Hortus Rudbeckianus - the botanic garden and florilegia of Olof Rudbeck Sr.
In 1655, Olof Rudbeck Sr. founded the Botanic Garden of Uppsala University, the first botanic garden in Sweden. This project aims at making a catalogue of plants cultivated in this garden during the Rudbeckian period 1655-1702. The catalogue will also function as a dictionary of the pre-Linnean plant names used by Olof Rudbeck and his contemporaries. The project comprises identification of the plants listed in Rudbeck´s garden catalogues as well as identifying, cataloguing and digitising the unique plates in his "Book of Flowers", an unpublished late 17th century florilegium. The "Book of Flowers" consists of 3,000 colour plates depicting plants, many of them growing in the Botanic Garden or in the surroundings of Uppsala. It is a little known parallel to the florilegium Campus Elysii, in which Rudbeck intended to depict all plants in the world known to man. The Campus Elysii project came to an abrupt end when most of the woodcuts were destroyed in the fire which devastated most of the city of Uppsala in May 1702. The "Book of Flowers", however, survived the flames. It serves as a documentation of the first botanic garden in Sweden as well as reflecting 17th century knowledge of Swedish flora and the species and cultivars grown during this time. The Hortus Rudbeckianus is being realized in collaboration between the Botanic Garden, the Museum of Evolution and the University Library of Uppsala University.
Karin Martinsson, Uppsala University
Aim
The main aim of the project has been to interpret and compile information on the 17th century Botanical Garden of Olof Rudbeck Sr at Uppsala University. In addition to the three garden catalogues edited by Rudbeck, and information from the first two volumes of Rudbeck´s printed florilegium Campus Elysii, we have also interpreted the notes by Rudbeck´s student Daniel Daalhemius from 1669 as well as Rudbeck´s own notes in the Burser-herbarium and various botanical books. An invaluable complement to the written information has been "Blomboken", a manuscript consisting of eleven huge volumes of watercolours made under the supervision of Rudbeck, and depicting a large number of taxa from the Botanical Garden. The survey of Blomboken has increased the number of known taxa from the garden with more than 25 %. All in all, we have been able to identify 2 500 taxa cultivated in the Botanical Garden during the second half of the 17th century and we have translated their 17th century phrase names into modern botanical nomenclature. Of these, 1 500 taxa are at the species level, the rest being cultivars. Rudbeck believed himself to have introduced at least 1 072 of these taxa as new to Sweden e.g. potato, tomato and liquorice. We have been able to associate most Rudbeckian names to a reference specimen, either in the Burser-herbarium, Blomboken or Campus Elysii.
Blomboken - motifs, artists, originals
A considerable part of the project has been devoted to the interpretation and identification of the unique illustrations in Blomboken. Of the 3 500 watercolours, 1 400 have been identified as being of extra importance from a Swedish point of view as they include some kind of original information. Many of these have been drawn using a living plant specimen from the Botanical Garden as a raw model. The rest of the plates have been identified as copies of plates from some twenty 16th and 17th century herbals and floras as well as the Burser-herbarium and the Leiden-herbarium of Olof Rudbeck Jr.
On some 80 folios in Blomboken, information on the occurrence of indigenous Swedish plants is found. Several of these are reported from Sweden for the first time e.g. Betula nana from Skarsfjället in Härjedalen, Potentilla fruticosa from Öland and Arnica montana from Medevi in Östergötland. By 99 taxa, their vernacular name has been noted by the Rudbecks such as åkane (Nuphar luteum), ydeträ (Taxus baccata) and molterbär (Rubus chamaemorus). A couple of the species introduced by Rudbeck into Sweden have since then become naturalized and are now regarded as part of the Swedish flora e.g. Frittillaria meleagris, Chaenorhinum minus and Conyza canadensis.
The identification of the artists and the originals copied for Blomboken has increased our knowledge on how Olof Rudbeck organized his monumental flora project. 3 200 of the illustrations in Blomboken are signed by, in total, 45 artists. We have been able to identify thirty of them, two women and 28 men, as responsible for all but fifteen of the signed illustrations. The most ardent artists are shown to have been part of Rudbeck´s household (children, son-in-law, tenants), children to his craftsmen or other students supported by scholarships at Uppsala University. The unidentified artists have only contributed with one illustration each, probably as part of their exams before Olof Rudbeck.
Announcement of results
The main report of the project is called "Hortus Rudbeckianus - an enumeration of plants cultivated in the Botanical Garden of Uppsala University during the Rudbeckian period 1655-1702", a catalogue covering 2 500 taxa. In the introduction, the sources used are commented upon as well as the routes for introducing the taxa and the conditions for cultivating them in 17th century Uppsala.
By the end of September 2008, the book "Blomboken - bilder ur Olof Rudbecks stora botaniska verk" (Blomboken - plates from the large botanical works of Olof Rudbeck) will be published. It describes the background of the Blomboken/Campus Elysii-project and also contains biographies of the artists involved. A selection of 530 of the most interesting plates in Blomboken are reproduced and commented upon. They represents the botanical, horticultural and craftsman like width of the manuscript.
Apart from the main report and the forthcoming book, facts and illustrations from the project has been used for a number of papers dealing with the history of botany and botanical gardens, several published in connection with the Linnaeus tercentenary in 2007. An index to Blomboken is being prepared and a paper on Rudbeckian contributions to the knowledge of the Swedish flora is planned. More than 800 taxa have been included in SKUD (Svensk Kulturväxtdatabas www.skud.ngb.se) as documentation of their introduction into cultivation in Sweden. Lectures have been held at e.g. the Rudbeck laboratory, the Swedish Linnaeus Society, Uppsala City Library and the Regional State Archive in Uppsala.
A design for a "Rudbeck flower quarter" has been drawn comprising c. 170 taxa; indigenous species discovered by Olof Rudbeck and medicinal and ornamental plants cultivated in Sweden for the first time by Rudbeck. This quarter is presently being realized in the Baroque Garden of Uppsala University Botanical Garden (originally Uppsala Castle Garden laid out by Olof Rudbeck in the 1660s).