Herbarium LE - Collection sections and specimen groups

Книга о гербарии Абрахама Энса: Травопознание Абрахама Энса, доктора медицины

Book about Abraham Ens's herbarium: The Herbal knowledge of Abraham Ens, M.D.

Herbarium of Abraham Ens is one of the largest private collections of plants of pre‑Linnaeans period in botany (the first half of the 18th century). Petersburg physician and amateur in botany Abraham Ens (1713-1770) collected about 3300 herbarium specimens during his educational trip to the universities of Northern Europe. The major part of the collection consists of flowering plants, as well as fungi, lichens, algae, mosses, ferns and gymnosperms. An important part of the collection are plants from Leiden Academic Botanical Garden. At this time, the Garden was headed by professor Adriaan van Royen, the follower of Carl Linnaeus`s. Ens learned rather to the old (pre‑Linnaeans) paradigm in botanical nomenclature system, bowing to the authority of his teacher Herman Boerhaave. However, he was also interested in the new trends in taxonomy. He visited Linnaeus at Hartecamp and received a flowering specimen of Coreopsis verticillata L. Apparently his position became more balanced and he always quoted the famous Hortus Cliffortianus (1738) by Linnaeus. Ens trip to Holland, England and Germany was significant contribution to the formation of his scientific interests and aesthetic tastes. One of the goals of the work was to study of literary source and plant images that Ens used to identify plant specimens. There is an interesting question about the origin of the collection - if it turns out that Ens received plant specimens in his collection first-hand it’s possible to discover some original material for the typification of plant names.