Georg Rumphius’ Herbarium Amboinense (1741–1750) as a source of information on Indonesian plants for Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778)

Abstract

The Herbarium Amboinense (1741-1750) and the supplementary Herbarii Amboinensis Auctuarium (1755) of Georg Eberhard Rumpf (Rumphius) (1627-1702) provided detailed descriptions and illustrations of the plants of the island of Ambon, then a Dutch colony in the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) of Indonesia. The initial work, published in six volumes, contained a great deal of new botanical, medicinal and ethnographical information from a part of the world then little-known. Published in the Netherlands long after Rumphius' death by the Director of the Amsterdam Botanic Garden, Johannes Burman, the work appeared prior to Carl Linnaeus' Species Plantarum (1753) in which the consistent use of binomial names was introduced. However, in that work, Linnaeus referred to only a handful of Rumphius' species accounts. More detailed studies by Linnaeus of Rumphius' work soon followed, notably in the dissertation Herbarium Amboinense (May 1754; November 1759). In all, only about 100 of the nearly 700 taxa illustrated by Rumphius were referred to by Linnaeus in his various publications, though many of those that were cited serve as nomenclatural types for their corresponding Linnaean binomials. The reasons for Linnaeus' apparent neglect of such an important source of novel information are explored.