Plant exploration: From Queen Hatshepsut to Sir Joseph Banks

Abstract

The worldwide exchange of fruits has been facilitated by traders, travelers, sovereigns, conquerors, diplomats, missionaries, and botanists. The beginnings of organized plant exploration date to the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who, as early as 2000 BCE, brought back exotic trees and plants in their foreign campaigns and illustrated them on their temple walls. Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1500 BCE) sent out ships to bring back trees from the land of Punt (northeast African coast). The exchange of plants throughout antiquity was a by-product of trade routes between East and West as well as though the campaigns of conquerors including Alexander, the warriors of Islam, Genghis Khan, and the crusades. The age of exploration starting at the end of the 15th century was inspired by the search for a sea route to the spice-rich East. The encounter of Columbus with the Americas brought about an explosive exchange of New World and Old World plants. The rise of science in the 17th and 18th centuries was associated with botanical exploration involving travels and expeditions, including Hans Sloan to the West Indies, James Cunningham to China, Georg Eberhard Rumpf (Rumphius) to the Moluccas, and Sir Joseph Banks to Newfoundland, Labrador, South America Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, Hebrides, and Iceland.