Conradus Gesnerus. Medicus et philosophus
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Happy 509th birthday to Conrad Gessner, born today in Zürich on 16 March 5016. Gessner (also sometimes Gesner and Geßner) was a noted physician, naturalist, bibliographer, humanist, and philologist, Among many descriptions. Variously described as the founder of zoology and plant geography, or the father of bibliography, and other appellations, he's sometimes even called the Swiss Pliny the Elder. His numerous writings, about seventy publications in all, and close observations gleaned from field trips, emphasized the importance of the empirical study of nature.
Two of his major achievements are the monumental and exhaustive Bibliotheca universalis (1545–1549) and his great zoological work, Historia animalium (1551–1558). To his contemporaries Gessner was probably best known as a botanist. Unfortunately his major publication on botany, Historia planatrum, was to be cut short by his death of the plague in 1565. The numerous notes, along with about 1500 prints amassed for the work, would be used by many other authors. The unfinished work itself would eventually be posthumously publish in 1754.
Gessner is also the name sake of the Gesneriaceae, the large Gesneriad Family, which include such well-know house plants as Aeschynanthus, Achimenes, Columnea, Gesneria, Haberlea, Nematanthus, Ramonda, and Streptocarpus (Cape primroses, and now African violets). The French botanist, Charles Plumier, described the first plant in the family as Gesnera in 1704. Linnaeus seems to have incorrectly corrected Plumier to Gesneria when he later accepted Plumier's new genus in his own work. However, Gessner's name was always Latinized as Conradus Gesnerus, not Gesnerius, as he might have assumed. He should have stuck with Plumier. Linnaeus did also double guess Plumier when he changed Plumier's nod honoring his teacher, the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, from Pittonia to Tournefortia.
I should perhaps maybe mention that Plumier was responsible for describing the first of a number of new genera from his three botanical expeditions to the Island of Hispaniola. The Begonia, the Magnolia, the Lonicera, among others. And the first Fuchsia. Yes, omnes viae ad fuchsiam ducunt. All roads really do lead to the fuchsia.
PS Gessner's date of birth is often given as 26 March 1516. That date is based on a single print and was most probably an engraver's error. Gessner himself states that he was born on Palm Sunday 1516 which, of course, fell on the Sixteenth of March in 1516. He's certainly a more accurate authority on his own birth than a nameless engraver. The Swiss, being well known for their precision in time keeping, unveiled the monument in his honor at the Botanical Garden in Zürich on the 500th anniversary of the correct date despite the incorrect date again engraved on the monument. Engravers! This one must have worked for the Deutsche Bahn. Secondly, it's always Gessner with a hard G in German and not Jessner. Therefore "Jesneriad" is generally incorrect.
The Fuchsia+Blog Tags — botanists
