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A tour through Rumphius’ work is a masterclass in the poetry of the concrete noun. His shells bear names like Little Dream Horn, the Prince’s Funeral, Peasant Music and the Double Venus Harp. Atlas Obscura tells the story of Georg Everhard Rumphius (no relation), the blind botanist who applied poetry to science.
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It is the story of an astronaut stranded on Mars for about a year, all by himself.
...moreThis, then, is the story of how one of Britain’s most promising, skilled explorers struggled to find a place in Victorian science, unable to shake his love for the underdogs of the plant world. The Public Domain Review shares the story of Richard Spruce, a Victorian botanist who never hit the big time.
...moreFor centuries the study of flowers and the cultivation of gardens were deemed to be safe pursuits for genteel young ladies – providing they did not aspire to become professional botanists…Carl Linnaeus’s sexual system for the classification of plants, based on stamens and pistils and expressed in overtly sexual terms, changed all that. The Public […]
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