Phytogeographic map

Tabula Geographica Brasiliae, by the German physician and botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp Von Martius (1794-1868), prepared during the Austrian Mission – expedition of natural sciences, which brought scientists such as Spix and Martius to Brazil from 1817 to 1820. It was the first Brazilian phytogeographic map, which classifies the different biomes and assigns names of Greek nymphs to the five botanical regions: Nayades (water nymphs) – Amazonian flora; Hamadryades (protectors of the trees, with which they share their destiny) – northeastern flora; Oreades (long-lived, inhabited and protected mountains, caves and caves) – Midwest flora; Dryades (forest nymphs) – Atlantic coast flora and Napeias (field, woods and valley nymphs) – subtropical flora. Traveling thousands of kilometers across Brazilian territory, the botanist studied and collected plant species and varieties from all regions of the country. The data collected by Martius were published in several publications, organized after his return to Europe, among them the extraordinary Flora Brasiliensis, which contains the “tabula”, which differs little from the last map of biomes produced by the IBGE.