Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Historia Naturalis Palmarum

The Natural History of Palm Trees



Attalea - Cocos - Sabal species


Borassus flabelliformis


Acrocomia sclerocarpa


Areca nibung


Astrocaryum species


Palm species


Palm species sections


Palm species sections a


Bactris longipos + Cocos botryophora


Ceratolobus glaucescens


Copernica ceifera


Daemonorops melanochaetes


Thrinax brasiliensis


Zalacca wallichiana


Desmoncus polyacanthos


Elaeis melanococca


Livistona humilis


Livistona humilis (fruit + seeds)



Sagus taedigera


Eugeisona tristis


Eugeisona tristis (detail)


palm symmetry


Plectocomia khasiyana


"The author of over 150 botanical titles, including the great flora of Brazil, Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius also wrote the still-definitive three-volume treatise on the palm family, one of the first plant monographs. He developed his life-long fascination with palms during an expedition through Brazil [map] from 1817 to 1820, and he worked nearly 30 years to prepare this grand summation, including palms found only as fossils." [source]

All three volumes of 'Historia Naturalis Palmarum' are available at the Botanicus website from the Missouri Botanical Gardens. This lavishly illustrated series included systematic descriptions of all known species in the palm family (Arecaceae). The illustrations were produced by Martius himself and Ferdinand Bauer (among others).

You can get an idea of how enormous the available jp2 image files of each chromolithograph are by clicking on those couple of illustration details towards the end of the sampling above. [each image file is about 3Mb and converts to ~20Mb jpeg files] Mouse over the images - taken from all three volumes - for the botanical names (in most cases).

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