LINNAEUS

Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) was a Swedish scientist who invented the universally accepted system used for classifying plants and animals. He gave each plant a generic Latin name, modified by a specific adjective. Despite his great contributions to science, Linnaeus was a man of his age. He believed God created the world and things in it and then left them to mankind to figure out.
Born in southeastern Sweden, Linnaeus was turned on to plants by his father, a preacher who tended a small garden near his church. He was raised in Stenbrohult, which he described as "one of the most beautiful places in all Sweden." His father’s church was situated on the shores of Lake Möckrln, which in turn was surrounded by beech forests, mountains, pines woods and meadows.
Linnaeus's father hoped his son would chose a career in the church, but the boy showed little interest in theology in school and his father considered sending him off to learn the trade of shoemaking but was persuaded by a teacher to send him to Uppsala to study medicine. As a student he lectured in a botanical garden, went on a specimen collecting expedition to Lapland and ended up in the Netherlands, then a major center of medical learning.
As a medical student and early scientist Linnaeus was influenced by the English scientist John Ray, who developed the concept of species, and the Swedish scientist Olaf Rudbeck, who discovered the lymphatic system and tried to prove the center of the civilized world was Sweden. Linnaeus lectured and cared for the botanical garden and herbarium at the university in Uppsala. In his townhouse he kept caged monkeys, which delighted him to no end, and invented the swivel chair.
Linnaeus was a brilliant, inspiring teacher. He took students on long hikes and described and lectured about plants he saw along the way. The hikes were often ten miles or more and ladies were welcome to come along, a rare event in his time.
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Linnaeus, Plants and Sex
Historian Daniel Boorstin wrote that "Linnaeus was the Freud of the botanical world." "We forget the embarrassment in 'mixed company' in the pre-Freudian age at public mention of any sexual organs, even though they were only those of plants. In Linnaeus's botany as in Freud's psychology, the primary fact was sexuality."
While still a medical student in the Netherlands, Linnaeus developed the guidelines for the classification system that would make him famous in a seven page paper published in 1735 called a “Systema Naturae” . His system was based on classifying flowering plants in terms of the characteristics of their "male" organs (relative length and number of stamens) and "flowerless" plants in term so their "female" organs (styles or stigmas).
German botanist Rudolph Jacob Camararius (1665-1721) was the first scientist to point out that seeds needed pollen to germinate. Linnaeus went a step further, saying the male and female sexual organs on the plant produced the seeds and pollen. He described flowering plants in terms of "bridegrooms," "brides" and "bridal beds."
The terms Linnaeus used to describe classes of plants contained suggestive Greek and Latin words such as “Monadria” ("One husband in a marriage"), “Diandria” ("Two husbands in the same marriage"), “Polyandria” ("twenty males or more in the same bed with the female"). He compared the calyx of flower to outer layers of skin of the vulva and the corolla to the vulva's inner layers.
Common names given to flowers by Linnaeus include: heartseases, bleeding hearts, moor kings, marsh marigold, lady's slippers and naked ladies. A poet inspired by Linnaeus described the "floral harems" of some kinds of lilies as, "Three blushing maids [pistils] the intrepid nymph attend. And six youth [stamens], enamour'd train! defend.” Linnaeus was labeled as salacious by other botanists. Goethe once said that young people and women shouldn't be exposed to Linnaeus' gross "dogma of sexuality."
Linnaeus Classification System

The idea of "species" had been introduced by Ray. Linnaeus made two major advances: he developed a system for divided plants into orders and classes and he devised a common language for the description of plants. Linnaeus's system for divided plants into orders and classes was the basis for biological system used today which divides plants and animals (in descending order) into: 1) kingdom; 2) phylum; 3) class 4) order; 5) family; 6) genus; 7) species.
Linnaeus common language for the description of plants was described by Boorstin as "a kind of Esperanto of biology." Before Linnaeus they was no universal system of naming plants. Individual plants often had many different names and names with six or seven words ( “Convolvulus foliis plamatis cordatis sericeis: lobis resapndis pedunculis”, for example, was the name of a plant in the morning glory family).
Under his binomial classification Linnaeus used the first word to describe the genus (“Homo” , for example) and the second word to describe the species (“sapiens” ). After he came up with the idea he poured through Latin dictionaries and came up with the scientific names of thousands of plants in a matter of months. The Latin words he chose often either described a characteristic of the plant or something about it habitat (a system still used by scientist today to described newly discovered species).
Linnaeus classification system and the thousands of names for plants was published in “Species Plantaraum” (1753). In the tenth edition of “Systema Naturae” (1758-59) he used a similar system to describe animals. If it were not for Linnaeus' charismatic and sociable personality, his system might ended up in the storage room of some library, but because he was a popular and well-known figure who worked and lectured tirelessly about his ideas, he attract a great number of followers. A couple of decades after he introduced his system, it was widely adopted by his European colleagues.
Linnaeus’s Later Life and Legacy
When Linnaeus died he left his wife, Sara Lisa, with only a little money. She sold all of her husband's papers for 1,000 guineas to a young English botanist named Edward Smith. The money was enough to provide and her children with comfortable lives. Smith set up the Linnaeus Society of London,
Linnaeus set loose a sort of specimen collecting frenzy. Followers like Joseph Banks who accompanied Captain Cook on voyage around the globe, ventured to the four corners of the works to collect specimens, often at great risks to themselves.
Linnaeus was the first person to categorize man as species ("Diurnal; varying by education and situation") in the order of primates ("Fore-teeth cutting; upper 4, parallel; teats 2 pectoral”). Man when then further subdivided into five varieties: 1) “Wild Man” ("Four-footed, mute hairy”); 2) “American” (“Copper colored...Hair black...nostrils wide...obstinate...paints himself with fine red lines”); 3) “Europeans” (“Fair, sanguine...eyes blue...gentle, acute, inventive...Governed by laws”); 4) “Asiatic” (‘sooty, melancholy...eyes dark..covetous...Governed by opinions”) ; and 4) “African” (“black, phlegmatic, relaxed...hair black, frizzled...lips tumids...crafty, indolent...Governed by caprice”).
The “ferus” , or "wild boys" were a nod to accounts of people occasionally found in the woods and possibly said to have been raised by animals (most turned out to be mentally ill or retarded youngsters abandoned by their parents). He also mentioned “monstrous” , hairy creatures with tails described by explorers.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Mostly National Geographic articles. Also “The Discoverers” by Daniel Boorstin; “Life on Earth” by David Attenborough (Princeton University Press), New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated February 2022