When the botanist can't draw: the case of Linnaeus

Abstract

Botany lessons have traditionally required students to draw plants as a way to understand basic plant morphology, and the resurgence of botany in the sixteenth century is closely tied to the publication of lifelike illustrations of plants. The founder of modern botany, Carolus Linnaeus (1707–78) made botany a broadly accessible subject through his binomial nomenclature and artificial system of classification. However, Linnaeus regarded botanical illustrations as useful only to ‘boys and those who have more brain-pan than brain’ (Genera Plantarum, 1737). Botanical progress, he insisted, depended on the use of clear, detailed, technical, written descriptions rather than pictures. In light of Linnaeus's own botanical education, his experience with botanical illustrators, and his drawings from his solo scientific expedition to Lappland in 1732, it becomes clear that his ranking of words over images reflected both his own strengths as a scientist and his personal difficulties with drawing.