Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Exchange (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society)

Collinson s life is a microcosm of 18th-century natural history. A gardener and naturalist by avocation, he was what we would now call a facilitator in natural science, disseminating botanical and horticultural knowledge during the Enlightenment. He influenced the Comte de Buffon and Linnaeus. He found clients for the Philadelphia naturalist John Bartram. American plants populated great estates like those of the Dukes of Richmond, Norfolk, and Bedford, as well as the Chelsea Physic Garden, and the nurseries of James Gordon and Robert Furber. Botanic painters such as Mark Catesby and Georg Dionysius Ehret painted American plants in Collinson s garden.Collinson had an unprecedented effect on the exchange of scientific information on both sides of the Atlantic, being credited for introducing more than 150 plans to horticulture. Illustrations. "One man can make a difference," co-author Elizabeth McLean tells Green Scene in the September/October 2009 issue. "[Collinson] did it for love. He was self-educated, yet he made enormous contributions to natural history in the eighteenth century."... More »