The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants

by Anna Pavord

The Naming of Names traces the search for order in the natural world, a search that for hundreds of years occupied some of the most brilliant minds in Europe, reaching its apex during the renaissance. Anna Pavord takes us on a thrilling adventure into botanical history, travelling from Athens in the third century BC, through Constantinople, Venice, the medical school at Salerno to the universities of Pisa and Padua. The journey, traced here for the first time, involves the culture of Islam, the first expeditions to the Indies and the first settlers in the New World. Gradually, over a long period in Europe, plants assumed identities and acquired names. Artists painted the first pictures of them. Plants acquired the two-part names that show how they are related to other plants. But who began all this work, and how was it done? Sumptuously illustrated in full colour, The Naming of Names gives a compelling insight into a world full of intrigue and intensely competitive egos.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Gardening, Science, Natural History, Nature, Plants

641 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Anna Pavord is the gardening correspondent for THE INDEPENDENT and the author of widely praised gardening books including PLANT PARTNERS and THE BORDER BOOK. She wrote for the OBSERVER for twenty years, has contributed to COUNTRY LIFE, ELLE DECORATION and COUNTRY LIVING, and is an associate editor of GARDENS ILLUSTRATED. For the last thirty years she has lived in Dorset, England where she is currently making a new garden. Constantly experimenting with new combinations of flowers and foliage, she finds it a tremendous source of inspiration. -http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/anna...

Reviews

[Eloise · Rating 3 out of 5]

It contains a lot of very nice illustrations from the various books it talks about. The first few chapters about Theophrastus, Pliny, and Dioscorides were quite good and they’re definitely major players. And yes, it’s well-researched but not well written or well organized. There’s definitely an English bias in dedicating chapters to Willaim Turner and John Ray but only mentioning Carolus Clasius in a couple of pages. Calling it The Naming of Names when 98% of the book is the history of the various botanical books that were published is misleading. It really doesn’t go into how the latin binomial naming system became the dominant one. I also thought it was odd how Catherine de Medici wasn’t mentioned at all because she commissioned a lot of botanical art and was largely responsible for the plant knowledge of the renaissance disseminating to France and then the rest of Europe.

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that traces how plants came to be named. Its high points are the sections on Theophrastus, Gerard, and Ray. Gerard is often given a prominent place amongst English botanists; in fact, he was a charlatan and contributed little to the furthering of science. Pavord follows her central theme through a maze of names, tracing how herbalism and what plants could offer got in the way of cataloguing and understanding the workings of plants. At times, the text is as weighty as the hardback tome! The strength of the book is its many colour illustrations -- they offer their own history of botanical illustration.

[Pete Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an easy read, and you need to be in the higher echelons of geekitude to want to spend that much time on the history of plant nomenclature since the Greeks. I thought it gave a fascinating window into the medieval mindset: for thousands of years, images of quite common plants were copied from previous sources; yet no one would think to walk outside and look at the actual plant and draw it from nature. That's just not how the scholastic worldview was organized.
With history books with a narrow subject focus over a long time frame, there's often a lot of really interesting incidental detail. The accounts of student life in Montpellier during the religious wars of the 16th century were particularly good.
Also, the color plates are gorgeous.

[Noelle M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book review - The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants by Anna Pavord 
This book is well-researched and examines how the study of plants evolved before, during, and after the renaissance. Each chapter is usually devoted to a person of importance, and its more or less in chronological order. It starts with Theophrastus, who was the first to apply the principles of classification to plants. He didn’t assign any significance to flowers or how the parts of a plant change throughout its life, but he did divide plants into four classes: trees, shrubs, sub-shrubs, and herbs. He also created the first known written body of works on plants, and debated the best way to name them, so he was very important. 
The next chapter described Pliny the Elder/ Pliny the Plagiarist. Theophrastus had been re-discovered 2,000 years later, with nothing particularly important happening in the time gap. Pliny was more of a complier than a thinker, and he described about 800 plants from second-hand sources, but didn’t add much to the debate about how to name or classify them. Then she moves on to the doctor Dioscorides, who produced a field guide about plants that strictly had medicinal importance called De materia medica in AD 77. This was considered to be the best authority on plants in the east and west for the next 1,500 years. It focused more on the way plants could be used than descriptions of them, and again did nothing to classify or name them differently. The Greek physician Galen is briefly mentioned in this chapter, and he was the first to arrange plants by alphabetical order. 
The next chapter is about Juliana’s Book, which is among the earliest and best-illustrated Greek herbals. Then the one after that described how the Arabs of the 12th and 13th centuries corrected and added to Dioscorides’ text, but didn’t develop anything entirely from their own experiences. 
Then there are a few not-as-important chapters before she gets to the topic of illustrations. The Carrara Herbal made by the Paduan monk Jacopo Filippino was the first to purposefully illustrate plants exactly as they would appear. The Arabs had not illustrated in this way due to Aniconism and the ban on life-like images. Many others followed with life-like illustrations, including Leonardo da Vinci. There were problems, though, as illustrations in books were handcopied and new mistakes were made, to the point where each copy was less accurate than the original. Otto Brunfels wrote Herbarum vivae eicones, which was illustrated by the brilliant Hans Weiditz, who solved the problem of one illustration not displaying a plant in its various stages by including miniature illustrations along with the main one. By then there was the printing press, so these improved illustrations became widely circulated and copied. 
After this comes Leonhart Fuchs, who developed some simple latin words to describe plants that are still used today like hortensis, odoratum, rotunda, vulgaris, etc. This was after Brunfels had begun using a two-tag naming system in his book. Later, as new plants and new varieties were being discovered faster than people could keep up with them, the names of plants started becoming very long and impractical. 
Next is a chapter that discuses Italy and the first botanical gardens, as well as the brilliant teacher Luca Ghini, who invented the herbarium by pressing dried plants in books to study. Andrea Cesalpino, who succeeded him as curator of Pisa’s botanical garden, began a new way of organizing plants - by seeds and fruit. It was the best system to date. He also noted that lichens and fungi never set seed at all. He wrote De plantis libri which was published in 1583 and grouped closely related plants together, rather than plants with similar medicinal uses. He arranged plants into 15 different categories, expanding on the previous tree, shrub, sub-shrub, and herb categories. Unfortunately, later writers like Hieronymus Bock reverted back to the previous system. 
Then the book skips ahead to England, which had not produced anything significant until William Turner, who in the 1500s wrote Names and Herbal, which were the first original works written by an Englishman. Sadly he is not well-known and receives little credit, but he synthesized plants names in Greek, Latin, English, French, German, and Italian, eliminating a lot of confusion. 
According to the author, John Ray then created the basis for taxonomy (she’s quite dismissive of Carolus Clasius) by proposing six rules remniscent of many of the things Ghini and Cesalpino came up with. And that’s pretty much it. In the prologue she mentions that the binomial naming system used by Linnaeus was not his invention, which is true, but he certainly popularized it. She more or less ends the book by saying that since 1867, the naming of plants has been regulated by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, which she gives no background about. 
Nice things about this book: It contains a lot of very nice illustrations from the various books it talks about. The first few chapters about Theophrastus, Pliny, and Dioscorides were quite good and they’re definitely major players. Criticisms of this book: It’s well-researched but not well written or well organized. There’s definitely an English bias in dedicating chapters to Willaim Turner and John Ray but only mentioning Carolus Clasius in a couple of pages. Calling it The Naming of Names when 98% of the book is the history of the various botanical books that were published is misleading. It really doesn’t go into how the latin binomial naming system became the dominant one. I also thought it was odd how Catherine de Medici wasn’t mentioned at all because she commissioned a lot of botanical art and was largely responsible for the plant knowledge of the renaissance disseminating to France and then the rest of Europe.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring. i'm a botanist. but i don't care for history of publications, folios and wood cuts and who had what library. this is not a book about plants so much, nor much about nomenclature nor plant taxonomy nor even botanical exploration. nothing is mentioned about asian or other cultures' contributions to the science either. nor the plant trade. only a little of these things anyway. then again a book can't be about everything. this is a book for a librarian or book geek or folio geek, but not a whole lot for a plant geek.

[Maria Rosanna Ioannou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this and highly recommend it to those interested in plants and garden and also to those interested in the history of books!

[Shuli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a history nerd and a plant nerd so this was the book for me and I really enjoyed it. Despite that, I'm not sure that this book does a very good job of doing what it says it's going to do—upon finishing I'm not sure I actually know much more about how we arrive upon botanical names. It's really a series of portraits of men who studied plants and the development of the study of botany in Europe. I also learned that the history of studying plants is more fraught than I had expected!

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a work is advertised as "the history of ___" then focuses almost exclusively on European history. I actually think the focus Pavord pays her topic, I just wish that it would have been advertised more clearly.

Like I said, I'm a history nerd and a plant nerd, so I didn't mind that this was 400+ pages of folios, scrolls, and herbals. But if you're someone exclusively interested in the history of taxonomy, reading the last two chapters and the epilogue will provide a quick introduction, and if parades of European white men bore you, you might want to give it a pass.

[Claire Hardwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars.

Not as an a enticing read as was hoping for. Especially the last third of the book felt an obligation to finish it enough glossed much of it. Early in the book thought was great and interesting speaking about the men that attempted to study plant in Ancient Greece. It is very well researched book, starting in ancient Greece, a tiny bit of Iranian plant studies, and predominately western European plant history, ending right before Carl Linnaeus involvement in the plant botany world.
A great reference on botanical history for research papers and plant taxonomy, otherwise the material loaded in the book would be daunting the plant novice or plant hobbyist to get through it.

[Karen Soanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think this subject could be thrilling as described in the summary but it was fascinating and kept me reading. I read this as part of some background for a photography project I'm working on and as an aspiring gardener.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, densely documented book about plant systematization from 387 AD to 1753. Quite outside my scope of history, but the narrative pulls you along.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting - but too long. And didn't live up to its title!

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will use it for reference now I have read it. I thought Karl L was the main man but it turns out there were many more players ( ie unsung and little known).

[Genese Grill]

A fascinating book about the history of plant naming, herbariums, and early plant illustration, from Theophrastus to Linnaeus. The author is most interested in the attempt to find order in chaos exemplified by Theophrastus's early search for natural laws in plants that might mirror the natural harmony of the cosmos. She traces the loss of manuscripts and the destruction of libraries, the loss and retrieval of Theophrastus's thread over hundreds of years, as researchers and publicists get distracted with medicinal uses rather than philosophical-aesthetic-spiritual questions; traces also the development of new ways of seeing and depicting plants (cross-sections, close-ups, roots, seeds, blossoms, and the depiction of plants at different stages) and the development of a universal language of plants over time (proving that it was not really Linnaeus, after all, who can take credit for this feat). A rich, pleasure-filled book, with many, many sumptuous illustrations!

[AskNezka · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amount of material covered in this narrative history of plant taxonomy is grand to say the least, but the material is a bit disorganized and roundabout in reading. The biographies of the botanists are really interesting, but the color plates of old herbals and plant natural histories make the book.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful books you will ever own" It really is a invaluable reference for anyone who loves plants (gardening or the natural world). The authors knowledge is encyclopedic, yet the narrative moves along and is interesting. I go back to this book several times a week. A must have both in hardcover and ebook formats. Something for everyone.

[Tina Finneyfrock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the book--and am really busy, so it took a lot longer than usual for me to get through. I love the historical depth, but to be honest, I REALLY loved the amazing color plates. Another review mentioned that one had to be a botany geek to enjoy this--which I think is probably true--but I am!!

[Dani]

A thoroughly beautiful book in both writing and for the illustrations it contains. The narrative is well done and compelling as it explains the beginnings of the journey to name, sort, and order plants beginning with Theophrastus (370 BCE- 290 BCE) and ending with John Ray, the English pastor whose classification system influenced that developed by Carl Linnaeus.

[Liana · Rating 4 out of 5]

well written. I thought I would be bored of a book just going through the history of plant names and would skip around. Not true at all. The numerous color plates from ancient herbals make the book that much better.

[Dinesh Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustrations are a feast, the history is suitably meandering and very personal, but I felt the distinct lack of a global history of plant taxonomy. Even a few pages on how the rest of the world (esp China/India) approached plants would have been sufficient.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story was intriguing. I loved the progression through history and the authors feeling of connection to each person who studied plants. It was, however, poorly edited. Despite this, I highly recommend it to anyone who loves plants.

[Seamus · Rating 4 out of 5]

aristotle had a friend Theophrastus, who took over the school, inherited aristiotles library, wrote on everything and was forgotten.

[Pasha]

I think it is an awesome book. Kudos to the author.

[Joel LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy and dense read, but nowhere else will you get such a wonderful history of botany as well as herbal medicine.