Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius

At the age of 16, Martius began studying medicine at the University of Erlangen. In 1812, Schreber’s herbarium was purchased by the King of Bavaria, and the scientists sent to Erlangen to negotiate this purchase were Franz von Schrank and Johann Baptist von Spix. They met Martius and soon recommended him to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Hence in 1814, after completing his degree in medicine with a botanical thesis, Martius moved to Munich, where he would spend the rest of his life.

After returning to Munich in 1821, Spix and Martius began to systematize the results of their journey through Brazil. The account of the expedition, Reise in Brasilien (1823-1831), was published in three volumes and an atlas. Spix also published nine volumes on Brazilian fauna and a historical essay but was unable to continue his work, passing away just six years after returning. Martius, on the other hand, continued his research until 1868, publishing around 150 works over his 74 years of life.

From the start, Martius was highly ambitious in exploring his findings. He took care to incorporate his findings with those of other naturalists of the time and systematized the results in various publications. One of his main works is entitled ‘Nova genera et species plantarum, quas in itinere per Brasiliam,’ published over eight years (1824-1832) in three volumes. It contains detailed descriptions of 400 new species and 70 new genera, with color illustrations (chromolithographs).

For cryptogams too, Martius managed to produce a very beautiful and important work, ‘Icones plantarum cryptogamicarum’ (1827-1834), with detailed descriptions and illustrations of the algae, lichens, bryophytes, lycophytes, and ferns collected in Brazil. For this work, Hugo von Mohl provided an excellent treatise on the structure of fern stems, and for the first volume of ‘Nova genera’ Martius had his colleague Zuccarini as a collaborator; everything else is exclusively his work.

Martius became known as “the Father of Palms”. He had a passion for these plants and we could say that he admired them like a tourist, drew them like a landscape painter, and studied them like a botanist. His work ‘Historia naturalis palmarum’ (1823-1850), published in three volumes over almost three decades, remains fundamental for the study of palms worldwide. It contains 180 plates of rare beauty and detail, with anatomical drawings and aspects of the plants’ habitat.

The expedition was carried out without any serious accidents or loss of the collected materials – something unusual for scientific expeditions at that time – and yielded a collection of approximately 20,000 exsiccates, containing around 6,500 plant species, as well as a large number of zoological specimens and an extensive collection of artifacts from the different indigenous tribes found during the trip. The botanical collections are mainly preserved in the Munich herbarium (M).

After an initial attempt, soon abandoned, to publish a Flora of Brazil in collaboration with his friend Nees von Esenbeck, Martius was encouraged by Prince Metternich to start a much larger and more ambitious publication of a Flora of Brazil. This became the Flora Brasiliensis we know today. The work began in 1839, first with Stephan Endlicher as co-editor and later also with Eduard Fenzl, given the enormity of the task.

It involved the collaboration of 65 authors, among them many of the most distinguished German and European botanists of the time. The project received financial support from Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil. In 1840, the first of the 140 fascicles that would make up the work was published, and it was only completed in 1906, long after Martius’ death in 1868.

Flora Brasiliensis, in its final form, consists of 15 volumes subdivided into 40 parts originally published in the form of 140 individual fascicles. It describes a total of 22,767 species, of which 19,629 are native and 5,689 are new. The text contains 20,733 “pages,” which are actually columns (two per page), and the 3,811 plates illustrate 6,246 species. Fifty-nine lithographs illustrate landscapes and types of vegetation, most accompanied by a descriptive text written by Martius.

In addition to the 59 landscape prints (Tabulae physiognomicae), volume I of Flora Brasiliensis also contains two maps (Tabulae Geographicae). One of these maps (figure on the left) shows the five floristic provinces recognized by Martius for Brazil. Despite the imprecision of some borders, Martius’ floristic provinces are largely consistent with subsequent delimitations based on increasing volumes of data throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (figure on the right). 

In 1843, Martius published the book ‘Plants used by Brazilians and their medicinal substances’. This work contains information about the traditional uses of 800 plant species, 90% of them native to Brazil. It is a milestone for understanding the importance of Brazilian plant biodiversity and its associated traditional uses.

Martius was one of the first scholars to research the indigenous dialects of Brazil. He spent over 40 years analyzing the different languages, identifying the common origin of words, and organizing the people based on linguistic groups and the geographical space they occupied. Shortly before his death, he published ‘Glossaries of Various Languages and Dialects Spoken by the Indians in the Empire of Brazil’ (1863) and ‘Contribution to the Ethnography and Linguistics of America, Especially Brazil’ (1867).

In addition to all these works, in 1831 Martius wrote a text that remained unpublished for a long time – 'Frey Apollonio: A Brazilian Novel', experienced and narrated by Hartoman. Transcribed and translated into Portuguese by Erwin Theodor Rosenthal, it was only published in 1992. It is a fictional version of the travels through the Amazon, where the author self-critically reexamines his prejudiced portrayal of the indigenous people. The main settings of the plot are the indigenous villages along the Japurá River.