Asuman Baytop Türkiye'de Botanik Tarihi Araştırmaları Ed. F. Günergun, TÜBİTAK Yayınları Akademik Dizi Ankara 2004, 574 s. ISBN 975-403-340-4

Türkçe

CONTENTS

STUDIES ON THE HISTORY OF BOTANY IN TURKEY
(ABSTRACT)

The articles in this book deal mainly with two subjects: the history of botanical education in Turkey, and the history of investigations on Turkish flora.

1. The academic teaching of botany began in Ottoman times with the opening in Istanbul of the Military School of Medicine (Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane, É cole Impériale de Médecine) in 1839. The first lecturer of botany was Dr. C.A. Bernard (1808-1844), the Austrian director of the School. The others were successively Salih Efendi (1816-1895), Mehmet Ali Paşa (1837-1914), Esad Şerefeddin (1866-1942) and Şerafettin Tevfik (1879-1957). We shall add Mehmet Niyazi (x-x) who was especially interested in microscopy and natural history museology. All were physicians. They lectured to students about plant morphology, systematics and medicinal and useful plants. Between 1839 to 1933, they contributed to the advancement of botany by publishing books, booklets or articles translated or adapted from French works, and by establishing botanical gardens in the grounds of the School. Although all were dedicated teachers, they themselves did not attempt to pursue original research in any field of botany. Scientific investigations in botany began with Atatürk's University Reform of 1933, when botanical education passed to two biologist professors who came to Istanbul from Germany: Prof. Dr. A. Heilbronn (1885-1961) and Prof.Dr. L. Brauner (1898-1974). These two pushed their assistants to undertake investigations in various fields of botany, such as plant morphology, anatomy, physiology, genetics and floristics, and aroused in them the enthousiasm of making experimental studies. When these assistants later became professors, they continued their investigations in the manner that their German directors had taught them, and maintained a high level of scientific research. The Pharmaceutical Botany Department of the Faculty of Pharmacy, the head of which was a former student and later assistant of Prof. Heilbronn, may be given as an example. The activities of this department and of the Herbarium of the Faculty are outlined in the Chapters 6 and 7.

2. Researchers on Turkish flora began in the 16 th century when western European naturalists began to go abroad to explore the plant life of unknown countries. Among the travellers who came to the eastern Mediterranean region in mid-16 th century, P.Belon was the first naturalist to venture into Anatolia. He published a book of travel (Les observations sur plusieurs singularités ., first edition 1553) in which he enumerated the wild plants that he encountered on Mount Amanus, on Cilician Taurus, on Mount Olympus and in the Istanbul area. It is clear that most of the plant names lack precision, but as the book carries lists of plants and cites the localities where they were observed, it is not devoid of floristic value, albeit it is a value which today is mostly historical.

The other travel books that we analyzed for their Turkish plants are those of the following authors: O.G. de Busbecq (1522-1592), D.Dernschwam (1494-1568), L.Rauwolff (1535-1596), Evliya Çelebi (1611-1682?), G.Wheler (1650-1724), J.P. de Tournefort (1656-1708), and G.A. Olivier (1756-1814).

Tournefort visited the eastern Mediterranean a century and a half after Belon. He spent one year in Anatolia. He was a professor of botany and a well-known French botanist who developed a system of plant classification and established the modern concept of genus. He returned to Paris with a rich plant collection, and described 1356 plants and 25 new genera in his Corollarium Institutionem Rei Herbariae. In his book (Relation d'un voyage du Levant, 1718) published after his death, we find among others fifty of his new species cited with their Latin phrase-names, descriptions in French and drawings by Tournefort's travel companion, the French artist Aubriet.

Olivier arrived one hundred years after Tournefort. He travelled in the Levant and Persia between 1793 and 1798. He was a French entomologist and professor of zoology in Paris. He stayed for a long time in Istanbul. He visited Gemlik, Çanakkale, Truva, Bozcaada and Çeşme, made the route Birecik-Nusaybin and crossed Anatolia from Gilindire to Istanbul. His rich collection was mostly examined by French and Swiss botanists who described many new species. Olivier himself named and described five species which are validly published and illustrated in his book of travel (Voyage dans l'Empire Ottoman, l'Egypte et la Perse, 1801-1807). This gives to the book some taxonomic value.

Evliya Çelebi, the renowned Turkish traveller and adventurer of 17 th century, was fond of plants. Wherever he went, he noted the trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants, and drugs. He gave their local names. He paid attention to monumental trees. As his book (Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi) contains much information based on observations, we consider it as a reference to be consulted in the first place. There are printed editions of the manuscript.

At the beginning of the 18 th century, Europe already possessed many well-established herbaria and botanical gardens. During this century and in the next, explorations and botanical expeditions outside the continent constantly increased. This led to the accumulation of a much greater number of plant material in the centers where botanists tried to develop reliable systems of plant classification and nomenclature. Expeditions to the Near East, including Anatolia, became more frequent, and the amount of Turkish specimens in European herbaria grew rapidly. We finally see in the second half of the 19 th century the appearance of a large flora which includes Turkish plants. This is the Flora Orientalis of the Swiss botanist E. Boissier (1810-1885), a monumental work in Latin comprising 5 volumes (1867-1884) and a supplement (1888). It covers a geographical range extending from Greece and Egypte to India and is based on material examination. The number of Turkish plants cited in this work is 4,740. This means that Boissier had noted about the half of the plants that we know to grow today in Turkey. Boissier came to Greece and West Anatolia in 1842, and then determined to write the Flora Orientalis-a project which took him over forty years to complete.

One hundred years after Boissier, we see an English botanist who, much impressed in 1938 by the rich diversity of the Anatolian plants, devoted the rest of his life to the investigation of the Turkish flora: P.H.Davis (1918-1992). He came eleven times to Turkey between 1938 and 1966, and collected about 28,500 specimens. He decided to write a flora of Turkey in 1961. A team of 117 specialists, including himself, examined the Davis collection kept in Edinburgh, and the Turkish specimens stored in various herbaria, both official and private. With the aid of two assistants and one secretary, Davis edited his well known work, The Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, made of 9 volumes (1965-1985) and a supplement (1988). It is a massive work totalling some 7,233 pages.

A contemporary of P.H. Davis, the Swiss botanist A.Huber-Morath (1901-1990), visited Turkey sixteen times between 1935 and 1969, and collected 30,000 specimens, published more that 80 research papers dealing with the Turkish plants that he collected, and named about 500 new taxa. He put his large collection at the disposal of Davis and revised for the Flora of Turkey fourteen mostly large and difficult genera. His was thus an eminent contribution to the knowledge of Turkish flora.

Among the many researchers who were interested in Turkish plants, P.H.Davis, A.Huber-Morath and E.Boissier are the three botanists who stand out by both the extent and quality of their studies on Turkish flora.

P.H. Davis' Flora of Turkey is a basic flora which is to be consulted as a first reference when starting research on Turkish plants. As soon as the first volume appeared, it stimulated plant collection from Turkey, and fostered the development of university herbaria in the country. Since then, botanists have been able to discover many taxa new to Turkey or new to science, and to add distributional records to the already ones cited in the flora. The accumulation of such information has led the Turkish botanists to edit a second supplement (2000) to Davis' Flora of Turkey. It is as large as the first supplement (1988) and is accepted as Volume Eleven of the set. It is dedicated to the memory of P.H. Davis.