Our Notes & References

First edition of “the first classified Russian flora” (Golikov), praised by Linnaeus, being also the second botanical book printed in Russia, after (and during) Buxbaum’s Plantarum minus cognitarum centuriae, which focused on southern plants, not especially Russian, and to which Amman also contributed significantly.

A pleasant example in contemporary binding.

Amman’s work features descriptions of almost 300 plants together with 35 finely engraved plates – something rather uncommon in Russia at the time (it is worth noting that, as a comparison, only 16 books in Russian were printed in total in Russia in 1739 according to Svod. Kat.).

“In bringing together the efforts of three ambitious, state-sponsored expeditions, Amman’s Stirpium presented a variety of never-before-seen species from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and central southern Siberia, along with some anecdotal information on their original locations.” Coming from across the Russian empire’s southern and far eastern borders, these many species were given to Amman, who “took care to grow as many specimens as he could in the Academy’s Botanical Garden, which he founded in 1735” (Dumbarton Oaks).

In his preparatory work, Amman discussed his classification with Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), who then appreciated the book and used it: “the Stirpium in fact became an important work for Linnaeus, who cited it (“Amm. Ruth.”) throughout his 1753 Species Plantarum” (D. Oaks).

A physician and botanist from Schaffhausen, Johann Amman (1707–41) was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1731 after having been a Curator of Hans Sloane’s natural history collection in London. Called by Gmelin to Russia, Amman served, from 1733 until his early death, as Professor of Botany and Natural History at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, where he established the Botanical Garden, along with the library and herbarium. As the main early developer of Russian taxonomy, Amman became an important precursor to later naturalists Gmelin and Pallas in advancing botanical knowledge in Russia: his Stirpium was one of a few works which “proved foundational for western Europe’s appreciation of the flora of the Russian Empire throughout the eighteenth century” (D. Oaks).

The edition also contains, on the dedicatory leaf, a detailed engraving by P[hilipp] G[eorg] Mattarnovy (Filip Iegorovich Mattarnovi, 1716–42), a talented Swiss-Italian artist who joined the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts before dying at the age of 26. This allegorical plate is not recorded by Rovinskii (II, col. 634) and may represent an idealised view of the Academy’s gardens.

Provenance

From the estate of Pr. Philip Longworth (1933-2020, historian, writer and book collector, esp. on Russian history).

Bibliography

Dumbarton Oaks, Online Exhibits, The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century; Golikov, Rol botanicheskoi laboratorii I.N.Gorozhankina v izuchenii flory srednei Rossii, Zhizn Zemli, 2024, num. 1 (“pervaia svodnaia flora Rossii”; online); Hunt 511; Nissen BBI 24; Rowell M. Linnaeus and Botanists in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Taxon, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Feb., 1980), pp. 15-26.