GEORGIUS EVERHARDUS RUMPHIUS – the Herbarium Amboinense

Rumphius' most important work was Het Amboinsch Kruidboek (Herbarium Amboinense). The enormous work describes several thousand plants of eastern and central Indonesia and runs to over one thousand six hundred folio pages with 690 illustrations in six volumes. 

The original Herbarium was published starting in1741 and the final volume appeared in 1750. It consists of the following volumes:

Volume-I, containing a portrait of Rumphius drawn by his son Paul August, deals with cultivated trees that bear edible fruits—especially palms—and their uses.

Volume-II specifies the spice trees and those that produce resin.

Volume-III is about the commercial timber species and other trees.

Volume-IV deals with shrubs.

Volume-V is about medical plants, liana and creeping plants.

Volume-VI concerns herbs and corals and other marine growth resembling plants.

The history of the manuscript is quite astonishing.

Not only did Rumphius, despite his blindness, continue his work, therein assisted by his son Paul August who made a first layout of the plates and put his father's words to paper, and a artist draftsman who drew the illustrations, but in 1687 part of the manuscript was lost in the Great Fire of Ambon. With great fortitude and energy the lost parts were remade and finally, in 1692, a first part of the book, Volume-IV, was sent to Amsterdam on board the ship "Waterland" which promptly was sunk by the French on 12 September of the same year.

Fortunately Gov-Gen Camphuys had ordered a copy to be made before departure. In 1696 this copy, together with three more, was again sent to Amsterdam, followed in 1697 by the fifth and sixth volumes. All arrived safely, and in 1701 the Index and the Auctuarium, or supplement to herbal plants, was received in Holland, too.

Permission to publish the books was granted a few years later. But finding a publisher interested in the work was more difficult. Only in 1736 did Prof. Johannis Burman back its publication. He provided the Latin translation of Rumphius' original Dutch text and publication finally started in 1741, some four decades after the death of Rumphius.

His blindness has prevented him from describing all details of the plants. For this reason his nomenclature is not compatible with the taxonomical biological system of classification developed by Linnaeus.

The work has recently been translated into English by Prof. E. M. Beekman and is now available in a slightly changed arrangement of the original contents.

Volume 1: Introduction and Book I: Containing All Sorts of Trees, That Bear Edible Fruits, and Are Husbanded by People

Volume 2: Book II: Containing the Aromatic Trees: Being Those That Have Aromatic Fruits, Barks or Redolent Wood; Book III: ... Containing the Wild Trees That Provide Timber

Volume 3: Book V: Dealing with the Remaining Wild Trees in No Particular Order; Book VI: Concerning Shrubs, Domesticall and Wild; ... the Forest Ropes and Creeping Shrubs

Volume 4: Book VIII: Containing Potherbs Used for Food, Medicine, and Sport; Book IX: Concerning Bindweeds, as well as Twining and Creeping Plants

Volume 5: Book XII: Concerning the Little Sea Trees, and Stony Sea Growths, Which Resemble Plants; Auctuarium, or Augmentation of The Ambonese Herbal

Volume 6: Species List and Indexes for Volumes 1-5

It is highly interesting to read, or at least browse the books. One plate that struck me is reproduced below. I have lived for five years on Ambon and in Indonesia for over 30 and have never seen the likes of it. Its Dutch name in the Herbarium is hondsvotten, a literal translation of the Malay puki anjing. Check out the translation if you neither speak Dutch nor Indonesian.

Reference:  Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Martinus Nijhoff, 1919