Beautiful in the Eye of the Beholder. Zinnia, ARTIS Amsterdam Zoo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-1759) was a gifted and creative physician and botanist. He is best known for his precise and ground-breaking work on the anatomy of the human eye, and two muscle structures in the eye are named for him, the so-called Zonule of Zinn and Zinn's Circles. But he was also a botanist and the first to describe a Zinnia under the Latin descriptive Rudbeckia foliis oppositis. In Mexico whence the plant hails it was called 'mal de ojos', hard on the eyes because of its brightness.
Zinn and great Linnaeus had a lively correspondence. Among the many topics of their mutual interest was the 'movement' of plants such as that of Mimosa pudica. Zinn had experimented with that plant in order to understand its mechanism. Linnaeus had done the same and he expanded his experiments to the opening and closing of flowers. He found that such movement is often governed by the time of day. Thus he allowed for the construction of a so-called Horologium florae, a Flower Clock (1751), with flowers planted in such a way that you could tell time by their opening and closing.
Saddened by Zinn's early death, Linnaeus named the Rudbeckia his friend had so fully described: Zinnia.
Beautiful in the Eye of the Beholder. Zinnia, ARTIS Amsterdam Zoo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-1759) was a gifted and creative physician and botanist. He is best known for his precise and ground-breaking work on the anatomy of the human eye, and two muscle structures in the eye are named for him, the so-called Zonule of Zinn and Zinn's Circles. But he was also a botanist and the first to describe a Zinnia under the Latin descriptive Rudbeckia foliis oppositis. In Mexico whence the plant hails it was called 'mal de ojos', hard on the eyes because of its brightness.
Zinn and great Linnaeus had a lively correspondence. Among the many topics of their mutual interest was the 'movement' of plants such as that of Mimosa pudica. Zinn had experimented with that plant in order to understand its mechanism. Linnaeus had done the same and he expanded his experiments to the opening and closing of flowers. He found that such movement is often governed by the time of day. Thus he allowed for the construction of a so-called Horologium florae, a Flower Clock (1751), with flowers planted in such a way that you could tell time by their opening and closing.
Saddened by Zinn's early death, Linnaeus named the Rudbeckia his friend had so fully described: Zinnia.