Long before this date John Ray had begun to study and publish books on
Botany. His _Catalogue of English Plants_[43] is considered to have
commenced a new era in the study of the science. The _Catalogue_ was
followed by the _History of Plants_[44], and later by a _Synopsis of
British Plants_[45], and in all of these books lichens find a place. Two
editions of the _Synopsis_ appeared during Ray’s lifetime, and to the
second there is added an Appendix contributed by Samuel Doody which is
entirely devoted to Cryptogamic plants, including not a few lichens—still
called “Mosses”—discovered for the first time. Doody, himself an
apothecary, took charge of the garden of the Apothecaries’ Society at
Chelsea, but his chief interest was Cryptogamic Botany, a branch of the
subject but little regarded before his day. Pulteney wrote of him as the
“Dillenius of his time.”
Among Doody’s associates were the Rev. Adam Buddle, James Petiver and
William Sherard. Buddle was primarily a collector and his herbarium is
incorporated in the Sloane Herbarium at the British Museum. It contains
lichens from all parts of the world, many of them contributed by Doody,
Sherard and Petiver. Only a few of them bear British localities: several
are from Hampstead where Buddle had a church.
The Society of Apothecaries had been founded in 1617 and the members
acquired land on the river-front at Chelsea, which was extended later
and made into a Physick Garden. James Petiver[46] was one of the first
Demonstrators of Plants to the Society in connection with the garden,
and one of his duties was to conduct the annual herborizing tours of the
apprentices in search of plants. He thus collected a large herbarium
on the annual excursions, as well as on shorter visits to the more
immediate neighbourhood of London. He wrote many tracts on Natural
History subjects, and in these some lichens are included. He was one of
the best known of Ray’s correspondents, and owing to his connection with
the Physic Garden received plants from naturalists in foreign countries.
Sherard, another of Doody’s friends, had studied abroad under Tournefort
and was full of enthusiasm for Natural Science. It was he who brought
Dillenius to England and finally nominated him for the position of the
first Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford. Another well-known
contemporary botanist was Leonard Plukenet[47] who had a botanical garden
at Old Palace Yard, Westminster. He wrote several botanical works in
which lichens are included.
Morison is the only one of all the botanists of the time who recognized
lichens as a group distinct from mosses, algae or liverworts, and even
he had very vague ideas as to their development. Malpighi[48] had noted
the presence of soredia on the thallus of some species, and regarded them
as seeds. Porta[49], a Neapolitan, has been quoted by Krempelhuber as
probably the first to discover and place on record the direct growth of
lichen fronds from green matter on the trunks of trees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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