Plumier’s drawing of the plant he named Arum hederaceum, amplis foliis & perforates (Plumier, 1693), but which was renamed Philodendron hederaceum in the 19th century. 

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... the English gave the pineapple its name because of its resemblance to a pine cone while the French word ananas is derived from the Guarani word for exquisite fruit. Plumier was caught in the confusion of the naming practices of New World plants. For example, he called one plant used to cure snake bites Arum hederaceum, amplis foliis & perforates (Fig. 3), although according to him the plant was called Clematis malabarensis, solus vitis, colore dracunculi by Gaspard Bauhin and lignum colubrinum primum by Acosta, whereas Father du Tertre for his part had called this same plant simply bois des couleuvres (Plumier, 1693). The correct taxonomic placement would come later in 1829 when the ...

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... and practice of classification. As Slaughter (1982) observed, the traditional medieval taxonomy, which was based on Aristotle and folk medicine, broke down as a result of an explosion of new information as botanical observations increased both in Europe and in its colonies. Reports from the tropics with their strange flora and fauna confused earlier conceptions of the structure of the natural world. Plumier wrote his natural history at a time when natural historians did not have to feel obliged to use a single pre-eminent principle of classification; there was still room for rivalling systems (see Cooper, 2007). Plumier used a scientific taxonomy that was being developed by his teacher Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the ‘father of the genus concept’. Tournefort adhered to a tradition of classification following Aristotle’s view according to which all beings possessed essential features that expressed their essential nature. He differentiated genera on the basis of floral and vegetative characteristics. Plumier’s Description des Plantes de l’Amérique (Fig. 2) is a well-organized study divided into two parts, the first consisting of descriptions and the second of illustrations. Carefully drawn pictures, often of full size, are included. The descriptions are short and objective, eventual medicinal properties are mentioned briefly, if at all (one of the reasons for this may have been that Plumier made his first trip together with his colleague J. D. Surian, whose task it had been to examine and report on the medicinal plants). In the preface, Plumier praised earlier writers treating the flora of the Antilles, but acknowledged the difficulty in finding the plant classes, as the local names of the plants were being used. He brought order to the matter by regrouping the plants in three classes, divided into genera, and by giving them Latin names: the first class included Fougeres , Hemionites , Polypodes , Langues-de-cerf , and Capillaires , the second Arum & Dracontium and Saururus , and the third Perploques (climbing plants). Saururus was a new genus for which Plumier invented the name based on the Greek word for lizard tail because Plumier thought that the plants in this genus were reminiscent of lizards’ tails. The plants were grouped according to the structure of the flower and the fruit, as recommended by Tournefort. The plants were mostly named according to a polynomial nomenclature in which the names were composed of several Latin words describing the plant. Linné first used the polynomial system but abandoned it in favour of the binomial one in which a generic name was followed by a specific epithet, using only the two first parts of the polynomial. Thus Plumier’s Fuchsia triphylla flore coccinea (which means ‘three-leaved fuchsia with red flowers’) became simply Fuchsia triphylla . Carl von Linné accepted, almost without change, Plumier’s descriptions and arrangement of several genera and species. Botanists travelling in America were faced with the task of naming the animals and plants they encountered for the first time. By the time of Plumier’s travels in the Antilles, American animals and plants had been written about, collected, and transported to Europe for almost two hundred years. The foreign flora and fauna were still exotic but the initial confusion created by them had given way to a more pragmatic view. The plants had to be given names and, it was hoped, put to use. The pragmatic methods used in the naming of plants meant that the old Adamic ideal according to which plants’ names corresponded to their nature had definitely come to an end (Irving, 2008). On the whole, the inclination was to fit the new species into the already existing picture. Stearns (1970) distinguishes four methods of naming species in the New World. First, the species could be given a generic name already used for a previously known species. Second, a new name could be invented to describe a previously unknown American species, such as the rattlesnake. Third, some unknown species were given names adapted from what either was, or was thought to be, the already existing indigenous name, as in the cases of the papaya, potato, or tobacco plants. Fourth, more complicated situations arose when a European name was given to a species similar but not identical to one found in Europe. For instance, the Spanish natural historian Oviedo describes ‘a fruit that the Christians call quince, but it is not a quince. But they are the same size, and round and yellow’ (Oviedo, 1959). Different nationalities bioprospecting in the Caribbean used different names for indigenous species. For example, the English gave the pineapple its name because of its resemblance to a pine cone while the French word ananas is derived from the Guarani word for exquisite fruit. Plumier was caught in the confusion of the naming practices of New World plants. For example, he called one plant used to cure snake bites Arum hederaceum, amplis foliis & perforates (Fig. 3), although according to him the plant was called Clematis malabarensis, solus vitis, colore dracunculi by Gaspard Bauhin and lignum colubrinum primum by Acosta, whereas Father du Tertre for his part had called this same plant simply bois des couleuvres (Plumier, 1693). The correct taxonomic placement would come later in 1829 when the genus name was changed and the plant was named Philodendron hederaceum . Another plant used for serpent bites Plumier named Clematis baccifera, glabra & villosa, rotundo & umbilico folio . The French population of Martinique, however, called it, according to Plumier, Liane a serpent and in South America the plant had several names: Caapeba des Brasiliens , (in Marcgrave’s work) l’erva di nostra Senora , Herbe de Nostre-Dame , and Cipo de Cobras des Portugais (Plumier, 1693). Plumier by no means had the last word on this plant: it was called Cissampelos caapeba by Linné, and later became known as Pareira brava and Cissampelos pareira . With so many parallel names in use, it is no wonder that Plumier felt there should be a common universal system of nomenclature (see Cooper, 2007). He writes that he had profited greatly from the work of earlier authors, but that their accounts may appear confusing to readers as they often only give the name of the plant in the ‘vulgar language’ of the country. Therefore, those who have never seen these plants in nature will have much trouble finding out what genera they represent; these people, Plumier states, will be grateful to him (Plumier, 1693). As Plumier set out to bring order to the situation, he converted indigenous names to Latin. For example, he renamed ‘vainillia’, which the Spanish physician Hernandez had found in Mexico in 1571, Vanilla planifolia . He rarely adopted names used by the indigenous people. He described an Antillean bean he named Phaseolus siliquis latis, hispidis, & rugolis, fructu nigro (in French Phaseole à gousses larges, values, & froncées ). After a long and detailed description of the physical characteristics and different stages of the plant, he mentions that the indigenous people, the Caribs, used the beans for food and the plant’s leaves in the making of their hammocks. In addition, Plumier explains that this was the plant named Mucuna des Brasiliens by Marcgrave and phaseolus Nigritarum ( phaseole des Négres ) by Clusius (Plumier, 1693). In the midst of all these names one would expect Plumier to refer to a local Carib name, but he does not do so. Many naturalists received information from the indigenous people (although these are seldom credited in the final works) but Plumier gives very little information about any possible contacts with indigenous people. On the whole, Plumier’s ability to obtain accurate information about plants from local people does not appear to have been particularly satisfactory. Father Labat, who sometimes accompanied Plumier on his excursions, wrote that on many occasions he had witnessed how Plumier’s ‘credulity and simplicity’ had been abused. Labat even declared that he had never met a man as prone to error as the celebrated botanist. According to Labat, Plumier readily believed anything people told him, even when they were just telling stories (Laissus, 1981). Plumier provides few personal anecdotes but, on rare occasions, he abandons his cool and objective descriptions to recount something personally experienced. After a long description of Colocasia montante (which he calls Colocasia because the leaves are almost of the same consistence as Colocasia d’Egypte , described by Gaspar Bauhin) he tells how, after tasting the plants, his mouth became so inflamed that he was not able to speak for two hours and could taste nothing for two weeks (Plumier, 1693). This experience explained to him the vernacular name of the plant, liane brulante . Because of his habit of tasting plants, Plumier has been called an experimentalist (Whitmore, 1967). The Latin names given by Plumier often give detailed descriptions of the plants. In some cases, however, he named plants after distinguished European men. The naming of plants after people was an ancient Greek practice he revived. He named a plant he found in South America Pittonia after Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (although Linné later changed its name to Tournefortia ). The Begonia received its name after one of Plumier’s benefactors, Michel Begon, the former governor of St. Domingue, who decided that a botanical survey of the Antilles was necessary. In addition, he named plants Sloanea after Hans Sloane, Suriana after his dead colleague Surian, Lobelia after the curator of the botanical garden at Oxford, and Magnolia after Pierre Magnol (1637–1715), director of the botanical garden at Marseille. Bromelia was named after the Swedish physician Olaf Bromelius (1639–1705) while Ximenia was named in honour of the Spanish monk Ximénes. The name Bauhinia was chosen as a tribute to Gaspard Bauhin. This paying of homage to his teachers, ...