Title: The King's Garden /
Authors: Duval, Marguerite, 1912-
Publisher: University Press of Virginia,
Year: 1982
Subjects: Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (France) History.; Botany History; Botany France History.; Botanists France History.; Botany history
Abstract: This translation of Marguerite Duval's La Planete des Fleurs, first published in Paris in 1977, is an important contribution to a sadly neglected faced of history - that of botanical exploration and discovery. During a quarter millennium of the age of discovery, a stream of daring and dedicated men searched the entire world from the Arctic Circles to the Antipodes to discover and bring back to Europe exotic and other useful productions of nature from every green corner of the world. No important aspect of history has been more unjustifiably neglected than the heroic, sociologically highly significant, often dramatic, often tragic, voyages of discovery of the plant hunters. Many of the treasures that were the fruit of their expeditions into the far-flung, newly discovered reaches of the world wrought immensely important changes and developments in the burgeoning Western civilization.
Contents: 1. The Montpellier Garden -- 2. Belon: First Botanist-Traveler -- 3. The Creation of the King's Garden -- 4. The Seventeenth-Century Missionaries -- 5. Tournefort in the Levant -- 6. Adventure in Canada -- 7. Buffon and Jussieu -- 8. In and around Africa -- 9. The Enlightenment and the Garden -- 10. The Revolution and the Garden -- 11. Michaux in the United States -- 12. Raffenau-Delile in Egypt -- 13. Bonpland and Humboldt -- 14. The Last Dream: Jacquemont -- 15. Aristotle Was Right -- Appendix: Botanical Gardens and Arboretums of France -- Index of Plant Names