Fishy Description. Aesculus pavia, Red Buckeye, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Under the aegis of Johan Maurits van Nassau (1604-1679), governor (1636-1644) of Dutch Brazil and patron of the sciences - see my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/45528232852/in/photoli... - Willem Piso, an Amsterdam physician and naturalist, was a member of a scientific expedition in Brazil between 1637 and 1644. There he described a plant which he called 'Saamouna', perhaps a native name. This tree or shrub was referred to afterwards as 'Saamouna pisonis' (=Piso's Saamouna).
When the English botanist Leonard Plukenet (1641-1706) described specimens of plants from North America he encountered one - our Aesculus pavia - which he identified (1696) with Piso's Saamouna. It is in fact a different plant. Later in 1720 Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) named Aesculus pavia for the Leiden medical professor Petrus Pavius (1564-1617), founder of the first anatomical laboratory in The Netherlands.
Confused? Well, so was great Carolus Linnaeus, who gives both 'Carolina' and 'Brasilia' as Aesculus pavia's provenance. Of course, later scholars sorted out the confusion.
There's an amusing coda to this story. Wonderful Florida Ethnobotany (2004) gives a state of the art description of our Aesculus. A translation is given, too, of Plukenet's original Latin description; there 'Saamouna pisonis' is put into English as '"Saamouna" for fish'. Poor Willem Piso, deprived thus of a honorific specific! It is said here and elsewhere, too, that this Buckeye was used by native Americans as a poison to catch fish. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly can't be connected to Saamouna's 'pisonis'.
Fishy Description. Aesculus pavia, Red Buckeye, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Under the aegis of Johan Maurits van Nassau (1604-1679), governor (1636-1644) of Dutch Brazil and patron of the sciences - see my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/45528232852/in/photoli... - Willem Piso, an Amsterdam physician and naturalist, was a member of a scientific expedition in Brazil between 1637 and 1644. There he described a plant which he called 'Saamouna', perhaps a native name. This tree or shrub was referred to afterwards as 'Saamouna pisonis' (=Piso's Saamouna).
When the English botanist Leonard Plukenet (1641-1706) described specimens of plants from North America he encountered one - our Aesculus pavia - which he identified (1696) with Piso's Saamouna. It is in fact a different plant. Later in 1720 Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) named Aesculus pavia for the Leiden medical professor Petrus Pavius (1564-1617), founder of the first anatomical laboratory in The Netherlands.
Confused? Well, so was great Carolus Linnaeus, who gives both 'Carolina' and 'Brasilia' as Aesculus pavia's provenance. Of course, later scholars sorted out the confusion.
There's an amusing coda to this story. Wonderful Florida Ethnobotany (2004) gives a state of the art description of our Aesculus. A translation is given, too, of Plukenet's original Latin description; there 'Saamouna pisonis' is put into English as '"Saamouna" for fish'. Poor Willem Piso, deprived thus of a honorific specific! It is said here and elsewhere, too, that this Buckeye was used by native Americans as a poison to catch fish. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly can't be connected to Saamouna's 'pisonis'.