimen first described in print in 1880 by Maximowicz, who named the plant. The officinalis epithet refers to the medicinal use of the flower buds. It was introduced to Western cultivation by E. H. Wilson from material obtained from the Yang-tze valley on a plant hunting expedition for the Arnold Arboretum. The illustration is a hand-colored lithograph by J. N. Fitch after Matilda Smith from volume 137 of Curtis's Botanical Magazine published in 1911.

This is the text of the exhibit on display in the rare book room of the Warren H. Corning Library and Visitor Center of The Holden Arboretum, 9500 Sperry Road, Kirtland, Ohio from July 9 through August 7, 1999.The exhibit may be viewed from the library Tuesday through Friday from 10 am to 4:45 pm and on weekends when the library is open. For more information on The Arboretum rare book collection click here.

Stanley Johnston, Curator of Rare Books