Botanical and floristic composition of the Historical Herbarium of Leonhard Rauwolf collected in the Near East (1573–1575)

• Published in: Taxon 2018-06, Vol.67 (3), p.565-580
• Main Authors: Ghorbani, Abdolbaset, Wieringa, Jan J., de Boer, Hugo J., Porck, Henk, Kardinaal, Adriaan, van Andel, Tinde
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: botanical exploration; BOTANICAL HISTORY; Levant; pre-Linnaean; Syria; taxonomy
• ISSN: 0040-0262; 1996-8175; 1996-8175
• DOI: 10.12705/673.7

The German doctor and botanist Leonhard Rauwolf (1535–1596) was the first post-medieval European to travel to the Levant and Mesopotamia. The travel account that he published on his hazardous journey (1573–1575) is well studied, but the plants he collected during his travels have hardly been subjected to scientific study. The fourth volume of Rauwolf's 16th century book herbarium includes plant specimens collected from the area encompassing modern-day Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. We digitized this valuable historic collection, identified all specimens in the herbarium, analyzed its floristic composition, transcribed and translated the Latin and German texts accompanying each specimen and updated the names with the latest accepted nomenclature. The herbarium book includes 191 specimens representing 183 species belonging to 64 families. It includes original specimens of Linnaean type illustrations as well as historical crop cultivars from the Near East. The Rauwolf Herbarium gives a unique insight in the exotic, unknown and useful species of the Near East from the perspective of a 16th century European botanist.