The Exotic World of Carolus Clusius

Both the Age of Discovery and the Botanical Revolution are significant terms for historical developments that not only altered Europe but also had a significant impact on other regions of the world during the Exotic World of Carolus Clusius era. Indeed, it was in part because of his role in the discovery of exotic nature distant from Europe that Clusius rose to become one of the most distinguished and prominent botanists and naturalists of the centuries preceding Carl Linnaeus.

However, that involvement did not include traveling to the Far East, Africa, or America. Clusius did not venture outside of Europe. Nonetheless, he was among the first—if not the most significant of the early modern European naturalists to share knowledge about alien nature and even to spread the exotic plants themselves. Clusius used the Latin words exoticus and peregrinus to refer to a flexible category of the exotic.

Both the  Age of Discovery  and the  Botanical Revolution  are significant terms for historical developments that not only altered Europe but also had a significant impact on other regions of the world during the Exotic World of Carolus Clusius era
In his writings, Clusius approaches plants from America, Africa, and Asia in a manner similar to how he approaches the novel plants particularly bulbs that have been making their way from the Middle East to Central and Western Europe since the middle of the sixteenth century. As all of these plants were uncommon, they had to be recognized, given names, explained, illustrated, and most importantly, cultivated and multiplied. Clusius had a wide range of interactions with alien nature.

Through his own research and publications, as well as his translations into Latin of the first European works by Iberian writers Garcia da Orta (Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia, 1563), Cristóbal Acosta (Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales, 1578), and Nicolás Monardes (Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, 1571), he spread the word. Not less importantly, he accomplished so in practice in the second place. He founded the Leiden Hortus (1593–1594) with head gardener Dirck Cluyt. From the beginning, the Leiden Hortus was a botanical garden that featured rare plants from throughout Europe and the Levant in addition to some live exotica from other continents. It was not primarily a collection of medicinal herbs.

Moreover, starting in the 1570s at the latest, Clusius sent copious amounts of unusual, non-European plant seeds, cuttings, and bulbs to his acquaintances around Europe, who subsequently cultivated them in their gardens. Furthermore, Clusius offered instructions on how to cultivate these seeds and bulbs in addition to just dispersing them. Publications by Clusius guaranteed his notoriety during his lifetime and his enduring renown throughout history. Even longer-lasting consequences might have resulted from his introduction of plants and his participation in their propagation.

His friends have already said that without him, gardens around Europe would not have looked the same, and that he is inextricably linked to the tulip and many other Middle Eastern bulbs as well as the American potato. The Southern Netherlands’ Arras is where Clusius was born. He lived, studied, and worked in the Southern Netherlands, at the universities of Paris, Montpellier, and several German towns, at the Habsburg court in Vienna, on aristocratic estates in Hungary, in Frankfurt, and at the recently established University of Leiden. He also traveled and conducted botanical field research in Spain, Portugal, the Southern Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and England. From the early 1560s until his death in Leiden in 1609, he kept up cordial correspondence through letters with a wide circle of European collectors, experts, and other acquaintances for at least fifty years.
Carolus Clusius
Hence, Clusius was a highly traveled individual who knew a good deal about Europe. He was informed about an even greater portion of the planet by his buddies. Clusius’s interactions with the unusual did not progress in a predictable or even manner. While he was a student in Montpellier in the 1550s, he must have seen some exotic naturalia; nevertheless, it was most likely in the 1560s that he first came into contact with live exotic plants in the Southern Netherlands and the Iberian Peninsula.


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The youthful Clusius, a member of the lesser nobility, was shown some uncommon plants from the New World in their collections and gardens by the aristocratic patrons in the Malines, Antwerp, and Bruges area. Peeter van Coudenberghe (1517–1599), a wealthy apothecary from Antwerp, had a variety of exotic plants in his garden, including a rare dragon tree from the Canary Islands, cotton, tobacco, ipomoea, tomato, and guaiacum from America, cotton, zizyphus or jujube from the East Indies, and pomegranate, aubergine, gladiolus, artichoke, and acanthus from the Mediterranean. Clusius visited several American plants, including aloe Americana, in the gardens of fellow naturalists in Spain during his 1564–1565 trip, and he also observed a dragon tree in Lisbon.