Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

THE LIFE AND WORK OF SYDENHAM EDWARDS FLS WELSHMAN, BOTANICAL AND ANIMAL DRAUGHTSMAN, 1768-1819 KEVIN L. DAVIES THE BOTANICAL TRADITION IN WALES Wales, despite its relatively small size, has over the centuries been the birthplace and inspiration for innumerable botanists and plant collectors, whose achievements and immense contributions to their respective specialist fields of study have by far eclipsed their humble beginnings. At first, interest in plants, as elsewhere, was primarily of a utilitarian nature. They were gathered as food, tinder, and sources of medicines, as raw materials for weapons and for mystical ceremonies and rituals. Although early botanical records of Wales are rare, Gaius Plinius Secundus, the elder Pliny, referred several times to Wales and to plants held sacred by the Druids, but whose identity, with the exception of mistle- toe, remains uncertain. Similarly, few of the earliest Welsh botanists are known by name. An exception however is Giraldus Silvester de Barri (1147-1223) surnamed Cambrensis, 'Gerald the Welshman'. Giraldus Cambrensis was Archdeacon of Brecon. In 1188 he accom- panied Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury on a tour of Wales and recorded both the journey and the plants he saw in his Itinerarium Cambriae. During that period, botanical study was largely synonymous with herbalism. However, in contrast to the English, French, German and Italian physicians whose knowledge of herbalism was largely founded upon the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, the Welsh physicians of the middle ages seemingly had much more first hand knowledge of plant remedies as evidenced by the many medical manuscripts of this period, most notably Meddygon Myddveu (Meddygon Myddfai; The Physicians of Myddfai). Monks had been responsible for much of the teaching related to plants, but with the establishment of universities, botanical gardens and physic gardens right across Europe, and the improved dissemination of botanical information, the 15th century saw the beginning of the systematic botanizing of Wales. It is not surprising therefore that many of the early botanists were men of the cloth. Perhaps better known for being the first translator of the New Testament into Welsh from the original Greek, William Salusbury (1520-1584?) of Lleweni, Denbigh- shire, wrote in Welsh one of the finest botanical works of the Renaissance, a manuscript