RU M P H I U S O RC H I D S

Rumphius Orchids
Orchid Texts from The Ambonese Herbal
by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius
Translated, edited, annotated,
and with an introduction by
E. M. Beekman

Support for publication of this book includes a grant to the author

by the Lounsbery Foundation through the University of Massachusetts.
Frontispiece: This is the only known portrait drawn from life. Rumphius son, Paulus
Augustus, drew the likeness sometime between October and July of in Kota
Ambon, about six years before his fathers death. The print states that Rumphius was
sixty-eight when he posed for this portrait, and that the governor then in oce wrote
the Latin encomium. This was Nicolaes Schaghen, who was Ambons governor from
to . The Latin verse reads in translation: Though he be blind, his mental eyes are so
sharp that no one can best him at inquiry or discernment. Rumphius is a German by
birth but his loyalty and pen are completely Dutch. Let the work say the rest.
Copyright by E. M. Beekman. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the
U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Monotype Centaur type
by Tseng Information Systems. Printed in the United States of America
by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rumpf, Georg Eberhard, .
[Amboinsche kruidboek. English] Rumphius orchids : orchid texts from The Ambonese
herbal / Georgius Everhardus Rumphius ; translated, edited, annotated, and with an
introduction by E. M. Beekman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
--- (cloth : alk. paper) . OrchidsIndonesiaAmbon Island.
. Rumpf, Georg Eberhard, . . BotanyPre-Linnean works.
I. Beekman, E. M.,
II. Title. . '.'dc

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.

In Memoriam
Rob Nieuwenhuys
and
Henk de Wit

To him who keeps an Orchis heart

The swamps are pink in June.
Emily Dickinson
Faire catleya.
Marcel Proust

CONTENTS

List of Original Plates

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

xv

About This Translation

xlix

Rumphius Orchids
One The Inscribed Angrek

Two The White, Double Angrek

Three The Red Angrek

Four The Fifth Angrek

Five The Yellow Angrek

Six The Remaining Yellow Angreks

Seven The Dog Angrek

The Fifty Seventh Chapter of the

Auctuarium

Eight The Purple Angrek

Nine The Beseeching Plant

Ten The First Ground Angrek

Eleven The Second Ground Angrek

Twelve The Wrapper

Thirteen The Triple Flower

Fourteen The Large Ambonese Orchis

Fifteen The Small Ambonese Orchis

The Susanna Flower

The Petola Leaf

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

[viii]

L I S T O F O R I G I N A L P L AT E S
but with Modern Binomials

Plate (XLII)
Plate (XLIII)
Plate (XLIV)
Plate (XLV)
Plate (XLVI)

Plate (XLVII)
Plate (XLVIII)
Plate (XLIX)
Plate (L)

Plate (LI)
Plate (LII)

Grammatophyllum scriptum (L.) Blume

Phalaenopsis amabilis (L.) Blume

Fig. . Dendrobium ephemerum J.J. Sm.

Fig. . Renanthera moluccana Bl.

Dendrobium mirbelianum Gaudich.

Fig. . Vanda furva (L.) Lindl.

Fig. . Dendrobium bicaudatum Reinw.

ex Lindl.
Fig. . Dendrobium anosmum Lindl.

Fig. . Dendrobium papilioniferum J.J. Sm.

Coelogyne rumphii Lindl.

Fig. . Vanda saxatilis J.J. Sm.

Fig. . Dendrobium sp.

Fig. . Dendrobium purpureum Roxb.

Fig. . Dendrobium moluccense J.J. Sm.

Fig. . Phaius gratus Bl.
Fig. . unidentied

Fig. . Dendrobium calceolum Roxb.

Fig. . Phaius amboinensis Bl.

Fig. . Calanthe triplicata (Willemet) Ames

[ix]

Plate (LIII)
Plate (LIV)

Plate (XCIX)
in book
Plate (XLI)
in book

Curculigo capitulata (Lour.) O. Kuntze

Fig. . Curculigo orchioides Gaertn.

Fig. . Habenaria rumphii (Brong.) Lindl.

Fig. . Peristylus sp.
Figs. . Pecteilis susannae (R.Br.) Raf.
Fig. . Lycopodium phlegmaria L.
Figs. and . Anoectochilus reinwardtii
Blume

[x]

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The present volume constitutes a modest installment of the

larger enterprise, which is to produce an annotated translation
of Rumphius entire Amboinsche Kruidboek (Ambonese Herbal).
The Richard Lounsbery Foundation made it possible for me
to get the project o the ground; their generosity gave me a
running start, and I very much appreciate their faith in me. I
particularly want to thank Marta Norman for her kindness and
professionalism. The work now continues under the auspices
of The National Tropical Botanical Garden.
These orchid texts are oered in appreciation to Lynn Margulis, who, with deliberate aection, steered me in the right
direction.
This book would not exist without Bart Eatons constant
care and support. He was the rst to suggest that I gather
Rumphius orchid texts into a separate book, and I hope we
did Susanna proud. He came to the rescue when rebarbative
intrusions almost scuttled the present enterprise. Mr. Eatons
generosity was seconded by Catherine Rodriguez and Juliet
Possati. I am grateful for their loyalty.
Explanatory illustrations are crucial in a text like this, if only
[xi]

to prove that Rumphius analogies and similes are quite correct. Locating examples, not to mention acquiring permission
for reproduction, is one of the most frustrating experiences one
encounters when dealing with what are, oxymoronically, called
public services. I am, therefore, in debt to my indefatigable
friend Dr. E. M. Joon, who also knows how hard it is to breach
Hollands takenpaketten: defenses denser than any medieval fortress. I thank him for trying.
To make sure that this would be a responsible text, I enlisted the aid of several specialists. Mr. J. B. Comber, expert on
Indonesian orchids, corrected the binomials I derived from J. J.
Smiths work published in the beginning of the twentieth century. I also proted greatly from the expertise of the orchidologist Joseph Arditti, Professor of Biology Emeritus, University
of California at Irvine.
Dr. Henk van der Wer, of the Missouri Botanical Garden,
scrutinized these orchid texts and oered useful commentary.
But he has done more than that: he became my indispensable
guide through the technical jungle, and I hope he will remain
my botanical cicerone for a long time to come. I am truly grateful for his seless commitment to the larger project.
When the need arose my friend and ally Dr. H. Heestermans
came through with some crucial material. As he has always
done.
In order to make this volume complete, I needed reproductions of the plates from the rst edition. I am grateful to the
Universiteitsbibliotheek of Leiden University and its director,
Dr. R. Breugelmans, for granting permission to reproduce the
[xii]

sixteen plates from the rst edition of Rumphius Amboinsche

Kruidboek.
Some of the people mentioned above know how my fortune
has changed and immediately volunteered to help as much as
possible. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them
as well as my other loyal friends who boost, if not my immune
system, my resolve to complete this quixotic venture. Keep me
steady and on course.
E. M. B

[xiii]

I N T RO D U C T I O N

The orchid is no longer a sinister and decadent passion but

rather a commodity that represents a billion business worldwide.1 This democratization took place in less than two centuries. Orchid fever, or orchidelirium, began in Europe in the
nineteenth century, and the craze was in some ways comparable to the Dutch tulipomania of the seventeenth. But it lasted
longer. The British leisure class contracted the fever in ,
when the rst Cattleya labiata bloomed in Suolk.2 In , Marcel
Proust translated the same plant into a new verb that conjugated making love at its most intoxicating ( faire catleya).3 The
mania was cured by the reality of the First World War and did
not reappear in the United States and Europe until the last
quarter of the twentieth century. By then the erstwhile rapture
had been replaced by an often vicious commercial enterprise.4
Why did it take Westerners so long to contract orchid fever?
After all, the orchid had been in bloom to million years
before the present 5 and it belongs to the most ubiquitous and
variable of plant families, ranging in habitat from Alaska to
Tierra del Fuego, and in size from a couple of millimeters
(Platystele) to a plant mass of a ton (Grammatophyllum speciosum).
[xv]

It is the largest plant family on earth; Dressler is certain of

genera and , species, adding that a gure between
, and , orchid species seems reasonable. 6 The plant
is present in almost every climate zone in Europe, with the
largest number of these temperate species living in the Mediterranean basin, the center of European antiquity. And indeed, the
orchid (a Greek word for testicle) was briey mentioned by
Hippocrates (fth century ..), then Theophrastus (who was
the rst to use the noun orchid) and Dioscorides, succeeded by
the Romans, especially Pliny and Galen, then Arab botanists,
into the Renaissance,7 to be followed by the great explosion
of botanical study in the seventeenth century with Holland at
its center. Every European country had its wild orchids; for
instance, even such an unlikely place as the Netherlands harbors twenty-eight species.8 And yet it was not until the nineteenth century that the orchid insinuated itself into the Western imagination. The intimation came from the tropics.
Asia had cherished the orchid much earlier than Europe,
with China antedating everyone else. The earliest mention of
orchids in the world is said to be in the Chinese Book of
Songs which dates from about the tenth to the sixth century
.. 9 Whereas in Western literature, the orchid was, generally
speaking, associated with salaciousness and the melodramatic
(for instance in the second chapter of Raymond Chandlers The
Big Sleep),10 in China, Japan, and in Asia as a whole the orchid
was justly lauded for its fragrance and its potential medicinal virtues. Rumphius too had nothing sinister to say about
[xvi]

these plants, but praised them for their bootless beauty. But the
European imagination was provoked only when it was nally
introduced to a tropical species.
More than three-quarters of known orchid species are tropical, and about three-quarters of all species are epiphytes, that
is to say they live on but not from trees. Epiphytes are limited to tropical and subtropical environments;11 there are no
epiphytes in Europe. The huge landmasses of North America
and Eurasia know relatively few orchid species: genera and
species. Australasia has the next fewest species, then tropical Africa. Most orchid genera and orchid species are found in
tropical America ( genera and , known species), with
tropical Asia second: genera and , known species.12 In
other words, more than two-thirds of the worlds orchid genera
and species are from tropical America and Asia, and yet Western knowledge of tropical orchids was extremely limited until
the nineteenth century. There are very few classics in the literature of Asian orchidology, and even those few are virtually unknown. As an example, Rumphius classic texts were not translated into a vernacular language until the present volume.
The rst tropical orchid introduced to Europe was the vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia from Mexico). The fruits of tlilxochitl (tlilli means black in Nahuatl, and xchitl is ower)13
avored Emperor Montezumas favored chocolate drink. Although Spaniards brought knowledge of this orchid to Europe
in the early sixteenth century, it was the Dutch who established
it in botanical literature. Clusius, a botanist from the southern
Netherlands, published the rst botanical notice of a Vanilla
[xvii]

species 14 in , while the rst use of the noun that established it as generic nomenclature was by Willem Piso (
),15 the Dutch physician who accompanied Johan Maurits von Nassau-Siegen to Brazil. Johan Maurits gubernatorial
group of scholars and artists assembled a natural history
of BrazilHistoria Naturalis Brasiliae, published in that remained unsurpassed for a very long time. This seminal text,
compiled by Piso, was planned and executed during the Dutch
West Indies Companys abortive attempt to establish a permanent Dutch colony in South America, roughly between and
. Clusius and Piso were not the only Dutch botanists to
establish tropical orchids in the West. The rst tropical orchid cultivated in Europe was gured in Paul Hermanns Paradisus Batavus () as the American Epidendrum nodosum (Brassavola
nodosa). The plant, listed as Epidendrum corassavicum folio crasso sulcato,
was grown in the garden of Casper Fagel, having been introduced into Holland from Curaao. 16 Paul Hermann (
) was considered the best botanist residing in the Dutch
Republic during the seventeenth century, Fagel was a high ocial and intimate of the Dutch ruling family, while Curaao,
captured in , had become the central depot for Dutch trade
in the Caribbean after .
The Dutch presence in Asia was more permanent, especially in Southeast Asia. It is true that the literature of tropical
botany begins with the Portuguese, especially the great Garcia
da Orta (??) who lived in Goa, India, and inspired
Camoens epic, The Lusiad, a poem that included a beautiful
eulogy of the Moluccas. After him comes the Cape Verdean
[xviii]

Cristbal Acosta (), who repeated a great deal from

Orta in his Treatise Concerning the Drugs and Medicines of the East Indies
published in Burgos in , followed by the Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes (), who published a treatise on
medicinal plants from tropical America in in Seville. One
should probably add the Natural History of the West Indies, published
in Toledo in , by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (
), which also discussed nature in the Americas. However,
the work of Orta, Monardes, and Acosta gained widespread
professional renown only after the Flemish botanist Clusius
Charles de lEscluse ()published their work in Latin
epitomes in , , and . They were republished in a
single volume in and reprinted in a collective edition, Exoticorum libri decem, published in. Most of the scholars and natural historians of the seventeenth century, including Rumphius,
knew these works only through Clusius Latin translations.
The Iberian triad was most denitely surpassed by the Dutch
trio of Jacobus Bontius (), Hendrik Adriaan van Reede
tot Drakenstein (), and Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (). The work of these three pioneers was based
on rst-hand observation in, respectively, Java, Indias Malabar
coast, and eastern Indonesia. Bontius work was even shorter
than that of Monardes and Acosta, but Van Reedes Hortus
Malabaricus and Rumphius Het Amboinsche Kruidboek (The Ambonese Herbal) were voluminous enterprisestogether the two
works add up to nineteen folio volumesthat established
themselves as the unsurpassed foundation of the study of tropical Asian botany.
[xix]

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was

the premier European center for botanical studies, especially
tropical botany. By that time there was a considerable literature
(including some discussion of orchids) on European botany,
even on tropical American nature, but very little about Asian
ora. The basic reason was ignorance. There had been no regular intercourse with Asia prior to the fteenth century; Europeans knew about certain Asian commodities, to be sure, but
only as products. They had not veried the botanical provenance
for themselves. When information nally did trickle down to
Europe it came most often in the form of scattered references in accounts of travel. There were few systematic descriptions of tropical ora before the eighteenth century, and the
handful that do exist, such as Van Reedes herbal of India and
Rumphius of Indonesia, are pioneering texts of inestimable
value. The territory they had discovered appeared limitless.
If we restrict this discussion to orchids alone, we can provide the following gures as examples. China has a total of
genera and species of orchids.17 The orchid ora of southern China is closely related to that of Malaysia, 18 hence we
will nd that some of the genera Rumphius discovered are also
found in southern China. Mention of Malaysia brings to mind
the tropical archipelago that is the natural habitat in this book.
In terms of Indonesia, according to J. B. Comber, Java has
named orchid species,19 Sumatra has just under , named
species, and Borneo about ,.20 In Papua New Guinea there
are untold species. For example, in a few years during the rst
decade of the twentieth century, the German botanist Rudolf
[xx]

Schlechter recorded genera and , species, of which ,

species were new.21 J. J. Smith listed species for the small
island of Ambon where Rumphius lived three-quarters of his
life. Thirty-six of those species and four varieties were, according to Smith, endemic to Ambon, and species were to be
found only in the eastern archipelago.22 Rumphius described
or pictured about conrmed species and that are subject
to taxonomic debate.23 By contrast, Van Reede listed only six
species of orchids in his Hortus Malabaricus, all epiphytes (which
in the Malayalam language were called maravara) from the Malabar coast in western India.24 Comber contends that a rough
estimate of , species for all Indonesian orchids is not exaggerated.
That is a surfeit of orchids, far more than all the species and
genera of Eurasia combined, yet this oral wealth was practically unknown in the seventeenth century. Van Reedes half
a dozen Malabar orchids were not known to Rumphius: he
never saw the twelfth and last volume of the Hortus Malabaricus, which discussed those maravara. Rumphius parades received
knowledge rather perfunctorily in his rst orchid chapter. It
was not much to build on. At least Clusius and Dodonaeus
printed brief descriptions of true orchids, but Rumphius never
knew Gessners drawing of orchid seed (though he does mention the Swiss botanist) because it was not published until
. Rumphius includes Tragus and Kircher only because they
posited a theory concerning the orchids generation, despite the
fact that this was still the prevalent myth that the plants were
somehow generated from spilled animal semen, or by means
[xxi]

of abiogenesis, which is spontaneous creation from carcasses.25

Rumphius politely declined to support such fanciful notions
and correctly intuited the presence of orchid seed, which he
described as wool, and correctly noted its dispersal by the
wind. He also mentions the contemporary botanist Bauhin,
who listed the wrong plant, and otherwise fell back on his main
source and model, the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder.
One should note that thereafter Rumphius does not mention
any other source because they were unavailable, and useless even
if at hand. Rumphius was creating a fundamental classic while
he wrote, pretty much alone, in relative intellectual isolation,
on a remote island in Indonesias eastern archipelago. Scientic
study of the orchid family was not initiated until the nineteenth
century.
An encounter with Rumphius, once dubbed The Blind Seer
of Ambon, be it the work or the man, is a privilege and a liberal education. He was born in late October or early November
in in Wlfersheim, a small town in the approximate center of Hesse, some miles north of Frankfurt.26 His father,
August Rumpf (?), was a Baumeister, a combination architect and construction contractor, and his mother was Anna
Elisabeth Keller (?), who had family connections in the
United Provinces, a republic now better known as the Kingdom
of the Netherlands. Despite his German birthplace, Rumphius
learned Dutch from his mothers family.
Georg Everhard Rumpf, whom I will call Rumphius for convenience sake, was born when the Thirty Years War had been
[xxii]

raging for about a decade. The Rumpf family experienced the

hazards of marauding soldiers, famine, plague epidemics, and
the devastation of their region. Beginning as a brutal war of
religion, the conict gradually turned into a vicious political contest in which principles and ideologies became feckless accommodations. Since national ghting forces did not
yet exist, the war was fought by hirelings. Mercenaries had no
regard for territorial sanctity: they burned and pillaged and
sacked with democratic fervor. The ruination of Hesse had one
benet: it provided Rumphius father with steady employment.
Local aristocrats needed to have their ancestral seats restored
to former glory, and a man such as the elder Rumpf was in great
demand. The only trouble was that his employers were broke
and more often than not failed to pay him for his services so
that, even though the war ensured that the Rumpf family would
survive, it also made sure that it would suer from a chronic
lack of money.
Because of his fathers social position Rumphius enjoyed
the privilege of education. In the seventeenth century education was a luxury, not a right, and depended on ones ability
to pay. As a young child in Wlfersheim he was taught Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew by a private instructor. Rumphius father
taught the children of his aristocratic employers such things
as drafting, mathematics, and the principles of construction,
particularly building defensive structures such as redoubts and
fortications. Subjects like that were not taught in schools,
so Rumphius was again lucky that he had a father who could
instruct him in these skills. As a very young adolescent, not
[xxiii]

much older than ten or eleven, Rumphius went to the Gymnasium in Hanau, a city east of Frankfurt. The connection with
Hanau is religious as well as economic (his father worked for
the Counts of Hanau and later for the city itself ). In ,
Count Philipp Ludwig II invited Protestant refugees from the
Spanish Netherlands to his domain, granting them a number
of privileges. They proceeded to build a new town and made
Hanau prosperous. Throughout his life, Rumphius would (inaccurately) claim Hanau as his native city.
The new town these Netherlandic Protestants built bore a
striking resemblance to New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan and to Kota Ambon in eastern Indonesia, a town where
Rumphius was to spend the last decades of his life. All three
were built according to a pragmatic grid of square blocks of
houses with streets that crossed each other at right angles, arranged around a central area that truly was a square. This was
not standard city planning at the time, but an innovative endeavor. Just recall medieval cities, which grew like coral reefs,
by accretion.
Hanau could boast of an institution of advanced learning
because the Counts of Hanau, as Reformed Protestants, were
champions of education. The curriculum comprised the traditional liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry (not algebra), music, and astronomy. In an unnished
autobiographical poem,27 Rumphius informs us that despite
his talent for mathematics, he preferred the humanities, the
Muses as he called them, and that he wanted to explore the

[xxiv]

secrets of Nature. Be that as it may, Minerva had to defer to

Mars for many years to come.
Rumphius stated that he left Hanau in at eighteen because he wanted to see Italy. To realize this dream he signed
up as a mercenary with a commander who was a son of one
of August Rumpf s former employers. Because of this connection, both father Rumpf and his son trusted the recruiter, who
said he was gathering hirelings for the Doge of Venice, troops
that would ght the Turks on Crete. The recruitment pitch
was a lie. The bizarre events of the next three years hide several mysteries in the story of Rumphius life. Rumphius and
his fellow Hessians were shipped to Holland and abandoned.
Then they somehow were corralled once more and transported
to Texel, an island o the northern coast of Holland where
Dutch eets rendezvoused before embarking on long voyages
all across the globe. As Rumphius recounts in his poem, the
hoodwinked band of hirelings became part of a force of ,
men who were crammed into three ships. Not until they were
sailing through the Channel were they told that their destination was Brazil, evidently as part of an expeditionary force
intended to relieve the beleaguered Dutch in northern Brazil.
But Rumphius never made it to South America either. His
ship was either wrecked or captured o the coast of Portugal in
, and he spent the next three years in the country that was
Hollands commercial and political rival. There is enough evidence to say that he was in Portugal from to and that
he lived there as a soldier. Rumphius and his fellow Hessians

[xxv]

were used by the Portuguese government as border troops. Like

all mercenaries, they lived o the land and earned the contempt
of the local citizens. In a letter from he mentions that
they once gathered a Portuguese variety of parsley to be eaten
as a salad despite being pelted with slingshots. 28 There are
scattered references to his Portuguese peregrination, (:)
as he called it, throughout his work. Whatever the particulars,
there is no doubt that the three Portuguese years meant a stint
in foreign military service.
How he managed to leave Portugal and how he got back
to Hesse we do not know. It is certain that he was back in
Hesse in the summer of , just about one year after the
Thirty Years War ended with the Treaty of Mnster. This time
Rumphius followed in the more prudent footsteps of his father,
and found employment in Idstein, a town northwest of Frankfurt. He worked for the local count as a Bauschreiber, a lesser version of what his fathers job entailed. A brief description of his
duties illustrates why Rumphius was such a valuable asset for
the Dutch when he went to the Indies. As a Bauschreiber he had to
oversee construction crews and was their liaison with the castle
hierarchy. He also produced working designs, what we would
call blueprints, for whatever structure was under construction,
or any other proposed project, and was contractually obliged
to teach his employers children, just as his father had done. In
Rumphius case this covered Arithmetic, Geometry, Architecture and related Arts. The latter most likely were drawing and
painting.
Rumphius lasted only a year and a half on this job. One rea[xxvi]

son he quit was given by his employer, the Count of Idstein:

Rumphius had publicly remonstrated against the Counts prohibition of Calvinist church services. Dissenting behavior was
dangerous at the time, so that it may have been foresighted
when Rumphius disappeared. A more likely reason is that his
mother died in December of . His father needed him and
called him home. Once he was back with his family, Georg discovered that his father was in serious nancial trouble, and he
left perhaps in order not to be a burden on his parent. Be that
as it may, within a week after his mothers death, Rumphius
had left Hanau and probably Hesse as well.
Once again Rumphius signed on as a soldier, this time with
the VOC or the Dutch East India Company, the business enterprise that was the rst multinational corporation of the modern era. (I will refer to it throughout this book either by the
Dutch acronym or the metonymy the Company.) Again, we
do not know how he got to Holland or who helped him solicit
for a position, but his mothers family was more than likely involved because he left Europe the day after Christmas , as an
adelborst, which a contemporary dictionary translates as gentleman soldiera small but signicant step up the social ladder.
In July of Rumphius disembarked in the colonial capital
called Batavia on the island of Java, and by the end of that
year he arrived in the Moluccas in the far eastern archipelago
as a member of a military force. He had just turned twenty-six.
He spent the next forty-eight years of his life in those eastern
islands and never saw Java, Hesse, or Europe again.
It was not unusual for a German to go to the Indies as
[xxvii]

an employee of the VOC. The Dutch company needed manpower and the small nation could not supply it. During the
time Rumphius signed on, about percent of the soldiers were
foreign, while percent of mariners had been born outside the
Netherlands. These percentages only increased during the eighteenth century. The greatest number of Gastarbeiter were German, and the major reason for that was the ruinous Thirty Years
War. Rumphius was not much dierent from his compatriots
except that he managed to advance beyond the military, which
not many foreigners were able to do.
If one survived, the journey to Java truly was a sea-change
into something rich and strange. But one thing must have
been familiar to the young man from Hanau. Old Batavia was
also built according to a rectangular grid, like Hanaus New
Town and New Amsterdam on the Hudson. The Dutch engineers straightened out the Ciliwung River and diverted it
into bricked canals that owed by seventeenth-century Dutch
houses complete with small gardens. In other words, Rumphius
walked into a Dutch town transplanted to the tropics, though
outside this relatively small center of palm-lined canals one encountered the dierent modes of real Asian life in the several
kampongs, or neighborhoods, inhabited by ethnic groups from
all over the archipelago.
But life in the eastern archipelago was stranger still. The
European presence seemed almost negligible in this vast domain of water and a few lonesome islands. Rumphius set out
to transfer this largely undisclosed world onto paper, but rst
he had to survive the fortunes of war one more time. Yet again
[xxviii]

we lack details and ocial conrmation, but if one has had

any familiarity with military life one can tell from certain passages in his writings that he most likely took part in ghting
in the Ambonese region, probably on Seram, against the combined forces of Makassarese and Ambonese in what came to be
known as the Fifth Ambonese War which lasted, according
to Rumphius, from to .29
Rumphius survived. What is more, the VOC recognized that
he had more valuable talents. They sent him to appraise and repair defensive structures on several islands and used his mathematical skills for military purposes. VOC contracts were for
ve years. In , Rumphius was permitted to resign from the
military and allowed to enter the civilian branch of the VOC as
a junior merchant stationed on the island of Ambon. There he
remained for the rest of his life. Rumphius had been soldiering o and on for about ten years. It had been an important
part of his life and proved to be a lasting inuence. The selfsuciency he had acquired would be severely tested in a series
of calamities that befell him a decade later, but it also reects
a strong character that had its rough side and an indomitable
will that did not conform or submit.
This self-reliant man was about to change himself into something entirely new and dierent. Like Camoens, Portugals great
national poet, Rumphius exchanged the sword for the pen. This
transformation from unknown soldier to a representative man
who is still admired took place in a region he aptly called the
Water Indies. In the preface to his Herbal, Rumphius told his
readers: The Water-Indies stretch from Sumatra, then Java,
[xxix]

and the other large Islands, in a long chain to the East, once
nicely called the eyelids of the world by Julius Scaliger, then with
the South-Easter Islands they curve to the North and Northwest, through the Moluccos, to end in the North with the Phillipine or Manilhase Islands. In the most remote corner of these
Water-Indies to the East, one will nd the three governments,
of Amboina, the Moluccas, and Banda; these are enclosed in
the East and separated from the South Sea by the land which
one is wont to call Nova Guinea. Rumphius was quite correct to
emphasize the presence of water because in Indonesia its area
is three times greater than the lands. The Indonesians speak
of their country as Tanah Air, land and water, almost as if one
word.
Far to the east was the small island of Ambon, which despite its diminutive sizeit is only miles long and miles
widehad been delegated a disproportionate importance due
to the European determination to monopolize the spice trade.
During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese made Ambon
the headquarters of the Spice Islands, and the Dutch maintained that status during the seventeenth. One could compare
the island to a lobster claw, with the northern peninsula like
a large upper pincer, called Hitu, and the smaller lower one
called Leitimor. Rumphius lived for thirteen years on the coast
of Hitu, rst at Larike, a small settlement in the west, then for
a decade in Hila, further to the east. It might seem a lonely
existence to us but it probably was not. Rumphius was his own
boss. His duties were exacting but not exhausting. As long as
he took care of business rst, the VOC would not bother him.
[xxx]

Larike had about inhabitants. Rumphius lived outside a

small redoubt that housed a garrison of about two dozen. It
was in Larike that he began to collect botanical, zoological, and
mineralogical items and started to register them in the vivid
prose which has survived three centuries.
To put it as briey as possible, Rumphius composed a natural history of eastern Indonesia, modeled on Plinys classic
work. Let me immediately add that Rumphius achievement
was greater than that of the Roman cavalry ocer because
no matter how much one admires the Latin volumes they remain a particular readers digest of over a hundred authorities. Rumphius equally voluminous writings are mostly original, based on rst-hand investigation and information. For all
sorts of reasons, he was prevented from shaping the various
parts into a single whole, but the independent components are
monumental in their own right. His greatest achievement was
a herbal of eastern Indonesia entitled Het Amboinsche Kruidboek
(The Ambonese Herbal), and his most popular achievement
was DAmboinsche Rariteitkamer or The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet,
published posthumously in . It discussed tropical crustaceans in book one, mollusks in book two, and minerals and
sundry curiosities in book three. Its popularity was primarily
due to the illustrations of shells in book two. Rumphius also
wrote a geographical description and a history of Ambon. Towards the end of his life he was working on a book about Moluccan animals and he had written a dictionary of Malay, completed up to the letter P. But Rumphius never saw any of this
in print. The only things published during his lifetime were a
[xxxi]

report of the catastrophic earthquake of and thirteen brief

notes about Asian natural history in a learned journal back in
Germany.
He started this unbelievable amount of work in the s,
accomplishing all of it in about forty years, at the same time
pursuing an active career in the VOC, doing most of the actual
writing during the nal three decades of his life. And his career
was successful. When he was assigned to Hila, the second-most
important post on the island, he was promoted to merchant,
a high position for a foreigner. Sometime during these years on
Hitu, Rumphius probably married a woman named Susanna.
They had several children, but it is not known how many. We
know he had a son, Paulus Augustus (?), who helped
him later on, but it is very frustrating that there is no further
information about Susanna except for her husbands brief, poignant mention in his Herbal. Describing an orchid variety that
had no local name, he called it in Latin Flos susannae, and in
Malay Bonga Susanna, in memory of her who when alive was
my rst Companion and Helpmate in the gathering of herbs
and plants, and who was also the rst ever to show this ower
to me. Whoever she was, if Susanna lived with Rumphius in
Hila she shared an enjoyable existence. He had a comfortable
dwelling, abundant food, and a large, armed vessel at his disposal, and the prospect from a moderate elevation was that of
beautiful Piru Bay. In that era of clean air he could see the
neighboring island of Seram.
During the day Rumphius took care of business, also gathered and collected, and received items from other parts of the
[xxxii]

region either on consignment or as gifts. At night he wrote.

From the point of view of modern ophthalmology, lighting in
Rumphius house was an abomination. The most common light
source was a dish with coconut or kenari oil, with a oat of
gaba marrow and a piece of cotton for a wickcharming and
decorative, but rather pitiful when pitted against the eclipse of
a tropic night. During the day, he spent many hours scouring
the beaches. Most of them were sand deriving from pulverized
shells, magnicently but cruelly white under the forbidding
sun. Rumphius blamed the beaches, but I think it was a combination of both day labor and night work which caused him
to lose his sight. In the preface to his Herbal he contends that
it was eld research that assassinated his vision: From such
walking in the heat of the Sun my sight was struck to such an
extent by a Suusio or Cataracta Nigra, that I lost most of it
within three months. By May , , the governor of Ambon
reported to his superiors in Java that the Merchant Rumphius
became blind several weeks ago. He was forty-two years old.
Today the problem would have been diagnosed as glaucoma and
it can be cured, but for Rumphius it meant blindness.
The idyll at Hila was over. This man who had survived shipwreck, military service in foreign countries, sea travel, and a
voluntary exile to what was quite literally the other side of the
world, this survivor was now faced with the worst calamity of
all. It did not destroy him, but for someone who could word a
ower or a plant in the most delicate detail, it must have been
devastating and one must concede that his achievement is all
the more remarkable for it. A phrase from a letter to a Euro[xxxiii]

pean colleague in says it all; blindness, he wrote, suddenly

took away from me the entire world and all its creatures. 30
And misfortune was not through with him yet.
Deemed unt to do his job, Rumphius was ordered by his
immediate superior to vacate his post and move himself and
his family to the only true town on the island, Kota Ambon, the capital. There, during a celebration of Chinese New
Year on February , , the entire island was hit by one of
the worst tectonic earthquakes in Ambons history. Rumphius,
Susanna, and at least one daughter were strolling down a street
in the Chinese quarter. A contemporary eyewitness reported
that Rumphius wife and daughter were called over by a certain Chinese woman and invited in, now when they felt the rst
shaking they wanted to walk away, but instead they got the wall
of the house on their backs, and thus lamentably suocated beneath it, notwithstanding that they were dug up as soon as was
possible. Just before that time Rumphius had gone for an evening stroll past the very same house and had even been called
over by his wife and daughter, but he demurred; which shows
that God was disposed to keep him from harm, for if he had sat
down, there is no doubt that there would have been no escape
for him, due to his blindness. It was a piteous sight to see that
man sit next to his corpses, and also to hear his lamentations,
concerning both this accident and his blindness. 31
Fate considered even this loss not quite sucient yet. First
his vision had been taken from him, then Susanna, now his
writing became a target. The VOC froze him in the rank of
merchant and used him as what we would call a consultant.
[xxxiv]

In other words, he lived at the behest of the Company and

could work only by the mercy of substitute eyes and pens. I
am convinced that his writing sheltered him from despair, but
he needed help. To its credit, the Company provided him with
amanuenses to take down his dictation and draughtsmen to
produce the illustrations he used to draw himself. One has to
realize that after , his blindness forced him to start writing his Herbal all over again. As was customary during that
century, he had rst written it in Latin, but there were not
many people in the Indies who could take down Latin dictation, so he was forced to switch to the language of his mothers
family. Yet there were benets. The rewrite imposed by this
practical need also gave him the chance to produce a vernacular text that would be of practical use to the common man.
As he announced in the preface to the Herbal, it was addressed
particularly to those who live in the Indies because those
people could use it as a medical vade mecum. And this was perfectly reasonable; many of his European contemporaries preferred the herbal medicine of the Indonesian dukuns (healers)
to the bloody incompetence of Western physicians. Rumphius
herbal is in that respect a huge materia medica, a repository of
herbal knowledge and remedies that is of great value to ethnographers and ethnobotanists. And, nally, the enforced switch to
Dutch also produced a far more expressive and original prose
than the constraints of Latin composition had permitted.
Though the text had to be entirely rewritten, he had at least
all the illustrations, in color, which he had nished himself before . But all these priceless images, along with manuscripts
[xxxv]

and all his books, were reduced to ashes in during a major

re that raged through the European quarter of Kota Ambon.
Rumphius house burned down to the ground. About a decade
later someone stole new illustrations from his study. But he
persisted. In he had half of his huge herbal nished once
again. It was shipped to Java where the manuscript was going
to be consigned to a ship that was part of that years retour
eet to Holland. Thanks to his curiosity and to the peremptory powers of his oce, however, the reigning governor general, by the name of Joannes Camphuys (), ordered his
clerks to copy Rumphius text because, as an ardent naturalist, he wanted it for his private enjoyment. Camphuys authoritarian dictate proved to be a saving grace. It took time to copy
all those pages, and not until two years later did the rst six
books of the Ambonese Herbal set sail for Holland. But Holland
and England were locked in a war with Frances Sun King, and
Rumphius manuscript became an innocent victim. A French
naval squadron attacked the retour eet and sank the ship that
bore those hard-won pages.
Once again, Rumphius rallied. He even took the opportunity to make additions and corrections to the now only existing
copy of the rst six books, the one Camphuys had ordered. The
other six reconstituted and copied books of the Herbal made it
across the ocean without incident, and by , only ve years
before his death, the entire work was safely in Holland, though
it would not be in print until more than half a century had
passed. During his nal years Rumphius also completed the
Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet and several other works. He kept on
[xxxvi]

adding to the herbal until by he had what amounted to

another, supplementary volume, which was dispatched to Holland in , only nine months before his death.
The very last chapter of this supplementary volume contains
a description of the Javanese mongoose. This seems a peculiar
conclusion to a work about plants, but Rumphius was fond
of this animal and wanted his readers to know about it, and
since, as he wrote at the beginning of the chapter, he doubted
that [his] weakness and old age would permit him to nish the
book on Native Animals he was working on, he added this
nal chapter as an insurance against oblivion. It is a charming sketch that in modesty and aection for a fellow creature
provides a quiet but telling farewell to a remarkable life. Since
Rumphius lived in the tropics it was only natural that he extolled the animals prowess as a snake killer, but the real emphasis is on the shape, quickness, and engaging temperament
of the Moncus (as he called the Herpestes javanicus, a member
of the Civet-cat genus). This Indonesian ancestor of Kiplings
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is consumed with curiosity, a character trait
that it shared with its aging master. This Animal is incredibly
quick, when it stands or sits upright, the head is never still for
a moment, and it inspects everything that passes, be it people
or animals. Perhaps the animals aectionate nature was more
important to an old man with little companionship. But it is
even more amazing how tame this Animal becomes, and how
used it gets to the people who keep it company. It is dicult
to grab hold of by its back, since it will immediately slip out
of your hands if you grab it like that, yet you can touch it with
[xxxvii]

your hands from the front, and it will presently seize them,
and do the same with the legs of whoever walks by. In short,
it becomes so tame that it even sleeps with people. Rumphius
captured the Moncus with one of the characteristic metaphoric
images which carry his work beyond the scientic imperative.
He says that it will take hold of whatever one gives it to eat
with its two front paws, which, when it has nothing to do, it
puts on its chest, like a poor sinner.
Rumphius died on June , , at the age of seventy-four.
He was buried in a plot outside Kota Ambon, and an unknown
admirer erected a modest marble tomb in his honor. During the
British interregnum, the British governor of Ambon destroyed
the grave site and sold the marble for prot. The grave was
restored by the Dutch government and a discreet monument
dedicated to the naturalists memory in . That memorial
was also destroyed, this time during an allied bombing raid in
the Second World War. In , a third monument was dedicated in downtown Kota Ambon, but its fate is also in jeopardy
due to the sectarian and religious war that has been raging in
that region since, and that has cost the lives of , people
and forced half a million other victims to become refugees.
The volume at hand presents all the descriptions of orchids
that Rumphius included in his monumental herbal, Het Amboinsche Kruidboek (The Ambonese Herbal). It was written between and and is, therefore, a seventeenth-century text.
It was published (at a minimum) half a century later: in six
volumes, plus an addition or seventh volume, between and
[xxxviii]

, which makes some people mistakenly believe that it was a

eighteenth-century text.
The rst half of the complete title translates as: The Ambonese Herbal, Being a Description of the most noteworthy
Trees, Shrubs, Herbs, Land- and Water-Plants, which are found
in Amboina, and the surrounding Islands, According to their
shape, various names, cultivations, and use: together with several insects and animals. For the most part with the Figures
pertaining to them. All gathered with much trouble and diligence over many years, and described in twelve books by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius. 32
The seven volumes contain , folio pages, divided into
twelve books, chapters, that are illustrated with
plates. As the titles of the individual books indicated, the Rumphian divisions are unlike those of modern botanical practice.
Book one describes trees that bear edible Fruits, and that
are planted by People in their Gardens: book two contains
the Spice Trees: book three describes those trees that produce some Resin, notable Flowers or hurtful Milk: book four
presents wild Trees, that are turned into Lumber; book ve,
a mixture of wild trees; book six presents wild and cultivated
shrubs; book seven, Forest-ropes, which are lianas, as well
as creeping Shrubs; book eight describes the all-important
Garden plants that serve as food, Medicine, or recreation;
book nine twining Plants; book ten presents a medley of
Wild Herbs; book eleven deals with the remaining wild
Herbs; and book twelve describes the Sea-trees, and stony
Marine growths, that resemble a Plant, that is to say coral and
[xxxix]

algae. The Auctuarium, or volume seven, has additions to any

of the above categories. Merrill has estimated that Rumphius
Amboinsche Kruidboek describes about , oral forms.33
There is order to Rumphius method. Each plant is rst described in graphic and often poetic detail. Rumphius is one of
the greatest phytographers in the history of botany, and unsurpassed as the phytographer of tropical ora. After the description, the plants names are given. First is the Latin one which,
more often than not, was an original label with Rumphius as
its author. Next comes the indigenous Malay name, if any, and
thereafter whichever other Indonesian names Rumphius might
have heard. Other Indonesian names often included are Ambonese ones, even distinguishing what a plant is called on the
northern peninsula (Hitu) of the island or on southern Leitimor; Macassarese names are frequently provided, as are Javanese
and Balinese appellations; also frequent are names from Ternate, nearby islands (such as Buru, Seram, the Banda islands),
other Moluccan islands, New Guinea, and so on. Rumphius
frequently provides Chinese cognomens, more specically,
names from southern coastal China. And every nominative section provides, of course, a Dutch simile, almost always original,
descriptive, and memorable.
Even by the standards of modern scientic taxonomy, Rumphius Herbal is very important because, as Merrill points out,
its descriptions and gures typify a very large number of binomials of later authors. 34 Merrills nal judgment is that
as an original source the Herbarium Amboinense stands preminent among all the early publications on Malayan botany. In
[xl]

more than original publications of species of plants under

the binomial system from to the Rumphian names
or gures, or both, are quoted as synonyms, and in about
cases the proposed binomials are based wholly on data given
by Rumphius. 35
After naming names come place and provenance. The above
sketch of Rumphian nomenclature makes it abundantly clear
that, though the title of his herbal sounds restrictive, he really
cast his botanical net far and wide. Rumphius refers to plants
from Java, Celebes (Sulawesi), Ceram (Seram), Bali, the Banda
islands, Buru, the true Moluccas (Ternate, Tidore, Bacian,
Halmahera, the latter also known as Gilolo), the SumbawaTimor group of islands (Nusa Tenggara), the Philippines,
Manipa, Buton, Borneo, Sumatra, the Sula islands, Ambons
small neighboring islands, the Aru islands, New Guinea, and
the Kei islands, as well as making frequent references to
countries beyond Indonesia, such as China, Japan, IndoChina, Malacca, Madagascar, South Africa, Mexico, Peru,
and Brazil.
After description, name, and place, a chapters concluding
discussion is of the plants use. This section was very important
at the time: one of Rumphius main objectives was to provide
a medical vade mecum for Europeans living in Indonesia. Even
if a plant has no medicinal signicance, Rumphius will always
mention whatever economic use of which he had become aware.
In other words, he provides scholars of our era with a voluminous text of ethnobotany. Natural products had to satisfy every
human need in his preindustrial era, from construction materi[xli]

als to writing implements. The range of his information is astonishing. It includes recipes (for instance, for a mussel sauce),
food habits, fashion information, natural writing utensils, how
to black shields and forge swords, remedies against conception,
remedies to promote conception, how to cleanse the digestive
system of the newborn, how to ward o the troubled sleep of
children by placing certain shells under their pillows, and so
on. He includes stories, folklore, religious practicesin short
things both marvelous and quotidian. All of this and more is
overlooked if one is satised with a mere index of his plants and
animals. This sympathetic appropriation of a dierent reality
was an act of enthusiasm, and students of Indonesian ethnography can only thank fate that Rumphius was a pre-modern
animist because a Cartesian would have scoed at and dismissed
most of what he recorded. An example from the present orchid texts is the Alfuran warriors who stuck Dendrobium blooms
behind their glass armbands before they went out to gather
severed heads.
Besides the ethnobotanical dimension of the Herbal, the other
strikingly modern feature of this classic text is Rumphius
working methods. Like a good scientist he based his text on
nearly thirteen years (from to ) of personal eld observations, use of local informants, and a professional correspondence with natural historians in other parts of the VOCs
farung empire. He maintained the latter two channels for
nearly half a century. Like any good modern anthropologist,
but very rare in the seventeenth century, Rumphius cultivated
the friendship of informants. What makes this even more as[xlii]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Courtesy of Theo Laurentius. From the Collection Laurentius.

tonishing is that he acknowledged their help, an act of gratitude that was very uncommon at the time, especially in the
colonies. He will call them Master, mention them by name,
and state that it is only decent to commemorate (:) their
instruction.
We know that he made eld observations, not only from
such statements as I measured everything the way I saw it in
these Islands (:), but also from the only other known portrait besides the one his son, Paulus, drew of his father, which
is reprinted here as the frontispiece. In that portrait Rumphius
is standing in a tropical forest, observing a workman climbing a cus tree while writing down his observations in a tafelet
(from the Italian tavolette, called papier tablette in French). An
art historian discovered these sketchbooks for artists, but he
also mentioned that similar booklets were given by the VOC
to its employees.36 The writing implement, kept in two loops
that were attached to the tafelet, was a metalpoint stylus (see
above). The pages in the booklets were reusable and the advan[xliii]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Courtesy of Leiden University Library.

tage of the use of metalpoint over drawing or writing materials

like chalk or ink is that it does not smudge, it is dry, and it
leaves a very ne and controlled line. That is the reason why it
was used for very detailed drawings. 37 This was obviously an
ideal tool in a tropical environment. Above Rumphius is seen
holding one in this rare image of him as a working botanist.
Despite all supercial appearances, Rumphius botanical examinations are closer to an Asian than a European system of
knowledge. His nomenclature was based on original Indonesian
nomination, and his ethnobotany is almost purely Indonesian.
He was well aware of this. He warned people not to assume
that an apparent similarity between an Indonesian and a Euro[xliv]

RU M P H I U S O RC H I D S

Chapter One
THE INSCRIBED ANGREK.

e shall now describe the Aristocrats of wild plants,

who convey their nobility by wanting to live only
high up in trees, and never below on the ground, just as one
will commonly see Noble Castles and Fortresses built on high,
wherefore they have a strange way of growing and are strangely
fashioned, just like Aristocrats aunting their nery. The Moluccan Princesses add a third reason, to wit, that they will
not permit anyone to wear these owers unless they be Gentle
Ladies. But one will also nd among these Nobles some who,
as is the case with people, will change into Peasants, and grow
on the ground, and these seem to form a particular family.1
Wherefore I must divide all Angreks into two main classes:
I. Into the Aristocracy, which will grow only on trees, and
secondly, into the Peasantry, which grows on the ground, yet
all are related to the plant, that is called Helleborine 2 or Calceolus
mariae 3 in the Herbals, and which is divided into so many kinds,
that I will not be able to describe them all.4 But I have comprehended the Aristocracy under the following twelve kinds,
of which the rst and most beautiful is Angraecum scriptum,5 described in this Chapter.
[]

Angraecum scriptum is a rare plant, that grows on trees like

Mistletoe,6 where it appears on the thickest branches, mostly
at their base, or from the joints,7 with countless tough, white
bers, attaching themselves to the selfsame bark, and it has
many white points, upright, as on a Hedgehog, but not prickly.
From this issue some large, rather at, cone-shaped purses,
divided transversely into joints, with deep furrows or stripes
lengthwise, with an inner substance that is plant-like and slimy,
wherefrom sprout three or four long and narrow leaves, that
embrace one another, like those of the white Hellebore, or Hyris,8
thick, sti, narrow in back, then gradually broadening, easily a
foot long, three ngers 9 wide, traversed 10 lengthwise by three
sinews, that do not bulge very much, though the central one
forms a groove 11 on the inside; another stem comes from the
root next to this purse, round, without leaves, four to ve feet
long, somewhat curved at the top, whereon the owers grow
orderly above each other, in the manner of Hyacinths. Each one
on its separate bandy little stem.
Now these owers have a particular shape, and would like
to resemble those called Satyrium,12 the size of a narcissus, fashioned from ve outer leaets, narrow in back, wide in front,
some yellow, some a yellowish green, whereon one will see
broad drops or characters, as if Hebrew letters,13 but not distinctly so, all of them a brownish red, dierent on each ower.
In the center is another hollow leaet, rolled inwards, like
a tiny beaker, of a lighter color, with brown or purple stripes,
and in this hollow one will see a thick little pillar, with a broad
little head; otherwise it lacks scent.
[]

The rst ower that opens up is yellow-green inside, and its

characters are a dark brown, but in time it turns a true yellow,
and its characters become red; it lives for a long time, even on
stems that have been broken o, for, when put in a room, they
will bear owers for as long as eight days, opening up one after
another. And they nally begin to wither, but without falling
o, and their feet become thick and bellied, and form the fruit,
which resembles a young Blimbing,14 or a six-sided, fat pod, and
the edges have bulging ridges, of which the three bigger ones
are furrowed, and are split in two towards the front; the other
three are lower, and not furrowed. It is ve inches long, one and
a half inch thick, widest in front, with the withered ower on
top, more pointed in back, with a green, thick, plant-like bark
on the outside, while the inside is lled with a yellow, downy
meal.
The ripe ones turn a dark gray, split easily into six parts, in
such a way that the ridges in back and in front remain attached
to each other, like an Imperial crown,15 and then most of the
yellow [meal] falls out and is scattered 16 on the wind, but it is
still unknown whether it contains a seminal power, enabling it
to transplant itself when the wind has borne it to other trees.17
As I mentioned, the purses, which bear the leaves, are plantlike inside, but when the leaves have fallen o, they become
thicker, and nally dry up, with a substance inside that is
spongy and brous, and that usually has ants nestled inside.
There are some variations of the foregoing, but none of them
are dierent enough to make for a separate kind. Firstly, the
plants that grow on Mangas 18 or suchlike trees, with sappy
[]

bark, have larger leaves than the preceding one, to wit, twentyseven or eight inches long, easily the width of a hand,19 with
no other notable sinew down its length except for the central
one, instead of three, as the foregoing has, and they resemble
the young leaves of the Spatwortel [Dart Root].20
I once had a ower-bearing stem that was ve and a half feet
long, with some bows that had fty-two blooms on them at the
same time. Its characters did not resemble Hebrew so much, as
old Latin Capitals,21 and some looked like Samaritan letters 22
as well, wherewith one would be able to make up some names,
if one took a leaf of a ower here and there, and laid them out
in some sort of order.
If a branch of the Mangas tree, whereon the Angreck and
similar herbs are planted, were to provide food for them, it will
not bear any fruit, or very little, which one should endure for
the sake of a handsome show.
There is another variation on the Kalappus tree, which many
consider a particular kind, so I will describe it in detail. It
grows on the sides of old Kalappus trees; the root forms a hillock or large clump of ne, long, though not prickly points.
The purses are similar to the foregoing, but smooth, without
demarcations or joints, except that it is slightly ribbed lengthwise. The leaves are somewhat shorter, wider, and thicker, without any sinews, except for the central groove, thirteen to sixteen inches long, four wide, and appear on the young purses.
The ower stem has a peculiar appearance, ve to six and a half
feet long, as thick as ones little nger, round, sti, and almost
woody. The two top thirds are covered with owers, not unlike
[]

the foregoing, to wit, fashioned from ve yellow-green leaves,

of which one is always curved inwards, and almost every ower
has a little curve at its origin, usually curving upwards, some
sideways.
These leaets are decorated with coarse, brown characters,
which one cannot say are specic shapes, for most of them resemble spots, though one could discern [the shape of the letters] A. J. O. among them. There is a little chalice in the center,
slightly paler than the outer leaves, with brown lines down the
length of it, otherwise scentless.
The fruits are undoubtedly large, angular pods, similar to
the foregoing. The clump of roots would almost provide a load
for a man. It blooms in November.
The Balinese do not have a special name for it, though they
will not recognize it as Angrec kringsing, wherefore I have named
it tentatively Angrec calappa,23 since it is found near the crown of
such a tree; others call it Angrec lida,24 because of the smooth
and sti leaves, which resemble a large tongue.
Name. In Latin Angraecum scriptum or Helleborine Mollucca; In
Malay Angrek or Bonga Boki and Bonga putri; 25 on Ternate Saja baki,
that is to say Flos principissae, for reasons given above. Others call
it Saja ngawa or Ngawan; In Balinese Angrec kringsing, because the
owers are painted like a certain kind of cloth called Kringsing.26
All these owers are called Rangrec 27 in Javanese; the Portuguese call them Fulha alacra or Fulha lacre.28 However, that is really
a particular kind on Java, that smells like Musk, and is called
such because the ower and its tail look like a Scorpion.
Some Malay also call all Angrecs, Api api,29 since they share the
[]

opinion that they come forth from the seed, or the waste of
certain Birds, blaming this particularity on the little Cacopit 30
bird, a kind of Regulus, though this is not very likely, since this
little Bird does not frequent Mangi-mangi trees 31 much, but
goes instead to shrubs that have owers, wherefrom it sucks the
sap or dew, but it has the name for seeding all mistletoe with
its waste.32
Place. It only grows on thick branches of trees in the wild
and in the mountains, on Kanari trees 33 as well as on varieties
of Mangi-mangi trees on the beach, and is known throughout
these Eastern Islands. If one lifts it gently with all its roots,
one can transplant it to a Mangas tree near a house, after having
smeared a little mud on the branches rst, and tying it down
with a string, and it will produce owers every year, though
they will never have that beautiful yellow of those that grow in
the wild.34
I have often tried to plant it in garden soil, but it only produced leaves, and I have never been able to make it produce
owers, though they were there for many years; afterward I
found a half-rotted log in the forest that they grew on, brought
it home, and put it deep into the ground, and the Angrek did
grow and bloom on it, but when the log nally fell apart, the
plant expired as well.35
Remains only to determine if it can be preserved when one
cuts o an entire green branch and buries it in the ground at an
angle. Otherwise we will have to be satised, that nature allows
us to feed this beautiful show on our neighboring Mangas trees.
It is dicult to guess how these plants get on the trees in
[]

the wild. It is pointless to believe that they grow from the dirt
on the bark, as Moss does and Ferns, for then they should have
dierent shapes on totally dierent trees, nor would one be able
to transplant them just like that, but if one notices that, as it
were, they were placed on it, even on smooth barks, like that of
Kanari trees,36 it is more likely, that they are either seeded from
their own seed by the wind, or by the birds, as, for instance,
Waringin trees,37 and all sorts of Viscum.38
One might be able to posit, that the true seminal power resides in some kernels the size of a Catjang,39 which are sometimes found in the aforementioned yellow meal of the fruits,
though they be rather watery. Similar kernels, bigger than
others, in the fruits of various Waringas, are also thought to be
seed kernels.
Use. The only use of these owers is to be a delight for the
eyes, after one cuts them o with the entire stem, and puts
them for a few days in a room, not in water, but naked on a
clump of soil, for if this plant gets into water, it will stink like
dishwater, or like most kinds of Orchis, and the fresh sap smells
like that as well. The great Ladies of Ternate, particularly the
wives, sisters, and daughters of their Kings (which are all called
Putri in Malay or Buki in the Moluccas), reserve these owers for
themselves, and they would put a great aront upon a common
woman, not to mention a female Slave, if they were to wear
this ower on their head. Wherefore they have these owers
brought from the forest only for them, so they can wear them
in their hair, reasoning that nature itself indicates that these
owers are not suitable for ordinary people, because they grow
[]

only in high places, which is why it has the aforementioned

name.
If someone is suering from whitlow,40 he should take the
plant-like marrow of the purse, crush it with some Curcuma 41
in salt water, and tie it around the nger, which will make the
sore quickly ripen, while it even goes away sometimes, if it has
not quite set yet.
If one takes the peeled purses, and mash the inner marrow
with a little Ginger, and then smear it on the stomach, it will
itch a little at rst, but not for long, whereafter it will kill
worms, and immediately expel all bad humours from the intestines; indeed, it will even shrink a swollen Spleen or Tehatu, and
the same is tied to swollen legs, to draw out the dropsy.
If one chews the marrow of the bulbs, until the sap comes
out, and then rinses ones mouth with it, it will drive out
thrush, because it is tasteless and strongly cooling.
The Ambonese have a secret, though superstitious way, to
make a Philter from the fruits yellow meal, saying that a
Woman will pursue that person who puts it in her food or
drink. It is otherwise indeed taken with food, to stop the
Bloody Flux, and is quite tasteless.
I called it Helleborine Molucca, because it resembles Helleborine
recentiorum the most, which Clusius 42 describes in Lib. . rar. Plant.
Cap. .,43 while it is also called Calceolus Mariae, and described by
Dodonaeus Lib. . Cap. .,44 which, according to Gesneri,45 would
correspond to the Cosmosandalos 46 of Pausanias,47 or the Chiliodynamis 48 of the Ancients, for our Angrec agrees with it in the
shape of its leaves, and owers, but not in the manner of its
growth. One should also examine if it bears any resemblance
[]

to the Flos tigridis,49 a West-Indian ower, that Dodon. describes

in his Latin Appendix cap. .50
Hieronymus Tragus 51 thinks that Orchides and Satyria develop
from the seed of thrushes and blackbirds, because their excrement can sometimes be found in Fields and Pastures, where
these Birds couple in Springtime.
Athanasius Kircherus opinion in his Mundo Subterraneo Lib. .
Sect. . Cap. .52 is, that all Satyria originate either from the rotten corpses of some Animals, that still contain some seminal
power, or from the seed itself of Animals that disported themselves on Mountains or in Meadows, and this can be proven
by the shape [of the markings] on the owers of the Satyria,
that is either of the animal from whose seed, after it rotted in
the ground, the Satyrium sprang forth, or from the insect, that
commonly grows from the corpse of any Animal.53
One could with some reason think of our Angrek as well, since
it shows a great kinship to Satyrium, that it has its origins in
the seeds [dropped by] the Wild Doves, which congregate in
great numbers on Mangi-mangi and Kanari trees. One might also
conjecture that Plinys Coagulum 54 and Gesners Orobanche 55 are
relatives of our Angrec.
Joh. Bauhinus,56 in Lib. . Cap. . describes a Viscum Indicum,57
which I also would guess to be some kind of Angrec.

The Forty Second Plate.

Shows the enscripted or pyed Angrec, growing on the trunk 58 of
a Calappus tree, where let. A. is the bud of an unopened flower. B.
is the open flower, seen from the side, C. is the open flower from the
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front, natural size. D. is the Fruit. E. the Root of this plant, grown
onto a Calappus tree.

Comment.59
This Angrec corresponds to the Ansjeli Maravara in the
H. Malab. part. . Tab. I.,60 which was called by Commel.61 the degenerate, juicy, Malabaran Orchis, with an odiferous and pyed
ower, resembling a little bird inside,62 also in Fl. Malab. p. .63
Also included here is the Viscum, with a white-spotted
ower, as if a Larkspur, with a brous root, in Sloan. Cat. pl. Jam.
p. .64 and the Histor. vol. I. Tab. . fig. .65

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Chapter Two
THE WHITE, DOUBLE ANGREK.

he second and third species of Angrek are white, consisting of a large and a small one, both with markedly
dierent owers from the foregoing.
I. Angraecum album majus 1 is almost the same plant since, rst
of all, it girdles 2 the trunks of trees with many long roots, a
dirty white on the outside, green on the inside, with a tough
sinew, that forms an entangled 3 clump under the plants, which
hangs loose sometimes, and which is rougher 4 than I have seen
in any other plant; the leaves are also gathered in small bunches
of three or four, without purses, except for the lower stem,
which is somewhat bellied, or striped.
The outer and largest leaf is between twelve and sixteen
inches long, three or four ngers wide, also thick, and sti, wellnigh without sinews, except for a groove in the center, rounded
in front, and if one examines it carefully, one will note that
the foremost tip is always split in two, whereof one corner is
always longer than the other, which is a characteristic of all Angreks. Though it is not so apparent in the rst kind, it can be
clearly seen in all subsequent ones; a specic stem arises from
the entangled clump of roots next to the leaves, with dark[]

brown lines,5 the thickness of a quill, round, woody, and also

without leaves, and it divides into a few side branches at the top,
all with broad joints, from the extremity of which the owers
come forth, far fewer in number, but larger than the rst kind;
they also have a strange shape, which is hard to describe, and
even more dicult to depict, but they grow alternately above
one another, each one on its own particular white foot.
The ower is fashioned from ve outer leaves, limp, pure
white, of which the two on the sides are the largest; within
[these ve] one will see three, also white leaets congregated,
shaped like a Conch, or looking somewhat like a little Shoe,
because the two lower ones curve together into a circle.
The upper leaet stands up straighter, and has two beards
at its end, that are curled up like Moustaches. In the center of
this circle one will note another thick leaet, that is divided
into two tiny heads like a small pillar, colored yellow or purple,
and this circle is not quite in the center of the ower, but leans
towards one side. Right in the center of the ower is a tiny
white hillock, from which the circle emerges, and one will nd
two yellow grains inside, as if these were seeds.
These yellow kernels shine through that white little hillock
as if they were two eyes, and look like the head of a Grasshopper; otherwise it has no scent.
The fruit is a roundish, striped pod, easily three inches long,
the thickness of a nger, with six protruding ridges, but some
of these fruits have three rather than six sides, and also split
open into three parts, each an inch wide, hanging together at
the tip. The inner meal is a pale yellow, and falls out, but some
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white grains remain hanging from the side threads, and if one
presses them, water comes out. One will nd them in October and subsequent months. This kind does have a variation,
with the ower the same shape, white inside but a shiny light
purple on the outside.6 Yet another variation 7 has a ower fashioned from ve extended leaets, whereof the two on the sides
are very wide, totally white, except for the inner little hillock,
which is yellow.
Name. In Latin Angraecum album majus; 8 in Malay, Angrec Puti
besaar; or Bombo terbang; 9 in Dutch Vliegende Duive [Flying Dove];
in Balinese Angrec colan; that is the male; because they think it is
the female, the Ambonese have no name for it, but it is called
Wanlecu on Luhu.10
Place. It also grows on thick but short trees, which are mossy,
such as Kinar 11 and Manga 12 trees, which it climbs like a rope,13
quite entangled, without any known use.
II. Angraecum album minus 14 also has stems, four or ve feet
long, whereof many come from one root, which is mossy, and
sticks to old trees like a plaster, entwining it with many bers.
The bottom of the stem is divided several times, rst a small
piece of about two inches long, the thickness of a quill, followed by a belly that is three or four inches long, the thickness of a nger, with eight ridges striped lengthwise, and transversely with three or two joints, where this belly is always a
little thinner, brownish on the outside. Then the stem becomes
thin again, and round, the same number of inches long, thereafter the leaves, in alternate rows over against each other, and
without stems, very thick and sti, four inches long, one and a
[]

half wide, somewhat split at the uppermost little point, and

with a dark groove in the center, but the upper ones are smaller
by half, with a tart taste.
The remaining stem, two foot long, is bare, and divided into
dark joints, and divided at its tip into two or three other little
stems, each of which bears only two or three owers, that are
much smaller than those of the foregoing, at rst completely
white, thereafter they become yellowish, fashioned from ve
leaets, of which four are extended on one side; the fth one is
on the other side, and forms the little helmet, with two aps,
that are curved inwards like a little chalice; its upper edges are
pleated,15 and bend outwards. It too is white on the outside,
with a few purple lines inside, and instead of the little pillar
the central ridge bulges out, which is yellow and slimy. All ve
come together at the bottom, and fashion a pointed little bag
like larkspurs,16 so that the stem is penetrated 17 at the side. It
has little smell.
The fruit is a nger joint long, the thickness of a quill,
triangular, and each side has three ridges, on the inside lled
with yellow marrow, like the foregoing. The root also produces
several small purses, striped as before, which in time produce
their own stems. It thrives on old, rotten trees, that grow on
open hillsides,18 and which have fallen down, near Caju puti 19
forests.
It does not sit straight on the branches, but as if glued to it
from the side, and its stems, which are ve or six inches long,
come at an angle from the tree, and partly hang down; the root
has another strange growth added onto it,20 that covers some of
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the selfsames tufts of hair,21 in the shape of a horned Worm,

or Caterpillar, plant-like, brittle, savorless, like Polypodium.22
The stems that come out rst are sometimes folded double,
with the tip curved down.
Name. In Latin Angraecum album minus; in Malay, Angrec puti
kitsjil 23 or Angrec cassian,24 which means Poor Angrek, from its simple 25 shape, a name also given to the large variety. One could
call it Beursjes angrec [Angrec Purses] in Dutch, after the shape
of the ower.
Place. It also grows on wild trees, like the large one, but is
not seen as often, it is also found on old, rotten, and fallen
trees, but neither can be easily transplanted, because the roots
are too hard, and spread out too far.
This small kind has yet another variation,26 making for a
mixed form with Daun subat.27 For it has a thin, prone stem
that grows downwards, that sends some threads from its joints,
wherewith it fastens itself, and upwards several other stems
without bellies, partially bare, thereafter four, ve or six thick
sti leaets, smaller than the ones described above; the stem
has yet another foot in length, as thick as an oaten straw, at
the top putting forth two owers, like the foregoing, having a
somewhat pleasant smell.

The Forty Third Plate.

Shows the large white Angrec.

[]

The Forty Fourth Plate.

The rst Figure shows the small white Angrek, which is the Pennangu Maravara in the H. Malab. . vol. Tab. .28
The second Figure indicates the red Angrek, which is described
in the next Chapter.

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Chapter Three
THE RED ANGREK.

he fourth kind of Angrec 1 is the red one, which has only

one species, even more ropy 2 than the foregoing, for it
is a long rope that runs with long branches through tangled
thickets,3 but one will not nd its root anchored in the ground,
but here and there on an old rotten tree; the branches are the
thickness of ones little nger, round, hard, and sti, but snap
readily when broken o; they bear the leaves, and not in separate tufts like the rst kind, but on this ower-bearing stem
[itself ] alternately above each other, four or ve inches long,
two wide, very thick and sti, with a slight bulge near the stem,
a blunt tip, divided into two, otherwise without ridges, except
that, from below, one can see the central sinew protrude a little.
The stem that bears the owers, has the length of two and
a half spans,4 round, sti, divided into various side branches
that bear the owerlets; these are the size of common Hyacinths, crowded together, at right angles from the stem, fashioned from ve small leaets, of which the two broadest ones
are curved down, and the three narrower ones are curved upwards, with a bright yellow background, ecked with red lines
and dots, so that the entire cluster seems to be ery red, with
[]

a small purse or cup of the same color in the center. Their disposition is not the same, for the widest leaves are now on top
and then below.
The ower-bearing stem has red lines as well; the leaves taste
somewhat sour and slightly salty.
The fruits are easily a nger joint long, half a nger thick,
both back and front are pointed, with a dirty yellow color,
somewhat triangular, but with six protruding ridges, striped
lengthwise, and inside one will see the same yellow brous marrow as in the other Angreks, and the rest of the ower is on
top, being a six-leaved starlet.
Name. In Latin Angraecum rubrum; 5 in Malay Angrec mera; the
Ambonese have no specic name for it.
Place. It grows mostly on the beach, with its many tendrils
creeping through the shrubbery, although it will always have a
rotten piece of wood or old root as its place of origin. One will
also nd it running up trees in valleys, and along rivers, where
its ery red amidst the green oers a beautiful spectacle.
Use. It has no general use, except that one can place the
young leaves in Vinegar and Salt, either by themselves or mixed
with some Atsjaar,6 when they will taste like Cappars,7 but you
cannot suck on them much, because they are too brous, and
you will get little more than the taste of Cappers. One should
choose the thickest and fattest leaves for this purpose, ones that
grow on the beach and in more open thickets, for these will
have a pleasant saltiness, and are to be preferred to the ones
from the forest.
This Angraecum rubrum 8 has a variation or commingled shape
[]

with the subsequent Octavum sive furvum.9 The leaves are somewhat larger, ve or six inches long, two wide, with a double tip,
the owers are red, yellow, or orange, similar to the dried Mace
of Nutmegs, without points, also with ve leaets, of which
the two broadest ones hang down, and the other three stand
upright, and the ower cluster is divided into several small side
branches. One does not see this species on trees, like the other
Angreks, but it grows on the beach in the thickets, with long
woody twigs like ropes, similar to the foregoing, which have a
spongy and watery marrow inside.
But I cannot say, however, that these two kinds spring from
the ground, for they run so far through the thickest shrubs,
that one cannot reach the root, and the few I encountered, had
established themselves on old rotten stumps and decayed twigs.

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Chapter Four
THE FIFTH ANGREK.

his fth kind 1 is a small subspecies of the rst or large

one, but due to its dierence I gave it a separate chapter.
First of all, it has a large bunch of leaves, which grow in a particular manner, all together, and embracing one another, fourteen or fteen inches long, two wide; the front tip is markedly
split in two, and one of these corners is longer than the other.
Next to this gathering, a ower-bearing stem comes from the
root itself, round, sti, four feet long, with rather limp owers,
alternately one above the other, on curved stems.
The owers resemble those of the rst kind, but smaller,
opened further, fashioned from ve leaets, purple or a light
purple on the outside, yellow on the inside, with blood-red
drops, or thick characters, whereof some are round, like drops,
others oblong, and other ones have a little yellow spot in the
center. There is a tiny helmet in the center, with two angles
on either side, like tiny horns, white with purple lines, and in
front of this is another curved little horn, with a groove inside, the color of purple on top, yellow below. The edges of the
thick leaets are usually curled over, and the knop of the curled

[]

ower is purple as well. The ower has no scent on Ambon, but

it does on Bali, if one opens the central helmet. The characters
of this ower are oblong at the base, like stripes, wide towards
the front, angular, and some enclose a small yellow circle.
Its fruits are oblong pods, hexagonal, three or four ngers
long, one nger thick, with yellow meal inside, like the foregoing.
Name. In Latin Angraecum quintum, sive Angraecum scriptum minus; 2
in Malay and Balinese Angrek kringsing kitsjil.
Place. It grows on the beach on Mangium caseolare,3 or Waccat,4
with its stems sometimes hanging down so low that they touch
the water, for these trees stand in the sea when the tide is
coming in, and are dry at ebb tide, whence I guess the Malay
call this ower Renda 5 casian,6 that is to say humble, and poor,
because they droop so meekly. One can keep cut ones for a long
time inside. The Balinese often plant this one and the rst kind
on Sajor puti 7 trees, whereon they wax luxuriously, and which
they accomplish as follows. They cut the entire stock from the
mother trunk, with part of the selfsame bark, then they tie it
with Gomuto ropes 8 on the thick branches of the aforementioned trees, and smear them with mud on the outside, and
they will grow rmly onto it.

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Chapter Five
T H E Y E L L OW A N G R E K .

he sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth kinds of Angrek are those, that have yellow owers, with few or
no characters, diering from the foregoing in that the leaves
are not in separate tufts, but grow onto or next to the owerbearing stem, but they also divide into branches, and there are
a large number of them, of which we will describe two in this
chapter.
I. Angraecum sextum Moschatum sive odoratum,1 also attaches itself
to the bark of trees, with many, thick, and white bers, which
also make for a clump wherefrom one or two stems shoot up,
three feet high, with the lower third clothed in leaves, growing
alternately above one another, almost in two rows, the one in
the lap of the other, thick and sti, almost like those of the
Houseleek,2 four inches long, two ngers wide, without sinews
or veins, except that one can see a groove on the inner side.
The tip is split in two, and the front half is always a little
longer; beyond this the stem becomes bellied and striped, a nger thick, four inches long; the remainder is as thick as a quill,
not quite round, with uneven joints, divided on top into three
or four side branches.
[]

But the owers have their own particular shape; rst of all,
they have two long, narrow leaets, like the spatules 3 of Surgeons, bent backwards at the top, and slightly curled, the length
of ones little nger; next to them are three broader leaets
spread out in a triangle, at rst pale or a greenish yellow, like the
Cananga ower,4 thereafter a true yellow, and slightly striped
from below, without characters, though sometimes with purple
lines on one side, and in the center one will see another leaflet, at the sides divided into four angles or joints, and folded
together like a chalice, whitish and beautifully adorned with
purple lines, and on the selfsames top stands the little thick
center pillar with a yellow little head. It has a fairly sweet scent
at dawn, when the ower rst opens up, almost like Narcissi,
or the Tanjong owers 5 in this country, faint, but stronger than
other kinds of Angreks.
It has an even more lovely scent on Bali,6 wherefore they
fabulate that Dewa,7 which is their God, called Dewata, Lewata,
Rewata, and Rewa by other Indian Heathens, visits the ower
at night and bestrews it with some Muscus 8 or Civet, which
gave it its name. The ower-bearing stem does not shoot up
straight from the gathering of the leaves, but often sideways
from among them, as if it had been stuck between them.
The fruit is, as before, fashioned from the foot of the ower,
shorter than the former kind, one and a half inch long, one
inch thick, triangular, though each side has a lower edge, green
as grass, with a downy yellow meal inside, keeping the dried
ower on top for a long time.9
Name. In Latin Angraecum sextum Moschatum, sive odoratum; in
[]

Malay and Balinese Angrec casturi; 10 because it smells like Muscus. Most of them on Ternate share the same name with the
foregoing Saja boki, or Saja ngawa ngawan.11 This kind has the
most in common with Helleborine recentiorum,12 because it bears
its leaves on the stem, and because they are small.
Place. It sits on trees like the Waccat, Mangium caseolare,13 and the
Lemon trees that grow in Ambonese forest gardens.
II. Angraecum septimum 14 has well-nigh the same leaves, or
slightly larger, ve or six inches long, three wide, arranged alternately closely on top of each other, with three dark sinews,
striped lengthwise, whereof the central one is a groove. Normally a ower-bearing stem shoots forth from the side of this
gathering; it is an ell,15 or two feet long, a little bellied below, on
top scarcely the thickness of a quill, woody, round, sprinkled
with brown lines, whereon grow the owers, somewhat thin,
many on top of each other, on longish stems.
The owers resemble a ying horsey,16 fashioned from ve
leaets, of which the top one is slightly curled forward, resembling [the horseys] back; the other two would be the wings;
two others on the side are shorter, and cover a central leaet,
which has two aps at the side, which encircle the little central
pillar; the outer leaves are somewhat striped like the Kananga
ower,17 yellow on the outside, a bright yellow inside, like the
Tsjampacca ower;18 the little helmet has a rim like a tongue,
bent outwards, and striped with purple lines. The lower part of
the ower resembles a horn, like a Larkspur, representing the
horseys head, almost odorless.
The fruit is thinner, and more oblong than the foregoing,
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scarcely the thickness of a nger, striped with six edges, lled

inside with the usual yellow meal.
The ower remains vigorous for a long time, until the foot
begins to thicken; then the outer leaets close up, and hide the
helmet, which has already turned red.19 It blooms in the rainy
season. The leaves have a sour taste, mixed with a saltiness, and
it blunts the teeth.
Name. In Latin Angraecum septimum; 20 in Malay Angrec tsjampacca.21
Place. This too grows on beaches on the aforementioned
Mangi-Mangi trees,22 as well as on others that stand in salt
water or salt creeks.

The Forty Fifth Plate.

Shows the seventh, or the yellow Angrek, which was described
as the second kind in this Chapter.

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Chapter Six
T H E R E M A I N I N G Y E L L OW A N G R E K S .

he roots of Angraecum octavum sive Furvum 1 are more spread

out than the former, and hang loosely from the trees;
the leaves grow in the same manner in two rows, but they are
eight and nine inches long, scarcely one wide, also split in two
at the tips, without sinews, except for the central groove, with
the same taste as the foregoing. The ower-bearing stem shoots
up as well as to the side, and the latter sends some roots or
bers down, which also attach themselves to the bark of the
tree.
The central or main stem is also bellied, in such a way that
it is always thinner between its place of origin and the belly,
which is the case with all the Angreks that have bellied stems.
The owers appear on an expansive cluster, on rather longish dirty-white stems, fashioned from ve leaets, opened wide,
curved like half moons; some are also curled, the size of Angraecum tertium 2 or Rubrum,3 yellowish on the outside, dark inside,
russet or a smoky color, yellow at the edges, with a sweet though
faint odor, that has a hint of dog in it, like the Satyria. In the
center is a leaet like a tooth, pale yellow, with two white little
aps below, ending at the bottom in a short purse; in front of
[]

these is a little pillar or anvil, also yellow, and between them

two white leaets. One can keep cut stems and owers for a
long time.
The fruits of Angraecum furvum are hexagonal pods, a hand
wide, and long, easily a nger thick, divided into six ridges, inside with the same kind of yellow and hairy marrow, that has
yellow, ne sand hanging from it. It creeps through everything,
and it has long, curved roots behind the leaves, like strings,
round, two feet long, the thickness of a quill, tough and breakable, with two or three divisions in front.
Name. In Latin Angraecum octavum or Furvum; in Malay Angreck
kitsjil glap.4
Place. It grows on the aforementioned Wakkat trees, on both
living and dead trunks, and on half-rotted branches. It does not
transplant easily due to its expansive roots, as was the case with
Angraecum album.5
Angraecum nonum 6 has the smallest leaves, similar to our common Sempervivum,7 about a nger long, scarcely two wide, without sinews, except for a dark groove, not much split at the
tips, thick, and sti, with an unpleasant sour taste. The leafbearing stem sometimes has an oblong belly under the leaves,
not angular or striped lengthwise, but transversely divided into
dark joints. The ower-bearing stems arise on top as well as to
the sides, and the owers resemble the sixth kind 8 the most,
though usually smaller, so that it looks like a smaller version of
it. For the ve outer leaets are a pale yellow with light purple
lines. The little helmet is whitish with purple lines, and ends
below in a little horn just like the Larkspurs; before noon it
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spreads a lovely scent, though faint, which is like the ower of

the Orchis, or Bonga tanjong 9 in this country.
The plants main stems are only three feet tall, and the
other stems grow like those of Daun subat,10 slightly brown by
the joints; it grows on wild trees around Capaha,11 owering
in November and December, and was specically called Angrek lemon kitsjil 12 because, like the large one, it loves to grow on
Lemon trees.
Angraecum decimum or Angustifolium 13 is the tiniest one, mostly
growing on Kanari trees,14 with thick, narrow leaves, like the
pods of Catjang tsjina,15 six or seven inches long, not round, but
at, the width of a quill, and disposed around the straight stem.
The owers are very small, two or three together from the lap
of the leaves, a pale yellow, fashioned from ve leaets, of which
the upper two, which are also the narrowest ones, hang down
and over, with a little purple helmet inside.
The fruit is the thickness of a quill, triangular, but striped in
between, one and a half ngers long, with the remaining ower
on top; it does not grow taller than a foot; growing under Ferns
on Mangi Mangi, or wild trees, the root is thinner 16 and long.
Bontius Lib. Cap. .17 describes a similar plant, which he calls
Sedum arborescens, that has a wondrously knobby root, which he
compares with the shaft of a Turkish spear, with thick leaves
like the Houseleek, and small white owers like Anagallis, very
fragrant like Lemon peels, and the leaves taste as sour as those
of Sorel. He ascribes it many excellent virtues, which were tried
by the Javanese, for they made a Conserva 18 from the leaves,
said to be a boon for all brain ailments, and nerves, such as
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Spasmum and Cholerum; the owers fortify the heart, and the
leaves cure bloody ux, since they are cold, kind of sour, and
of an astringent nature. The leaves are also supposed to be very
eective against poisoned wounds from krisses and pikes.
The fruit is the length of ones middle nger, slimy inside,
and insipid, and if the fruit is cut across one will see a Fort
with four Bulwarks.

The Forty Sixth Plate.

The rst Figure shows the dark Angrek or the eighth one. The
second Figure depicts the ninth kind of Angrek.

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Chapter Seven
THE DOG ANGREK.

he eleventh kind also has many long roots that are

all tangled up, and which wind around a tree without
forming a massive clump. But from the center arise two or three
stems, that are striped below and leaved for a length of eighteen
to twenty inches. These leaves grow in two rows, alternately
over against one another, at a straight angle from the stem, sti
and ribbed, four to ve inches long, one and a half wide.
The remainder of the stem is bare, somewhat bellied below,
otherwise round, and two or three feet long, bearing few owers
at the tip, two or three together. These are, along with the white
ones, the largest among all the Angreks, fashioned from ve
leaves, all purple, without characters, of which the four outer
leaves are spread out. The sixth stands over the little chalice
like a thimble, truly purple, and woolly on the inside, like an
Iris, hiding a tiny pillar in the center, without a horn below.
The ower has a strong smell, cloying,1 grievous to the head,
and markedly doggish, like the owers of certain Satyria.
The taste is salty, tart, but not unpleasant, and it does not
produce purses from its root, nor bellied stems, like other An-

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greks; one sees the fruits in October and November, and they
are angular like the other Angreks.
Name. In Latin Angraecum caninum, sive Undecimum; 2 in Malay
Angreck andjing 3 because of its doggish smell.
Place. It grows on trees that have a short, thick trunk, and
are mossy, especially on Kinar trees,4 both on beaches and in
the valleys; otherwise no use is known.

The Forty Seventh Plate.

Shows the Dog Angrek with the rst Figure.
The second Figure points out the pursed Angrek described in
Chapter of the Auctuarium.5

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THE FIFTY SEVENTH CHAPTER

O F T H E AU C T U A R I U M
G I V E S T H E F O L L OW I N G N E W K I N D S O F
ANGREKS.

ne should not think that Ambons luxuriant wildernesses produce no other kinds of Angreks, besides the
ones, which we proposed at the beginning of book eleven, when
I gave up hope to nd out about all of them; since then I have
found some new kinds, which I deemed worthy to be described,
because of their rare appearance, and I will present some of
them here one after another.1
I. Angraecum nervosum,2 which grows on Kinar 3 and Ironwood 4
trees, appears with many square purses, three to four inches
long, two ngers thick, heaped together in groups, of a pale
green color, and somewhat hard, like all the others. Each purse
produces a large leaf, twelve to fteen inches long, four or ve
wide, striped lengthwise with ve sinews, which make for sharp
ridges below, and which looks like those of Helleborus albus; 5 over
against each leaf is a small pointed leaet, and from its center
comes a stem, about a foot long, round, the thickness of oaten
pipe, whereon grow three or four owerlets, which at rst are
long pointed knops.
The ower resembles those of other Angreks of average
size, consisting of ve leaets, of which the three outer and
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largest ones have a whitish-yellow color, whereof one stands up

straight, and two hang down, then there are two narrow ones
like small thongs, which bend backwards; inside one will nd
the usual little house, fashioned from two leaets, white on the
outside, veering towards yellow, with brown speckles inside.
This ower resembles a ying Horsey, if one takes the
angular little stem to be the head, the lowest broad leaet the
tail, and the two narrow leaets the wings.6
The fruits are still not known, unless they are produced by
the owers angular foot; the taste of the leaves is bitter and
unpleasant. It is, therefore, a singular Angrek because it has
striped leaves, and the ower stem comes from the purse itself.

The Forty Eighth Plate.7

Shows the sinewy Angrek, which might possibly be the
Erythro-bulb, with folded leaves of the white Helleborus, Red
bulb, as we call it in Plukn. Mantiss.8 p. and the Chichultic
Tepetlauhxochite of Hernand. in Recch.9 p. .
II. Angraecum pungens,10 or stinging Angrek, found on a Caju
matta buta 11 tree, does not acquire a purse, but creeps with
a thick tendril along the branches, and hangs down mostly,
shooting up a stem here and there, that bears the leaves, and
between them other ones appear.
The leaves grow singly, twelve to fourteen inches long,
scarcely the width of ones little nger, with a point in front,
about a nger joint long, which seems as if it had been placed
there, otherwise thick, sti, and without noticeable sinews,
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which protrude somewhat at the bottom, and make the leaf

slightly hollow at the top, like a at groove, of a dark green
color, and the older ones turn russet; the stinging tips drop o
the old leaves, between the same appear other thin, sti and
woody little stems out of the main stem, four or ve inches
long, some of them dividing into two little stems to the side;
the front half is covered with owers, shaped like the normal
Angreks, but with short leaves, and a yellowish white.
The fruit comes forth from its stem, barely an inch long,
striped, triangular, in the shape of a budding Clove,12 bearing owers on top for a long time, lled inside with a coarse,
whitish meal.
III. Angraecum saxatile 13 or Rock Angrek, is almost the same
ropy plant, that crawls over rocks; the leaves grow together in
tufts, eight to ten inches long, one wide, grooved on top, below
with a sharp ridge, split in two at the front, with two tips, of
which one is not only noticeably longer than the other, but also
stings like a soft thorn.
Long, round, and somewhat crooked stems emerge between
the back leaves, like Girdles, tough, and unbreakable, white on
the outside, and dividing at the end into two or three branches,
which in turn root themselves in the bark of the trees.

The Forty Ninth Plate.

The rst Figure shows the Rock Angrek, which is the Tsjerou
mau maravara of the H. Malab. part. . Tab. 14 to which Plukn.
in Almag. p. .15 added the Monomotapense Caryophyllus with
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the sinewy leaves of the Bupleurum, hollow inside, with a blue

ower, and with small stems winged lengthwise,16 in Phyt. Tab.
. fig. .17
A Parasytic plant belongs to this as well, quite similar to the
Orchis, with a thickly formed leaf in Herm. Parud. Bat. p. .18
Though the ower diers somewhat: which is the American
Viscum that grows on trees, with a beautiful white ower, and
leaves in the shape of Nerium Pods in Plukn. Phyt. Tab. . fig. .
The second Figure shows the purple Angrek, described in Chapter Eight, to wit, the rst kind.
IV. Angraecum angustis crumenis,19 acquires many, roundish
purses divided into two or three dark joints, ve or six inches
long, easily one wide, draped with many dry little eeces on the
outside; most are bare and without leaves, others bear three or
four long, narrow leaves on top, twelve to fteen inches long,
two ngers wide, coming to a single point, except for the central sinew, bulging slightly at the bottom, and with some stripes
like very ne sinews down the length of them.
Next to this tuft of leaves they have two leaf-bearing stems,
also fteen inches long, which bear the owerlets on the front
half, [which are] as yet unknown. Followed by the fruits,
scarcely an inch long, an oaten pipe thick, the root is a clump
of thin, long, and very tough bers.
V. Angraecum sediforme,20 really called such because the leaves
look like those of the Sedum or Houseleek;21 some are one,
others are three inches long, two ngers wide, some without
ridges, with a sti point, thick, smooth, and sappy, though
without milk, otherwise one would think it was a Nummularia
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lactea.22 The ower has not been seen yet. It grows with thin
and entangled chords under and through the roots of other
Angreks.
VI. Angraecum uniflorum 23 has leaves that, in terms of shape
and size, resemble a tongue, to wit, round in front, and somewhat split in two, thick, sti, and without ridges, except for a
at groove on the upper side. Every leaf rests on a short little
purse, made from four or ve sharp ridges, some also smooth
with two sides.
The ower stem appears next to the purse, round, a span
high, each one bearing just one ower, somewhat similar to Angrec angin,24 fashioned from three leaves, of which the largest and
frontal one has the shape of a tongue, wide in back, narrow in
front, with a sharp ridge in the center, curved backwards over
the entire ower; to the side are two other leaves, also broad
in back, and thick, narrow in front, curved toward each other
like sickles.
There is a tiny little head in the center. Its color is brown,
with many white-yellow stipples or eyelets on it, some round,
some square, otherwise odorless.
It grows with a simple root on the branches of wild trees,
and sometimes forms a at corner, as if fashioned from Moss,
wherefrom here and there the little purses and some leaves
emerge.
VII. Angrec gajang 25 was found on a Gajang tree,26 together
with many small bushes, has the shape of a Javanese Lily, or Casi
selan,27 at the bottom with an oblong globule, like an Onion.
This one produces two leaves, scarcely twelve inches long, and
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one wide, with a sti central sinew on the underside, and without a split tip, as other Angreks have, though it does come to
a point.
A single, long stem emerges from between these two leaves,
of which the upper and greatest half, easily a foot long, is
covered with owerlets, which look just like the Angreks, fashioned from ve dirty-white, narrow leaets, of which three
hang down, and two spread out, with a little helmet on the
upper side. It also has a pointed leaet where its stem begins,
and this covers the stem. They grow so closely together, that
the entire stem looks like a long cattail,28 and after they fall
o a few fruits come to perfection, which are the tiniest of all
the Angreks, to wit, slightly larger than a wheat kernel, hexagonal, bursting open when they ripen, except that the front
one remains hanging together. What is inside is rst yellowish,
and sappy, and this changes in the ripe ones into a sandy yellow
meal.
It blooms in the rainy season, and one will nd it on Gajang
trees, that grow in the wild in the valley of Ayer Cotta Lamma.29
One will nd this kind also on other trees, on the East Coast
of Celebes as well, where they use the leaves for swollen and
hardened bellies, withered 30 over a re, so they become soft,
and then rubbed on the stomach, and the marrow of the narrow
globules are chewed in the mouth, and the sap swallowed.
VIII. Angrec jambu 31 has narrow, sti leaves, ve inches long,
two ngers wide, ending up front in a sti point; its taste is
unpleasant at rst, but then becomes sweet like the sap of Licorice.
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The owerlets grow on the tendril two by two, over against

one another, on short little feet, fashioned from ve thick
Lemon-yellow leaets, all curved inwards like birds claws, and
in the center one will see a purplish-blue little tongue. The
fruits are still not known, and it grows with long dangling tendrils on wild Jambu trees.32
IX. Angraecum taeniosum,33 or thonged 34 Angrec, has a single,
woody stem, with its leaves disposed on it singly and without
order, resembling thick little thongs, with a groove lengthwise
on either side, as if they had been fashioned from two parts,
four to ve inches long, and easily the thickness of an oaten
pipe. From the sides of the front leaves comes a short ower
cluster, but the owers are still not known.
These are followed by three to six fruits, being oblong, ridged
pods, a thumb joint long, like the other Angreks, divided on
the outside into three larger and three smaller, sharp ridges,
with a tiny crown on top, being the remainder of the ower,
lled inside with a sandy lint. The root is long, thin, woody,
and creeps forward at an angle; it does not produce a purse.
X. Angraecum lanuginosum,35 diers slightly from the normal
Angrek shape, for it acquires a single stem, three to four feet
long, without a belly or purse, of which the back half is bare,
and divided into dark joints. The front half is thickly leafed,
round, and woolly.
The leaves have the shape of the small Angreks, growing very
irregularly around the stem, three or four inches long, two ngers wide, thick, sti, without a noticeable sinew, ending in a
short, sti point, that is slightly crooked.
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The upper side is a little coarse, like worn plush, and of the
three or four top ones, the youngest ones are woolly on either
side.
The ower stem emerges from the lap of the foremost leaves,
easily a nger long, whereon grow the owerlets on short little
feet, also woolly, the size of a Bean.
They have on the bottom a round leaet like a little boat,
wherein lies a round owerlet that opens up into three yellowish thick leaets, with a tiny purple tongue sticking out between them, together resembling a Lions mouth with a protruding tongue.36
It has a sparse root, fashioned from a few bers, and grows
beneath other Angreks on wild trees, at Toleeuw,37 a Village in
Eastern Ambon.

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Chapter Eight
THE PURPLE ANGREK.

he twelfth kind was so rarely seen with leaves, that many

thought it was leaess. I have found this dierence, to
wit, the one that grows on trees and on rocks on the beach, is
usually seen without leaves, but the one that grows on trees inland, does have leaves, so that one could make them into two
kinds, which is not necessary, however, since there is too little
dierence between them.
I. First of all, the beach kind 1 has an angular or striped stem,
divided into many uneven joints, that are always thicker in the
center than at the ends, just as the entire stem below, near the
root, is at its thinnest and roundest, bearing leaves like the foregoing little Angreks, growing alternately above one another, ve
inches long, easily one wide, and split in front like the others.
This stem becomes about a foot tall, and has only leaves
which fall o, when they have grown old, leaving the bare stem
behind, and this causes people to think that it is leaess, for
to the side of the aforementioned stem comes yet another particular one from the root, two to three feet high, thinner down
below, near the root, thereafter divided into similar bellied
joints. The owerlets grow where these joints come together,
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which are always lower than the belly, hanging together in clusters, like vertebrae, or Jambu owers,2 around the joints or bare
on one side.
These owerlets have a particular shape, dierent from the
foregoing, for they have ve leaets, that are not open, but
closed together as if forming a little pipe, open on the underside, with a tiny little bag or horn nearby, as with the Orchides,
an inch long or less, scarcely an oaten pipe thick. The upper
edges are divided into tips, and inside the hindmost two leaflets cover a little helmet, the color of purple or a rose-red, like
the color Cassomba,3 with no scent whatsoever. These clusters
hang from the center of the stem, and near the tips it is almost
bare; the fruits are still not known, the root is paltry, fashioned
from short bers.
This kind is found on the beach, on both short and thick
trees, as well as on steep rocks, that have pieces of rotten wood
or twigs scattered about on them.
Name. It is specically called Angrecum Purpureum or nudum,4 in
Malay Angrek Jambu,5 or Angrek Cassumba; 6 Rangrec in Javanese, as
they call all other Angreks.
II. The land kind 7 does not dier from the foregoing except that it shows more leaves, because from a root that is thin,
mossy and brous, come eight to ten stems, eight to nine feet
long, of which the thicker ones bear the leaves, and the thinner
ones the owers, divided into many joints, that do not have any
peculiar bumps, like the foregoing, but are deeply grooved and
striped.
The leaves on the stems begin at least four feet from the
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root, and then only singly and alternately, many on top of one
another, thinner than other Angreks, ve to six inches long,
two ngers wide, coming to a point, with a central sinew protruding below, with an insipid and viscous taste. The part of
the stem that bears the leaves, is thicker than below.
The ower-bearing stem has its owers around the center;
these are like round globules and hang together in groups, now
on one then on the other side of the stem; every owerlet is
about a ngernail long, like a tiny chalice, scarcely as thick as
a quill, with a pointed little sack at the bottom that is striped,
or divisible into narrow leaets, which open up on top with
ve tips, and show inside a whitish, sti little chalice, while
they themselves are a purple-red, scentless; one will see them
in October and November.
Name. In Latin Angraecum purpureum silvestre; 8 in Malay Angrec
cassomba, or Jambu; Rangrec in Javanese, like the foregoing.
Place. It grows on wild trees, such as Waringin 9 trees, Samaria 10 or Clove 11 trees.
Use. Crush the stems, heat them, and smear it on, which will
cure Matta ican,12 or whitlow of the hands and ngers, to wit,
when it will not burst, in order to divide and destroy the swelling, or otherwise to break it up when it has grown large.
On tall forest trees these stems grow to be seven or eight feet
long, from the bottom up mostly bare, owers in the center,
and at the upper end again with some leaves; they are lled with
a tough slime, which will ow copiously when cut or broken,
yet they cannot be ripped o because they are very tough. They
are round near the root, thereafter deeply edged or striped, and
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in front, between the leaves, roundishly at, with two ridges on

the sides.
Some other kinds of Angreks, which I came to know about
at a later time, were discussed in the foregoing chapter, Ch.
of the Auctuar.

The Fiftieth Plate.

The rst Figure shows the purple Angrek, to wit, its second kind,
described in this eighth Chapter.
The second Figure shows the Beseeching Plant,13 to wit, its first
kind, which comes close to resembling the Thalia Maravara in
the H. Malab. part.. Tab. .14
The third Figure depicts the other wild or peasant Angrek, described in the eleventh Chapter, with its fruit shown by A.

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Chapter Nine
T H E B E S E E C H I N G P L A N T.

his plant also wants to be part of the Angrek family, and

it can serve that Aristocracy as a Parasite 1 or Flatterer,
who usually follows the court, and it has ve kinds, a small or
ordinary one, and four large ones.
I. Herba supplex minor,2 is a little plant, no more than half a
foot tall, sprouting from the root with almost no stems, for
they begin at the bottom soon after the root, on a very short
little stem, two rows of leaves over against one another, one
embracing the other alternately, completely at, as if they had
been pressed.
Each leaet is a thumb joint long, barely half a nger wide,
sti and rather thick, coming at an angle from its congregation, at the lower sides straight or only slightly curved, but the
upper side is bellied, which makes the leaf wider in the center
than at the back, in the shape of a Saber or a crescent Moon.
They appear to be double at the hind end, straight as if a leaf
was folded lengthwise, but they are whole 3 on the front edges,
a bright sea-green, smooth on the outside, brous inside, and
with a salty taste, that has some tartness in it, remaining alive

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for a long time 4 after it has been broken o and hung in the
house.
Eight or ten of these leaets grow in a row, and the central
ones are the largest. But such congregations grow only four, six
or seven [of them] together, on their thin little stems, from a
triing root, fashioned from Mossy bers, with which it clings
to the bark of a tree so rmly, that one can usually pull the
leaets o without [removing] the roots. Most of the time one
usually sees only these leaves on it, but when it has become
truly old, it produces its owers and seeds.
The owerlets are small, barely the size of Lilies of the Valley,5 peeping out singly between the leaets, for these are short,
narrow, little chalices, a deep brown,6 with sharp upper edges,
standing in a small, green-bearded chalice, whereafter follow
grain kernels, like rice grains, keeping the dry owers on top
for a long time, lled inside with a pale yellow and hairy meal,
like the other Angreks.
It grows on trees such as the Mangium caseolare, or Waccat, on
the beach, also on Waringin trees, and on other beach trees that
have a somewhat slanted trunk.
Name. In Latin Herba supplex minor, in Malay Daun subat; 7 one
has to distinguish it from another Daun subat, which we described earlier as a kind of grass in the beginning of book ten,8
wherefore the Ternatans gave it another name.
II. Herba supplex major prima,9 also has several stems from one
root, that are partly bare at the bottom, thereafter decked with
leaves to a height of two feet, of the same shape as the foregoing, but larger, then the stem grows for another foot or foot
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and a half, draped at the top with tiny owers, which are yellow, and look like a small helmet, and that drop readily, leaving
the bare stem behind; only a few become fruits, which are triangular berries, lled with the usual yellow meal.
The people in Luhu call it specically Sibane, others Daun subat
parampuan,10 that is to say Herba supplex femina, for they consider
the foregoing one the male.
Use. Both kinds got their names, because the leaets are
joined together like the ngers of two hands, as if to pray, to
wit, when one turns the leafy bunches upside down; a similar
reason was mentioned for the aforementioned Daun subat grass.
The Malay and the people from Hitu use them because of
this shape, just as the Ternatans do with the aforementioned
grass, to wit, for lovers to send to each other, when they want
to beseech one another, or beg for forgiveness, and they use this
even more specically, in that the men should send the leaf of
the rst kind, which has the stiest leaets, showing thereby
more desire.11
But the second, and subsequent kinds, are sent by the
women, thereby admitting, that their beseeching and begging
is less sincere and more of a pretense than with the men.
The Reader is requested not to laugh too much at such
tries, since here, in the Indies, it is often very useful to understand this Hieroglyphic Grammar,12 in order not to be cheated.
The Alfurs on Ceram stick these leaved stems with the owers in their armbands,13 which they wear on their arms when
they go plundering or hunting for heads, because they believe
it will make them brave, or have good luck, I presume because
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they think that these plants are lucky due to their durable fresh
green.
III. Herba supplex major secunda,14 was also held to be the female,
and has more in common with that Gramen supplex,15 since it
has much thinner and narrower leaves than the two foregoing,
wherefore it is much more like a grass. They are also tted
into each other;16 each leaet is ve inches long, and less, and
has a little knee in the center, but they are mostly withered,
and eaten through towards the front; next to these leafy tufts
grow very thin, sti little stems, which, while creeping along,
form little knees, root themselves, and produce new bunches
of leaves, emerging not straight from the little stems, but on
the sides, always forming smaller bunches all the way to the
end. It grows on the beach on old trees that are bent forward a
little, also on rocks that have some soil on them, and get good
sunlight.
IV. Herba supplex major tertia,17 acquires angular and slightly
bulging stems below, near the root, divided into sharp ridges,
like the Angrek. The leaves are like those of the second kind of
Herba supplex, and grow in bunches together, pressed at, but
in such a way, that they divide on top into two or three other
bunches, and the upper stem shoots up a ways with some leaves,
up to the top stem, that bears sparse owers, like the second
kind; after the owers the knobby stems are bare, with a fruit
dangling from a thin stem here and there, triangular, but the
spaces between them are divided into ridges, a ngernail long,
with a yellow meal inside.
V. Herba supplex major quarta,18 has leaves and stems like the
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second one, though usually larger; the stems are an ell high, and
more, with a few leaves on them; it also bears on top only two
or three owers, curved like crescent moons, each one open on
its own little thin stem, like a little boat or shoe.19 The lowest
leaet grows upwards, divided into ve points, which look like
shoeheels; at the top is yet another leaet bent backwards like
the nose of a shoe, entirely white, with some yellow inside on
the upper leaet, scentless.
Herba supplex quinta 20 is better described as hanging like a rope
from the trees, grows with fourteen or sixteen stems out of one
root, thin at its point of origin, at, and very tough; three of
them grow up to the length of a fathom, and more, and produce
short side branches at the top, which are disposed transversely.
The leaves are a nger long, scarcely one wide, sti, with a long
tip, fashioned like a Lance; the ower is the size of a small Angrek, the same shape as above: The fruit is still unknown. There
is a depiction of it.21

The Fifty First Plate.

Shows the Beseeching Plant in the rst Figure, to wit, the female,
or the second kind.22
The second Figure shows the fifth kind of the Beseeching Plant,
hanging down from the wood that it grows on, with the actual
shape and size of its ower.

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Chapter Ten
T H E F I R S T G RO U N D A N G R E K .

ow follows the Peasant kin of the Angreks, which, unlike the previous twelve,1 do not grow in trees, but
on the ground, and which are once again divided into various
kinds, whereof some come close to resembling the Helleborus
plant, and others the Orchis or Standelwort.2 The rst class has
four kinds, and we devote a chapter to each one. The rst one
is Angrecum terrestre primum, the second Angrecum terrestre alterum, the
third Involucrum, and the fourth Helleborus Amboinicus.
I. Angraecum terrestre primum,3 or Daun corra corra,4 sprouts from
the ground, and it attaches itself by means of many thick bers,
that mostly creep bare along the ground, like worms, and it
has countless other, smaller ones. From among them emerges
rst a tuft of leaves, which embrace one another, and make for
a thick, striped stem below, like the leaves of Curcuma Silvestris,5
but much larger, and not so smooth, a blackish green, deeply
striped lengthwise, and full of folds, but in such a way, that
some ridges commence in the center, sticking out sharply at
the bottom, with other lesser ones among them, about four feet
long, or more, one and a half to two hands wide, and each of
the outside ones have their separate stem; they are thin, pointed
[]

in back and in front, and can be folded and bent any which
way one likes. The young ones are somewhat hollow in their
centers, like a little boat, but the old ones are expansive.
After the leaves one sees four or ve pointed knobs near the
roots, but above ground like a small Combilis,6 divided into
dark joints, like the purses of other Angreks, attached to the
ground with many bers. The ower-bearing stems appear to
the sides of these knobs, four to ve feet high, round, mostly
bare, but slightly joined. On top they bear many purple owers
above one another, fashioned like Columbines.7
Each one is suspended from a longish little stem, and fashioned from ve leaves, of which the three narrowest are spread
out, of a light purple like Colchicum or Meadow Saron.8 In
the center are two other, broader leaets, slightly folded, on
one side; with the others they cover another leaet that is split
in two on top, and that rests on a small yellow stem that is
decorated with purple lines. To the sides grow yet two other,
narrower leaets, and in front of the same yet a third one, that
is curved upwards above the aforementioned little stem, all a
purplish red, and covered with the rst two leaets, without a
main stem, fashioned like the bag below the neck of a pelican,9
a mixture of purple and pale yellow; as soon as its owers open,
the stem becomes bellied and striped, and gradually turns into
the fruit.
The latter is hexagonal, as with other Angreks, but with only
three protruding ridges, and each one striped lengthwise with a
groove, one and a half to two inches long, a nger thick, green,
and it keeps the withered ower leaets for a long time.
[]

The ripe ones burst into three broader, and three narrower
thongs, connected to each other in front and back as on an Imperial Crown;10 inside is a yellowish meal, which turns gray,
and drops out, leaving the little boats that contained the stems,
which remain for a long time on the main stem, forming a separate cluster.
One will nd a second kind,11 which is held to be the female of
the foregoing, very like it, except that the leaves are shorter, and
only half the width; some are only three ngers wide, ridged
lengthwise in the same fashion, full of folds, and fewer in number. The ower is the same, but smaller, totally white, or sometimes with a little purple below, also odorless. The purses near
the roots are somewhat narrower and more pointed as well. If
they grow in a rich clay soil, the purses of some of the rst kind
become so thick that they resemble the tubers 12 of Combilis,
and sometimes one sees nothing else on this plant but these
knobbles, four or ve together, without leaves or stems, plantlike and brous inside, slimy at rst, thereafter changing to a
dry, spongy substance, as we mentioned above about the Angraecum scriptum.13 But when planted in gardens it will not produce
thick tubers.
Name. In Latin Angraecum terrestre primum purpureum and album; 14
in Malay Daun Corra Corra, after the shape of the leaf which, as
I said, resembles the hold of a Karakar;15 others call it with a
common name Angrec tana.16 The Ambonese call it Ahaan, a name
it shares with the subsequent Involucrum,17 because they consider
both plants to be of the same kind.
Place. These plants have already abased themselves by coming
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down out of the trees, and now grow on the ground, though
they do not come down as far as the plains, for one will always
nd them in steep places, mostly in valleys, where the land has
dropped away, and where on top grows only a tall grass, called
Hulong.18 The white kind is seldom found; one can nd both
on the steep banks of the Alf River,19 where it sometimes can
be obtained with great diculty; they can also be transplanted
into gardens, where it will take a year before they will bear
owers.
Use. These owers are used only as an ornament; one ties
them with the leaves around Saguer 20 pots, and they wrap all
kinds of fruits in it, which are brought to market, as will be said
about the subsequent Involucrum. The roots and leaves have a
strange sharpness, that is somewhat like that of the Helleborus.
The picture shows a little bird near a ower, with a long,
curved little beak, being a kind of Regulus or Kinglet, which
is so small and light, that it can sit on all kinds of owers, and
sucks the sap or dew from them.21

The Fifty Second Plate.

The rst Figure shows the first Ground Angrek,22 showing its
ower, A, separately, and the little bird called Cacopit. The other
Ground Angrek is depicted in the previous Plate .23 The second
Figure 24 shows the thrice-folded flower, described in Chapter ,
with the selfsames fruit, B, separately.

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Chapter Eleven
T H E S E C O N D G RO U N D A N G R E K .

he second kind of ground Angrek, has a rather thick,

creeping root, almost like a Curcuma, that produces
some thick stems, striped lengthwise with sharp ridges, and
with transverse joints. The leaves also grow clasping one another, and resemble those of a young Pinang 1 sprout, or of
Helleborus albus,2 two and a half spans long, one and a half hand
wide, divided lengthwise by ve ridges, smooth, and a bright
green.
One or two other straight and round stems come forth from
the main stem, one and a half span long, whereon grow owers
above one another, the size of Angrek primum.
The ower has ve white outer leaves, and inside a wide yellowish little helmet, its wings embracing the central triangular
pillar, and both stand up straight under the top leaet, being
one of the aforementioned ve, which also inclines over the
ower like a little boat; the fruit grows behind the ower from
the foot, being an oblong, hexagonal pod, green on the outside,
with a yellowish meal inside, as in the rst Angrek.
The main root looks like a piece of Curcuma,3 and when

[]

the leaves and old stem have dropped o it bulges from the
ground, and it has other thick, long bers at the sides, which
crawl along the ground like worms.
Name. In Latin Angraecum terrestre alterum; 4 in Malay Angrec tana.5
Place. It creeps along at ground, also on bald mountains,
where there is a dell, and some thickets, as in at valleys, in the
grass along rivers, and can be easily transplanted into gardens.
Its use is still unknown, except that it does not have as sharp
a taste as the foregoing, and is closer to the true Angrek.
N.B. This Ground Angrek was shown before in fig. . on Plate
.,6 and corresponds to Bela pola in the H. Malab. part. . Tab. ,7
which in Commelins Note 8 was called the Indian, broad-leaved
Gladiolus that grows in swamps, with a whitish ower, also in
Fl. Malab.9 p. . and by Plukn. in Amalth.10 p. .

[]

Chapter Twelve
THE WRAPPER.

nvolucrum 1 is the third kind of Angraecum terrestre; its leaves

resemble those of the rst kind, for they are full of ridges
and folds, at the back with sharp protruding ridges down its
length, but ner than with the rst one, thin, smooth, and of a
blackish green, each one growing on a ridged stem, and clasping each other, like the Curcuma,2 together with the stem some
three to four feet long, two hands wide.
The owers and fruits appear in a peculiar manner, not like
an Angrek, but more like a Globba.3 For a short spike 4 rises up
from the roots from between the leaves, fashioned from dirtygreen leaves or scales, like the Hypophyton 5 of the Globba
durion 6 or Curcuma, but much smaller. Little hollow owers
peep from among the leaets, divided into six points on top,
yellow, that quickly wither. Thereafter one will see the spike,
covered with long, dark-gray leaets, and between them grow
the fruits, which are round, oblong, green berries, like small
rooster balls, with some dried ower leaets on top. They are
lled inside with black kernels, that are enveloped in a silvery
slime or marrow, as one will see in the Globba, but without
smell or taste.
[]

It has a transverse root, an inch thick, spongy like Cork,

with blackish spots and dots inside, on the outside enveloped by
countless tiny bers. The Hypophyton is seldom seen, hiding
between the leaves, mostly in January.
Name. In Latin Involucrum; after the common Malay [name]
Daun bonkus,7 which means Folium involutionis; but the real Malay
call it Cattari; others call it Daun corra corra, like the rst kind,
in Ambonese Ahaain.
Place. It grows in mountain forests, but in places where it is
airy, and the trees are widely spaced, around rural roads for instance, where [the ground] is sharp and stony, or in red clay,
where it is rmly rooted. It never grows by itself, but always
in groups, though not attached to each other, and is not easily
transplanted because of its wild nature.
Use. The Natives use it a great deal in their households, for
they gather these leaves in the forests, and use them to wrap
Kanari [nuts],8 Lemons, and all sorts of fruits and sh, which
they carry to market, or want to send to others, for these leaves
are most suitable for this purpose because they have the shape
of a boat, are tough, and come to a point both in back and in
front, wherefore whatever is wrapped remains well covered. No
Medicinal use is known.
Another plant that diers markedly from the foregoing is
the one that is considered the male, which is why the Ambonese
call it Ahaain malona. The leaves are much smaller and narrower,
and so sharply ridged that it seems they have folds, disposed
around a low trunk, a sad black-green, and covered at its place
of origin with a prickly down or hair, as is the trunk or central
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stem, which emerges from the center, three feet high, round,
sti, and as thick as a goose quill, inside dry and hollow 9 with a
thin plume on top, consisting of thin stems, and enveloped with
a downy and almost sticky seed, which will stick very easily to
ones hands and clothes, and makes your skin itch, as will the
small gray hairs of the aforementioned stem.
It prefers to grow on river banks in the plains. It has no particular use, since it is dicult to handle because of the aforementioned hairs; the round stems are used to blow in somebodys eyes and ears, when something has fallen in ones eyes,
and some dirt remains sticking in them, and the same thing
with somebodys ears, when they hurt from a cold cathar.
If the one that was described rst is in a shadowy place, it
grows so tall, that one would think it was a dierent or large
kind, for it grows to a length of at least six feet, and the leaf
is easily three or four and a half feet long, seven inches wide,
the rest below being a deeply grooved stem, and eight or ten
of these leaves rise up from one root, that is as short as a small
stump, draped with a host of thick, tough bers.
It bears near the root two or three tufts as Cardamom 10 does,
but smaller, with small yellow owers, and after these come
fruits that look like small cloves of Garlic, and these contain
small, round, black, crackling seed, like Mustard, empty inside,
and tasteless.

The Fifty Third Plate.

Shows the plant called the Wrapper, with its Suckers, and the
flower and fruit separately.
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Chapter Thirteen
T H E T R I P L E F L OW E R .

he fourth kind 1 resembles Helleborus albus 2 or Gentiana 3

the most, and diers so much from the Angreks, that
I prefer to consider it a singular plant, but the Natives regard
it (as another) kind of Involucrum. It has three or four large
leaves, which together make for a thick, angular stem, eighteen
to twenty inches long, six wide, striped lengthwise with ve
ridges, that make a sharp edge below, as with Plantago,4 otherwise smooth, thin, and a bright green.
It ends below in a thick stem, striped on the outside, and
grooved inside. When [these leaves] begin to wither, the ridges
are bared; a single stem rises up from the center of this congregation, the thickness of a quill, round, divided into a few dark
joints, easily two feet tall, bearing few owers on top.
These owers have a particular shape, dierent from all the
Angreks, because it seems as if three owers grow above one another, all white, odorless, of which the lower part is fashioned
from ve leaets, smaller and narrower than a Jasmine blossom,
and the three larger ones are disposed in a triangle; the central
one resembles a small helmet somewhat, and one can see something yellowish or mossy in its mouth, like ne threads with
a tail, as with Larkspurs. The third and upper part, opposite
[]

the little helmet, has four leaets, whereof the two center ones
are curved away from one another, like the Astronomical sign
Aries.5
Every ower has a rather long neck, and a green leaet where
it originates. After the ower has withered, the neck or stem begins to thicken, and forms a rather longish, striped, and angular
pod, an inch long, like those of other Angreks, that hides small
sandy seed, and if one opens the unripe pod, and rubs the seed
between ones ngers, it will turn the color of lead.
The root is fashioned from many thick bers, very like
worms, bare when above ground, the color of smoke below,
green on top, and with a tough sinew inside; the taste is insipid
at rst, but then turns quite sharp, like some Gentiana, burning the mouth, so that ones lips will swell, and ones throat
gets hoarse, and one even feels this sharpness somewhat in the
leaves, wherein it diers from all the Angreks. It blooms in
October.
Name. In Latin Flos triplicatus,6 or Helleborus Amboinicus,7 in ordinary Malay Bonga tiga lapis; 8 the Ambonese consider it of the
same kind as the foregoing Involucrum, and call it Ahaan albal, and
Ahan Malona, that is to say wild and male Ahan.
Place. It grows in mountain forests, especially where much
brush and dried leaves are piled up and are rotting. I have found
it in the bright Caju puti forests,9 and under the creeping fern
Filix calamaria,10 where there was a black and somewhat moist
soil, covered with rotten leaves, its snake-like roots so loose
above the ground, that one could easily pull it o, but it is
seldom found.
After it has been transplanted into a garden, it takes its time
[]

before it decides whether it will grow or not, but when surrounded with its natural mountain soil and stones, it will produce its leaves and owers, which will perish every year down
to the root.
There is also a dierent kind, in terms of its leaves, though
it grows like the foregoing; the owers are also white, but not
as clearly divided into three parts. The fruits are angular pods,
somewhat longer than the foregoing, lled inside with a sandy
meal.
Use. Since this entire plant is quite sharp, one should use it
carefully for swollen hands (which is still little known), which is
called Hismi, that is to say blessed or enchanted; one takes these
roots with some Nutmeg, Bangle,11 Tsjonker,12 and Ginger, rub
it all together, and tie it to the swelling.
The Natives have such tough mouths, that they dare to take
these sharp roots internally, and chew it along with Pinang,13
Nutmeg, and Ginger, against a persistent diarrhea caused by
cold or raw dampness.
N.B. This plants gure was shown before on Tab. . fig. .

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Chapter Fourteen
T H E L A RG E A M B O N E S E O RC H I S .

aving discussed four kinds of Angrekum terrestre,

which resemble Helleborine or Helleborus,1 I will now
present four others, which correspond to Orchis 2 or Standelwort,3 wherefore they can also be thought of as Ambonese Orchides. The rst and most handsome kind was described before,
in Book , among garden herbs, under the name Flos susanae,4
because it is such a close kin of Amica nocturna.5
The other three we will describe in two chapters, under the
names Orchis Amboinica Major and minor.
This chapter includes two kinds of Orchis major, the rst one
with a branched root, the other with one that looks like a Radish.
I. Orchis Amboinica major, radice digitata,6 has only one or two
leaves, that look a great deal like those of the foregoing Daun
corra corra,7 but they are much narrower, two and a half or three
feet long, two inches wide, pointed on top and bottom, standing there like little swords, also ridged lengthwise with ve
sinews and folds. It has the most leaves in January, thereafter
a single bare stem which is also two and a half feet tall, bear-

[]

ing few owers on top, like normal Angreks, fashioned of ve

leaets with a short little bag, whitish, with purple stripes, but
the little helmet has purple drops.
The fruit is an oblong pod like a nger, and barely that thick,
a dark green, striped with ridges lengthwise, with a yellowish
meal inside.
The root resembles the root of Lampujang 8 or Ginger, for it
grows aslant in the ground like a clump of many ngers or
claws, whereof two or three hang together, with narrow necks
like Calbahaar puti.9
It is whitish on the outside, and semi transparent when held
against the light of a candle, lled with a tough slime, bitter
and unpleasant, with a smell like a dog.
II. Orchis Amboinica major, radice Raphanoide,10 has ve or six leaves
that close together very near the root, and are even narrower
than the foregoing, two feet long, barely a nger wide, and nely
ridged, so that one could hold it to be a reed. The owers
appear from the center of the leaves, just above the root in a
sheath, each one on a short stem, one or two, a dirty white,
mixed with some light red, like those of Tommon cantsje.11
Below each ower is an oblong, striped little purse, that contains an angular, black seed.
The root goes straight down into the earth, like a small
Radish, easily a nger long, and thick, or less, blackish on
the outside, white inside and slimy like the foregoing, draped
with thick bers like Ginger, leaving little black stipples behind
when it is peeled. The taste comes close to that of Satyrium,12
not bitter, but cloying, and a little sharp.
[]

Name. Orchis Amboinica major; the rst kind, Radice digitata; the
other, Radice raphanoide; I do not know of any special name in
Malay, only the common Angrek tana; 13 the rst one could be
called Angrek tana alea; 14 due to its Ginger-shaped root. The second [could be called] Angrek tana itam,15 because of its black root.
It has no name in Ambonese. On Ternate it is called Panawa
Sassiri-isso because of the following use.
Place. Both grow on bare and cool 16 mountains, and high
plains, under Carex or Hulong grass.17 They grow a lot on
bald mountains near Victoria Castle. One does not see them
throughout the year, only around January, but only if they bear
owers, for its narrow leaves are otherwise dicult to distinguish from Carex grass, and one will often nd, that the sharp
tips, which this grass shoots up from the root, penetrate like
awls through the root of the rst kind, growing right through
it. It is a strange sight to see one plant grow through the root
of another one, and those tips of that grass are so penetrating,
that one will often nd them growing through much thicker
roots, like Ubi 18 and Combily.19
Use. The rst root looks the most like Satyrium; they can
be candied, but they rst have to be drained, when they become as clear as Amber,20 but it remains very tough and hairy
when it is chewed, and keeps some of its nasty smell. But it
nally falls apart in ones mouth, and one should always choose
the youngest ones, to wit, those that are the whitest on that
clump, or that are the rst to bear owers. The second root,
that looks like a radish, is much better for this, since it has less
of that nasty smell, and crumbles when chewed, almost melt[]

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ing in ones mouth, and is considered to have the same eects

as our European Satyria.
The Ternatans use the rst root as a remedy against Abscesses,21 called Sassiri-isso, which are big, blueish, causing little
pain, but generating a great deal of pus. For they call large,
red, hot swellings, such as bloody ulcers and boils,22 Sassiri-bara.
They take the root, crush it, wrap it in a leaf of Buro malacco,
which is Oculus astaci,23 heat it over a re, and put it like that
over the aforementioned Abscesses.

The Fifty Fourth Plate.

The rst Figure 24 shows the second kind of the great Ambonese
Orchis. The second Figure 25 indicates the small Ambonese Orchis, to
wit the first kind.
The third Figure 26 represents the second kind of the small Orchis.

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Chapter Fifteen
T H E S M A L L A M B O N E S E O RC H I S .

he fourth kind 1 is also a true Orchis, but smaller than

all the foregoing ones.
It rst produces long leaves, numbering three or four, shaped
like grass, six to seven inches long, half a nger wide, thickish,
and smooth, somewhat folded, and with a groove in the center; these wilt quickly, and from their midst emerges a single
stem, whereon the leaves are disposed not over against but above
each other, of unequal size; the lower ones are only a thumb
joint long, and partially dried up, whereafter follow three or
four longer ones, four to six inches long, broad, and grooved
as before, with a long sti tip. These are gradually followed by
smaller ones, that lie close to the stem.
It bears a thick, short ear 2 on top, that has many white
little owers closely packed together, quite the same shape as
our ordinary Orchis, except that they lack the sacks in the
back; otherwise they gape in front, and have two tiny leaets
on top, like two little wings, a curved little horn towards the
front, and with a long little beard below, curved backwards,
altogether white; the owers on the top part of this ear are
usually closed.
[]

The fruits are small, angular pods, with a slimy meal inside,
but few reach perfection. The root is very small, and short,3 to
wit, white, short and thickish bers, and at the bottom hang
usually two, seldom one, oblong glands, like testicles, of which
one is usually small and more wrinkled, gray on the outside,
inside white and sappy, slimy, and with a sweetish taste, almost
like cooked Combilis.4
It owers at the end of the rainy season, and in the beginning of the dry Monsoon,5 and after it owers the entire stem
perishes, so that one will not nd it again. Only the top bers
remain when it is pulled out of the ground. For the long glands
are rather rmly stuck in the ground, which is why one should
dig them up.
Name. In Latin Orchis Amboinica minor; 6 it has no name in Malay
or Ambonese, or one should call it Angrek kitsjil.7
Place. Like the foregoing, it grows on airy hills, and also on
plains among Carex grass,8 and one will hardly notice it there
unless it has owers. One always nds many of them together
where the grass is lower and shorter, as on the red mountain 9
near Victoria Castle, where the entire troop blooms at the same
time, and they also perish together. It loves a black, hard clay
soil, and if one wants to transplant it, one should dig up the
root after owering, clean it of the bers, keep it dry for several days, and then transplant it in the same kind of soil, but
it likes to be elevated, and does not like shady or moist places.
Use. It is unknown to the Natives, but I have found it to
be better and tastier for candying than the foregoing, because
when candied it is crumbly, crunchy, and sweet in the mouth,
[]

and without that nasty smell. But it is dicult to nd and dig

up because the roots are at their best before they ower, which
is when they are hard to nd in that grass, and I had them dig
in the same place where the plant perished, but could not nd
any roots that looked like those glands, so one can say that it
shoots up suddenly, and vanishes just as suddenly.
A second kind 10 becomes slightly taller, to wit, three to four
spans 11 high, shooting up with a single, round stem, that is bare
about two hands 12 above the root, whereafter one will nd a
congregation of ve to six leaets above one another, on the
main stem without a foot, like those of the Angrek, four inches
long, two ngers 13 wide, striped lengthwise with ve ridges, of
which the central one protrudes below, and makes for a groove
on top; the other four are dark, and protrude more on top,
whereafter the main stem continues bare again, and makes a
long ear, easily a span long, densely covered with little owerlets, hollow, like those of the Herba supplex,14 divided into ve
tips, a whitish yellow, followed by the fruits, a ngernail long,
mostly triangular, lled inside with a slimy meal, like the other
Angreks, and scentless.
The root consists of two little balls, of which the largest is
as long as ones little nger, the thickness of a nger, usually
sticking out to the side; the other one is much smaller and thinner, right below the stalk, draped with few bers, mostly under
the trunk,15 russet on the outside, inside white and watery.
This concludes the plants that are considered Angreks.

[]

Comment.
Mr. Breynes Centuria 16 has several handsome varieties of Orchis, and the second kind of the small Orchis corresponds to
the taller and broad-leaved Orchis, with the Asphodil root, and
a rigid, narrow ear in Sloan. Cat. pl. p. .17 and Jam. Hist. part one
Tab. . fig. .18 Basaala poulou Marabara, in H. Malab. vol. . Tab.
,19 belongs here as well.

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T H E S U S A N N A F L OW E R

los Susannae 1 is an Ambonese Orchis 2 that can be put in the

fourth Class of Orchides, called Orchis Serapias, as described
by Dodonaeus, lib. . cap. .3
It shoots up with a single, straight, round, and rm stem
/ feet tall, whereof the lower part has few leaves, like
those of the Plantain,4 though longer, thicker, and smoother, six
inches long, ngers wide, lengthwise divided by or sinews,
of which the middle one protrudes on the bottom with a sharp
ridge, though the others do not stick out on the bottom.
These leaves embrace the main stem and are sometimes widest at the top and sometimes at the bottom, and they are at
their biggest and most luxurious before the stem shoots up,
which then puts forth only a few other leaves, which are smaller
and narrower than the former ones, snug against the stem, viscous and unpleasant to the taste.
Four or ve entirely white owers appear at the top of the
stem, a blend of singular and rare shapes, like both an Iris and
an Orchid, but as large as the largest Narcissus, for each ower
is made up of large leaets of which two are a dirty white and
curve backwards; the third, being the largest, stands up straight,
[]

bends forward a little and over the ower, resting within on

two white and pronged little horns. The other two, wider than
the others, cover the borders, and their outer edges are cut into
many rays, as if they were fringed.
Between these two lies the sixth, lowest and smallest leaflet, folded together like a little boat. In the center one sees a
hollow leaet, shaped like a little Helmet, with two thin little
horns on the side that curve back upon themselves towards the
inside, and hide under the little helmet, bearing yellow Buds,
as in white Lilies. Behind this little helmet one sees two white
and gleaming hillocks or glands, with a hole beneath them that
goes all the way to the stem. The ower has a long and somewhat crooked tail at the back, hanging down for some inches,
as thick as an oaten pipe, round, hollow inside, on the outside
green and white.
The foot of the ower is an angular and green stem, with
edges that are sharp and sawed, two inches long, fairly thick
in the middle, and sprouting from the lap of a small leaf on
the main stem. This foot becomes the fruit, being an oblong
pod the length of a nger joint, more than the thickness of a
quill, divided by six sharp edges, containing a hairy and russetlike wool instead of seeds, as in the Angrecis,5 that ies out and
disperses when the ripe pods burst at the sides into six narrow
strips which are still linked together at their tips. The smell is
sweet, like that of a Lily, but faint.
At rst I could not nd a true root, for the end of the main
stem became a little stump in the ground, with a few short
bers hanging from it. And at the time there were also few
[]

leaves to be seen on it, as all Orchides are wont to do when they

bear owers. But at other times, when it is not bearing owers
yet, one will nd perfect glandulous roots, to wit, an oblong
little globe, like a Testicle, somewhat uneven and lying slantwise, and with one or, more rarely, with lesser ones, as if dried
out, on each side. These Testicles are often of the same size,
but one will always be more wrinkled, and spongier and slightly
smaller, as is true of all Orchids. The taste is watery, insipid,
and somewhat bitter, as with all Satyria.
One sees these owers rarely, mostly in the rainy months of
June and July, because at other times it loses its stem and leaves,
though I have found them in December; in any case, they are
not often found on Amboina, and only during the rainy season.
Name. Since I have not been able to nd either a Malay or an
Ambonese name, I call it Flos Susannae in Latin. In Malay: Bonga 6
Susanna, in memory of her 7 who when alive, was my rst Companion and Helpmate in looking for herbs and plants, and who
was also the rst one to show it to me. Some would want to
call it an Angrec tana 8 in Malay, but that name belongs properly
to another plant.
Place. One nds it in Leytimor 9 in the mountains, near Fort
Victoria, to the East, especially on the road to Rietton, under
low bushes, and where Caju Puti trees 10 grow.
When dug up before its stem has appeared, it can be transplanted to gardens, where it will produce its ower and show
it fully opened for days on end, and the Year next will fashion a new plant again. But if transplanted when the ower has

[]

opened already, it will not want to bloom and will perish in

the earth.
Use. Of its virtues and use nothing is known up till now,
unless that it is a handsome and rare ower because of its wondrous shape, worthy of being planted in pots and ower beds.
Maccabuhay 11 is perhaps a similar ower and root that grows
in Manilha, and its root is candied there by the Chinese, wherefore I too had the Ambonese one dug up when the roots were
the largest, that is before the owers appear, and had them
cleaned and soaked in water for several days until they lost their
nasty and bitter taste, and then boiled them with sugar, but I
found that cooking made them hard, and when chewing them
they were like gristle, and grainy, but tasted better after a Year.
There is also a smaller kind 12 of Flos Susannae, no more than
a foot high, with similar leaves and glands, but both much
smaller.
The ower is very small, also white and nely notched, but
otherwise like the larger one. It is seldom found, and then only
on windy mountains; its Testicles are larger and more noticeable than the former one, also more t to be candied, though
they should be dug up before they ower, even if they are then
more dicult to nd because the little leaves are scarcely to be
distinguished from young grass, and after the ower has perished one will not nd a single leaf.
The Satyria are also found in China, and are called Pu SangTjan 13 there, which means: mother without a child, or child
without a mother, because the leaves of the plant have with-

[]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

ered when the ower-bearing stem is in bloom, as one can also

see in Europe. They rub the roots in vinegar and smear it on
certain white spots on the face.

The Ninety Ninth Plate.

The first Figure shows a small young plant of the Susanne flower,
before it has owered.
The second Figure indicates a perfect ower-bearing plant of
the Susanne flower, with its stem divided in two because of its
height.
The third Figure shows only the top part of the stem with
fruits, after its leaves have already withered and dropped o.

Comment.
Anyone can clearly see that this plant is a true kind of Orchis,
with exceptional owers, and a particularly long tail, and it
was called the Ambonese Orchis with white fringed owers;
Rumphius Susanne flower can be found in Herman,14 in his Par.
Bat. Pr. p. , while added to the one in Plukenets Mantissa,15 p. ,
was the beautiful ngered Orchis, with owers of the mountain
Clove tree, the edges as if fringed, from Virginia, &c.

[]

T H E P E T O L A L E A F.

e will close the tenth book with this masterpiece of

nature,1 being a small low little plant, consisting of
few leaves, but these are beautifully painted, as if wrought by
art; it has a single, weak stem, not more than two or three inches
high, so that this little plant is almost lying on the ground. It
has three leaves on top, spread out in what is almost a triangle,
and below them another two or three smaller ones, which divide
the stem somewhat into joints, and cover it partly with their
sheaths, like the leaves of Alsine Indica or Arundinella,2 a family to
which it appears to belong.3
The larger leaets also resemble Arundinella latifolia 4 somewhat, but shorter, and rounder, some are also a bit heartshaped, thickish, but limp. It is chestnut brown on the upper
side, perhaps darker, soft to the touch, like plush, and somewhat shiny, very handsomely painted, with light-red or yellow
lines, that run through one another, representing small squares,
or unknown characters, as if a skilled Painter had limned them
with a ne brush. The leaves are red on the under side, the color
purple, without characters. And so it stands there for a long

[]

time, without showing anything else but these three or four

painted leaets.
Finally it produces a single soft stem from its center, round,
woolly, ve to six inches tall, divided into three or four dark
joints, whereon appear some little white owers, that soon perish, and beneath them the little stem begins to thicken, and
forms a triangular fruit, like that of Empetrum acetosum,5 to wit, an
oblong little house, fashioned from three little eeces or wings,
but more oblong than that of Empetrum, a mixed color of green
and brown, keeping the withered little ower for a long time
on top.
This pod nally splits into three parts, but remains attached
on top and bottom, and then a ne seed falls out, similar to
that of Empetrum, leaving three bare little threads between the
thongs.
The root is small, fashioned from few, thick, and white
bers, weakly xed to the ground, for it grows always in a loose
and moist soil.
Name. In Latin Folium petolatum,6 after the Malay Daun petola,
because it resembles a rich silk cloth, called Petola,7 that has been
painted with many colors.
Place. It is rarely found, hence it is not known to most Natives. It always grows on tall, remote mountains, where tall
trees provide shade, but are widely spaced,8 and the soil beneath
them is somewhat moist. I have taken a great deal of trouble
to transplant it into gardens, and it did grow for quite a while,
but perished each time without producing seed. The Ambo-

[]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

nese have better luck sometimes, when they transplant it into

their mountain plots.
Use. None is known, so that it is only displayed as a curiosity that has come down from the mountains. I was unable
to depict it with either pen or brush, because the lineaments
on the leaves were too ingenious, wherefore I pasted the entire
plant here on a piece of paper, all the more so, because dried
it preserves its colors better.9

The Forty First Plate.

Shows in the rst Figure a scaled Equiseet that grows on trees, and
that is also called the Horse Tail.
The second Figure indicates the Pethola leaf, which is called
the Male.
The third Figure depicts the Pethola leaf or the Female, or the
real one, both of which are described in [this] Chapter.

[]

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

ACC

Chen

Comber
De Clercq

De Haan

De Wit

Dressler

Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, The Ambonese

Curiosity Cabinet. Translated, edited, annotated, and
with an introduction by E. M. Beekman. New
Haven: Yale University Press, .
Chen Sing-Chi and Tang Tsin, A General Review
of the Orchid Flora of China. Orchid Biology.
Reviews and Perspectives, II, ed. Joseph Arditti. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, .
J. B. Comber, Orchids of Java. London: Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew, .
F. S. A. De Clercq, Nieuw Plantkundig Woordenboek
voor Nederlandsch Indi d rev. ed. Amsterdam: J. H.
de Bussy, .
F. de Haan, Priangan. De Preanger-Regentschappen
onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot . vols. Batavia: Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen, .
H. D. C. de Wit, Orchids in Rumphius Herbarium Amboinense. In Orchid Biology: Reviews and
Perspectives, I, ed. Joseph Arditti. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, . Pp. .
Robert L. Dressler, The Orchids: Natural History and
Classification. . Reprint ed., Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, .

[]

G
Gerard

Heniger

Heyne

Jacquet

Lawler

Leupe

Lewis & Short

M

MV

Rumphius Gedenkboek . Ed. M. Gresho.

Haarlem: Koloniaal Museum, .
John Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants
[]. Revised and enlarged by Thomas Johnson.
Reprint ed., New York: Dover, .
J. Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein
() and Hortus Malabaricus: A Contribution to
the History of Dutch Colonial Botany. Rotterdam: A. A.
Balkema, .
K. Heyne, De Nuttige Planten van Nederlandsch Indi.
d rev. ed., vols. Batavia: Department van Landbouw, Nijverheid & Handel in NederlandschIndi, .
Pierre Jacquet, History of Orchids in Europe,
from Antiquity to the th Century. In Orchid
Biology: Reviews and Perspectives, VI, ed. Joseph Arditti.
New York: John Wiley, . Pp. .
Leonard J. Lawler, Ethnobotany of the Orchidaceae. In Orchid Biology. Reviews and Perspectives, III, ed.
Joseph Arditti. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, . Pp. .
P. A. Leupe, Georgius Everardus Rumphius,
Ambonsch Natuurkundige der zeventiende eeuw.
Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen,
vol. XII. Amsterdam: C. G. van der Post, . Pp.
.
Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin
Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, .
E. D. Merrill, An Interpretation of Rumphiuss Herbarium Amboinense. Manila: Bureau of Printing,
.
Rumphius Memorial Volume. Ed. H. C. D. de Wit.
Baarn: Hollandia, .

[]

OED
Pliny

Reinikka
Smith
Valentijn

Wilkinson

WNT

Yule

Oxford English Dictionary. vols. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, .
Pliny, Natural History. Trans. H. Rackham, W. H. S.
Jones, and D. E. Eichholz. vols. Loeb Classical
Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
.
Merle Reinikka, A History of the Orchid. Coral
Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, .
J. J. Smith, Die Orchideen von Ambon. Batavia:
Landsdrukkerij, .
Franois Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indin.
books in volumes. Dordrecht and Amsterdam,
.
R. J. Wilkinson, A Malay-English Dictionary (Romanised). vols. Reprint ed., London: Macmillan,
.
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal. vols. The
Hague: Martinus Nijho & SDU Uitgeverij,
.
Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: being
a Glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases
[]. Reprint ed., New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, .

[]

NOTES

Introduction
. Hansen, Orchid Fever, pp. and . See also Orlean, Orchid Thief;
Orlean cites billion on p. .
. Reinikka, A History of the Orchid, pp. ; hereafter referred to
as Reinikka, with page number(s). Reinikkas book is the only history
of the movers and shakers of orchid history. Rumphius is not included.
. The neologism is part of the private language shared by Swann
and his mistress Odette in the rst volume of Prousts A la Recherche du
Temps Perdu, which is Du Ct de chez Swann, rst published in . The
relevant passage reads in part: . . . la mtaphore faire catleya, devenue
un simple vocable quils employaient sans y penser quand ils voulaient
signier lacte de la possession physique. . . . See the Pliade edition
of this masterpiece: Proust, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, :.
. There is ample evidence in Hansen, Orchid Fever, and Orlean, Orchid Thief.
. Chase, Freudenstein, and Cameron, DNA data and Orchidaceae Systematics, in The First International Orchid Conservation Congress,
p. . See also Jacquet, History of Orchids in Europe, from Antiquity
to the th Century, in Orchid Biology, VI, p. ; hereafter referred to
as Jacquet, with page number(s). See also Lawler, Ethnobotany of
the Orchidaceae, in Orchid Biology, III, pp. ; hereafter referred
to as Lawler, with page number(s). For more detailed discussion of
geographical data see Dressler, The Orchids: Natural History and Classification, pp. .; hereafter referred to as Dressler, with page number(s). I
[]

want to mention here that the series Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives, edited by Joseph Arditti, now counting eight volumes, published
by various publishers between and , is probably the best mine
of information for both specialist and general reader.
. Dressler, p. .
. See Jacquet.
. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (hereafter WNT ), vol. XV, under
standelkruid. There are genera of European orchids, divided into
species. See Flora Europea, vol. : Alismataceae to Orchidaceae (Monocotyledones), p. .
. Chen Sing-Chi and Tang Tsin, A General Review of the Orchid Flora of China in Orchid Biology, II, p. ; hereafter referred to as
Chen, with page number(s). See also Needham, Science and Civilisation in
China, vol. : Biology and Biological Technology, Part I: Botany, pp. .
. In this famous passage from Chandlers superlative novel, orchids in a greenhouse are described as follows: The plants lled the
place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the
newly washed ngers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering
as boiling alcohol under a blanket (Chandler, Stories and Early Novels,
p. ). A good survey of the role of orchids in literature is Lewis,
Power and Passion: The Orchid in Literature in Orchid Biology, V, pp.
.
. Dressler, p. ; see also p. .
. See ibid., p. , g. ..
. Ordoo, Diccionario de la Lengua Nahuatl.
. Lawler, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Reinikka, pp. .
. Chen, p. . The breakdown of this total as given there is:
genera and species are terrestrials, and genera and species are
epiphytes. The remaining genera and species are saprophytes. A
saprophyte does not make its own food via photosynthesis, but avails
itself of nourishment produced by other plants.
. Ibid., p. .

[]

. Comber, Orchids of Java, p. ; hereafter referred to as Comber,

with page number(s).
. Personal communication from Mr. Comber by letter, dated
October , .
. Millar, Orchids of Papua New Guinea, pp. and .
. Smith, Die Orchideen von Ambon, pp. ; hereafter referred to as
Smith, with page number(s).
. De Wit has species, with specic ones: De Wit, Orchids
in Rumphius Herbarium Amboinense, in Orchid Biology, I, pp. ; hereafter referred to as De Wit, with page number(s). J. B. Comber informed me by letter (January , ) that he also believes the total is
, but just how many of these are accurately named is open to interpretation. . . . Out of the species mentioned, ve have so far not
been named to species level.
. Reinikka, p. .
. See my nn. in ch. for more detail.
. This and other new information about Rumphius is based on
original research and can be perused in more detail in the fully documented and longer introduction to my edition of Rumphius other
classic: The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, pp. xxxvcxii. That volume is
throughout this text referred to as ACC, with page number(s).
. The poem is entitled Georgii Everhardi Rumphii Peregrinatio,
sive iter in Brasiliam, is lines long, and was printed inexplicably
after the title page of the sixth volume of his Herbal. See n. .
. Valentini, Museum Museorum, p. .
. Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, De Ambonese Historie. Behelsende
Een kort Verhaal der Gedenkwaardigste Geschiedenissen zo in Vreede als oorlog voorgevallen sedert dat de Nederlandsche Oost Indische Comp: Het Besit in Amboina Gehadt
Heeft [The History of Ambon. Containing a short Relation of the most
Memorable Events that took place both in Peace and war since the
Dutch East Indies Company took Possession of Amboina]. Published
in the journal Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van NederlandschIndi, zevende volgreeks: tiende deel [vol. ] (The Hague: Nijho,
), pp. and .

[]

. The original reads: quam ego, plus consuens, totum mundum

cum omnibus creaturis subito meo visui subtraxit, unde jam per decennium in tristibus tenebris sedere cogor. Printed in Miscellanea Curiosa
sive Ephemeridum Medico-Physicarum Germanicarum Academiae Imperialis Leopoldinae Naturae Curiosorum. (Nuremberg: Wolfgang Maurit Endter, ),
p. . This publication printed Rumphius thirteen Asian notices during his lifetime.
. Leupe, Georgius Everardus Rumphius, in Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie, pp. ; hereafter referred to as Leupe, with page
number(s).
. Het Amboinsche Kruid-boek. Dat is, Beschryving van de meest bekende Boomen,
Heesters, Kruiden, Land- en Water-Planten, die men in Amboina, en de omleggende
eylanden vind, Na haare gedaante, verscheide benamingen, aanqueking, en gebruik: mitsgaders van eenige insecten en gediertens, Voor t meeste deel met de Figuren daar toe
behoorende, Allen met veel moeite en vleit in veele jaaren vergadert, en beschreven in
twaalf boeken, door Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, Med. Doct. van Hanau, Oud
Koopman en Raadspersoon in Amboina, mitsgaders onder de naam van Plinius Indicus, Lid van de Illustre Academia Naturae Curiosorum, in t Duitsche en Roomsche
Ryk opgerigt. Nagezien en uitgegeven door Joannes Burmannus, Med. Doct. en Botanices Professor in den Hortus Medicus te Amsterdam, Medelidt van het Keyzerlyke
Queekschool der onderzoekers van de Natuurkunde; Die daar verscheide Benamingen,
en zyne Aanmerkingen heeft bygevoegt, vols. (Amsterdam, By Franois Changuion, Jan Catue, Hermanus Uytwerf; In s Hage, By Pieter Gosse,
Jean Neaulme, Adriaan Moetjens, Antony van Dole; Te Utrecht, By
Steven Neaulme, ). The Utrecht publisher did not participate
in producing volumes and . One should mention that the main title
is variously printed as Amboinsch Kruid-boek, Kruyd-boek, Kruydboek,
and Kruidboek. I use Amboinsche Kruidboek, just Kruidboek, or Herbal.
As far as we know, Rumphius did not earn a degree in medicine, nor
is this distinction mentioned on the title page of DAmboinsche Rariteitkamer. The complete title of the Auctuarium or volume is: Het
Auctuarium, ofte Vermeerdering, op het Amboinsch Kruyd-boek. Dat is, Beschryving
van de overige Boomen, Heesters, en Planten, die men in Amboina, en de omleggende
eilanden vind, Allen zeer accuraat beschreven en afgebeeldt na der zelver gedaantes, met

[]

de verscheide Indische benamingen, aanqueking, en gebruik, door Georgius Everhardus

Rumphius, Med. Doct. van Hanau, Oud Koopman en Raadspersoon in Amboina,
mitsgaders onder de naam van Plinius Indicus, Lid van de Illustre Academia Naturae
Curiosorum, int Duitsche en Roomsche Ryk opgerigt. Nu voor t eerst uitgegeven, en in
het Latyn overgezet, door Joannes Burmannus, Med. Doctor, en Botanices Professor in
het Illustre Athenaeum, en de Hortus Medicus te Amsteldam, Medelidt van het Keizerlyke Queekschool der onderzoekers van de Natuurkunde; Die daar verscheide Benamingen, en zyn Aanmerkingen heeft bygevoegt (Amsterdam, By Mynard Uytwerf, en de Wed. S. Schouten en Zoon, ). [The Auctuarium, or
Addition, to the Ambonese Herbal. That is, Description of the remaining Trees, Shrubs, and Plants, which are found in Amboina, and
the surrounding islands, All very accurately described and depicted according to their proper shapes, with their various Indian names, cultivations, and use, by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, Med. Doct. from
Hanau, Former Merchant and Counselor in Amboina, also known by
the name of Plinius Indicus, Member of the Illustre Academia Naturae Curiosorum, founded in the Holy Roman Empire. Now published
for the rst time, and translated into Latin, by Johannes Burmannus,
Med. Doctor, and Professor of Botany at the Illustre Athenaeum, and
the Hortus Medicus in Amsterdam, Fellow member of the Imperial
Academy of inquirers into Nature; Who has added various Names,
and his Comments.] Hereafter references to Het Amboinsche Kruidboek or
The Ambonese Herbal will be given in the text between brackets, by volume
number and page(s): i.e., :.
. Merrill, An Interpretation of Rumphiuss Herbarium Amboinense, p. ;
hereafter referred to as M, with page number(s).
. M, p. .
. M, p. .
. Van de Wetering, Rembrandt, pp. , esp. p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Dressler, p. . For Rumphian rsts in terms of orchids see
also De Wit, pp. .
. See Wehner, Zierau, and Arditti, Plinius Germanicus and Plinius Indicus, in Orchid Biology, VIII, pp. .

[]

. See ch. .
. Reinikka, p. .
. Comber, p. .
. The composite name for this orchid genus is derived from the
Greek a word for a moth, specically a species they called
ying soul ( and which means the aspect of
[something]).
. Comber, p. .
. De Wit, p. .
Chapter One
. Original text in ..:.
A ne example of Rumphius wit. His readers did not know what
epiphytes were, so this is an elegant way to present the main division
of these plants: epiphytic and terrestrial orchids. The metaphor includes a sly dig at aristocrats, a social species with which Rumphius
was well acquainted and which he did not like (see the introduction).
The remark about castles and fortresses is based on personal experience. Rumphius ancestral region, the Wetterau, had a number of these
keeps built in high places to make them unassailable. His father was
a fortications expert and had passed the skill on to his son. Finally,
Rumphius knew of sudden reversals of aristocratic fortune during the
Thirty Years War. It had happened to a member of the Solms clan, a
family of local nobility who were his fathers employers.
. Helleborine means a plant like hellebore, which is rather
confusing; hellebore (genus Helleborus) is a species of the Ranunculaceae. It was a fabled plant used for medicinal purposes, especially to
treat mental disease. Helleborine was once considered a separate genus
of orchids, but is today regarded as a species of orchid either of the
genus Cephalanthera or of Epipactis (the latter was formerly known as
Serapias, a name Rumphius uses as well). Rumphius appears to be employing it as a generic term for orchid species.

[]

. Calceolaria is a large genus of tropical American plants of the

family Scrophulariaceae, which have little to do with orchids.
Although Rumphius, once again, seems to use the phrase rather
generically, Calceolus mariae was also the name in the herbals (for
instance Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants, p. ; hereafter Gerard, with page number[s]), for the lovely Ladys Slipper, a
temperate-zone orchid of the genus Cypripedium. The latter compound
noun literally means Venus Slippers while the word Lady in our
vernacular name referred originally to the Virgin Mary. Calceolus is
Latin for a small shoe.
. There are an estimated , species of orchids on earth, of
which Indonesia has more than ,, many of them unique.
. Merrill (M, p. ) lists it as Grammatophyllum scriptum (L.).
The Dutch botanist Joannes Jacobus Smith contributed the section
on Rumphius orchids in Merrills Interpretation of Rumphiuss Herbarium
Amboinense. Hence all identications here are by Smith, not Merrill.
Smith based his assessments on his previous monograph, Die Orchideen
von Ambon.
Smith was born in Antwerp in and died in Oegstgeest in .
For most of his professional life he worked for the Botanic Gardens
in Bogor (then Buitenzorg) on Java, becoming its director from to
. He traveled extensively in Java but also took part in lengthy botanical expeditions to the Moluccas (including Ambon) and Celebes
(Sulawesi). Though he published papers on a number of plants, he is
especially remembered as an orchidologist.
Rumphius original name is a hybrid, since angraecum is a Latinized form of the Javanese anggrk, a noun that is still the general Indonesian word for orchid. Scriptum means inscribed, written upon.
. Maare-takken in the original. This is the Old World mistletoe
(Viscum album). Its berries were used to make birdlime.
. For oksel which literally means the pit of ones arm. Still used
in the Netherlands as a term in botany. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch made the deliberate choice to eschew Latin

[]

and Greek terminology in science, and preferred instead original vernacular compounds. This is one example. In modern English terminology the term would be axil, but that was not standard usage until
the end of the eighteenth century.
. The iris.
. The width of a nger was about . inch.
. For the original doortogen met, which is a rare usage of doortiegen. Since the Middle Ages this verb had been used only in the imperfect and the past participial forms. I think Rumphius has in mind
the sense of something extending across something else, and not the
notion of something woven through something else, which is also possible in Dutch.
. For geut, variant of goot, a channel to convey liquid away, such
as a gutter on a house.
. The satyr orchid is today restricted to the species Coeloglossum
bracteatum, a terrestrial plant from the cooler regions. Rumphius uses
Satyrium in a generic sense. Ancient authors, who knew the roots
better than the living ower, ascribed erotic powers to this plant,
basing their belief on the shape of the roots.
Orchis is the Greek word for testicle, and the plant was called this
because the tuberous roots resemble male gonads. Pliny was also struck
by those remarkable plants. In book , chapter , of his Natural History, he puts the orchis high on the list of wonders. Because the twin
roots look similar to testicles the plant is said to arouse sexual desire
and was given the alternative name: satyrion. Yet another kind he calls
satyrios orchis and says that it prefers to be near the sea. When mixed with
sheeps milk, orchis will induce erections, but if taken with water it
will have the opposite eect. See Pliny, Natural History, :; hereafter referred to as Pliny, with volume and page number(s).
Plinys text is not very clear, but the identication of the plants
properties with the physical feature of its rootsthe doctrine of signaturessurvived in the popular belief that orchids were an aphrodisiac, whence their other name which Rumphius also provides: Satyria.
. Rumphius is trying to convey to his readers the decorative pat-

[]

terns on the petals, which he compares here to Hebrew characters,

probably Rashi script, for instance:
. Blimbing or belimbing is the star fruit, Averrhoa carambola L., to be
found throughout the archipelago. It is an apt comparison. Rumphius
describes the blimbing tree in ..:.
. He is referring to the arches that rise from the circlet, from
front to back, or side to side, in a continuing loop.
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]

. For the Dutch verb verstuiven. This exclusively West-Germanic

word (stuben in German) propagated the beautiful Dutch compound
noun stuifmeel, for pollen. A cognate, stive, was once current in Pembrokeshire, England, for dust, specically the oating dust of our
during the operation of grinding (OED).
. This is an important passage, for it implies that Rumphius
entertained the notion that orchids propagated by wind-born seed.
Orchid seed was virtually unknown at the time.
. Manga is the well-known mango tree (Mangifera indica L.) which
Rumphius described at length in ..:. Smith notes (M, p. )
that Hasskarl suggested this plant might be Cymbidium wallichii Lindl.
Smith is not certain about this.
. A hand was considered the equivalent of four inches.
. What Rumphius calls Dart Root in Dutch is bakung in Indonesian, Crinum asiaticum L., described by him in ..:.
. This refers most likely to what in Latin palaeography is called
Square Capitals such as the following:

[]

See Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, pp.

.
. Rumphius is presumably referring to an ancient Samaritan
script, common to a part of Palestine in the fourth century .. See
Crown, Samaritan Minuscule Palaeography, Bulletin, pp. .
There was a square or majuscule script which is a developed form
of the palaeo-Hebrew script and a minuscule or cursive, which is a
owing and undecorated script (p. ). It is probable that Rumphius
has the majuscule script in mind, for that is the one he most likely saw
since it was the ocial script used for religious works.
. Smith (M, p. ) states that what Rumphius baptized Coconut Orchid was referred to by Blume to Arachnis flos aeris Rchb.f. but is
again (see n. ) doubtful that this is correct. De Wit, however, begs
to dier: . . . but I submit that Rumphius was aware of the presence
of A. flos aris on Java, that it diered from G. scriptum, and that it can
be deduced that this Bornean endemic was an ornamental in Java since
the rst half of the seventeenth century or earlier (p. ).
. Lida is the Indonesian word for tongue.
. Bonga is bunga and means ower, and putri can mean princess, hence the Princess Flower, which, according to Rumphius, is
what the name on Ternate, Saja baki (bak or boki), also means, as well as
the Latin Flos principissae.
. Also spelled keringsing and garingsing. Kain geringsing
which means cloth that does not make you fall ill, i.e., perhaps simply
healthis an ancient type of weaving that most likely originated in
western India. It is a sacred textile, woven in double ikat, primarily
from Bali. The cloths were used to ward o evil inuences, and were
employed only in rituals. They are now exclusively woven in the village
called Tenganan Paperinsingan (see illustration on page ).
. A misprint: no r.
. Most likely a misprint because lacra or lacre would have
something to do with sealing wax or lacquer. Perhaps what was meant
was the popular Portuguese word lacrau (Spanish: alacran), which meant
scorpion.

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Ceremonial cloth, geringsing wayang puteri, from Bali.

Cotton, double-ikat, from beginning of the twentieth century.
Collection Wereldmuseum Rotterdam.

. Although api is the common Indonesian word for re, Rumphius has pohon api-api in mind, which is a name for mangrove trees.
. There is some confusion here, it seems to me. Van Bemmel,
in Rumphius Memorial Volume, p. (hereafter MV, with page number[s]),
says that this bird might be Dicaeum vulneratum (Wallace), but the name,
Cacopit or Kakopit, and Rumphius descriptions here, in :, and
in :, seem to t Nectarinia aspasia better. This Sunbird of the
family Nectariniidae is described as Black Sunbird in Beehler, Pratt,
and Zimmerman, Birds of New Guinea, p. . They provide the illustration on page :
See plate for an illustration from Rumphius era.
. Mangroves.
. See :.
. The popular kenari tree, Canarium commune L.

[]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

From Bruce M. Beehler, Thane K. Pratt, and Dale A. Zimmerman,

Birds of New Guinea. Copyright by Princeton University Press.
Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

. This passage shows, according to De Wit (p. ), that Rumphius

understood that epiphytes are not parasites.
. An example of the botanical experiments that Rumphius constantly performed in his small, private hortus botanicus in eastern
Indonesia.
. The second passage that corroborates the assertion in n. .
. With Waringin trees, also known in English as banyan trees,
Rumphius is referring specically to what he called the Small-leaved
Waringin or Ficus benjamina L., described in ..:, esp. . This
is the rst correct mention of how this species propagates (De Wit,
p. ).
. Viscum is what Rumphius calls Ambonese Mistletoe and
De Wit (MV, p. ) identies as Amylotheca triflora (Span.) Danser. Described in ..:, esp. p. .
. Once better known as Katjang, now spelled kacang, this is the
peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.).
. Whitlow was in the original the succinct compound noun
nagelzweer. This refers to a festering sore or ulcer at the topmost nger joint, usually near the nail. This is also called vijt in Dutch, which
might well be the rst component (whit) of the English noun.
. Curcuma is kunyit, Curcuma domestica Val., a kind of yellow curry,
indispensable in Indonesian cooking.

[]

. The Latinized form of Charles de lEscluse (), Belgian

scholar born in Arras, in northern France. He was educated at the
universities of Ghent, Louvain, and Wittenberg and studied medicine
under the famous Rondelet at the University of Montpellier. He became a mentor of the son of Fugger, the wealthy banker. In he
traveled to Spain and Portugal and came across Ortas work. In England in Clusius found the work in Spanish on medicinal plants
from the New World by Nicolas Monardes, a Spanish physician from
Seville, entitled (in Clusius translation) De simplicibus medicamentis ex occidentali India delatis quorum in medicina usus est, and during another stay in
England obtained a copy of the work by Cristbal Acosta entitled Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias orientales. Clusius became prefect of
the Imperial Garden in Vienna and later the director of the botanical
garden of the University in Leyden. He succeeded to the chair held by
Dodoens at the latters death.
What Clusius appears to have done is collect works on botany and
natural history such as the Iberian trio just mentioned, abridge them,
translate the abbreviated version into Latin, then annotate and correct
them. In some casesespecially in that of Garcia da Ortathe original work was supplanted by this later version, so the problem arises
that one will often nd references to Carolus Clusius work when in
fact it was someone elses.
Clusius rst collaborative eort was on Rondelets De piscibus marinis
libri XVIII, and he also translated Dodoens Cruydeboeck into French as
Histoire des plantes (). Among his original works are a ora of Spain
() and one on Hungary and Austria ().
. Carolus Clusius, Rariorum plantarum historia (Antwerp: Plantin,
). This volume contained descriptions and illustrations of European plants.
. This refers to the Flemish botanist Rembert Dodoens (
). He studied in Louvain, in France, and in Italy, and although he
became a physician, Dodonaeus was primarily interested in botany. He
was in Vienna from to ; there he met Clusius and became the
personal physician to the Emperor Maximilian II and his successor

[]

Rudolph II. He was appointed a professor in Leyden in , a position he held until his death, when his chair went to Clusius. He wrote
many scientic works, mostly published in Antwerp and printed by
Plantin. Primarily of interest in the present context are his herbals. In
he published in Antwerp a herbal entitled De stirpium historia, which
was reprinted with additional material in two volumes in . In
a Dutch version had been published as Cruydeboeck, and reprinted in
. This same work appeared in a French translation by Charles de
lEscluse (Clusius) as Histoire des plantes (), and in an English translation in (reprinted in , , , ). His major work is Stirpium
historiae pemptades sex sive libri XXX, published by Plantin in Antwerp in
and reprinted in . This was published in a Dutch translation in
Leyden in as Herborius, seu Cruydeboeck van Rembertus Dodonaeus. The
famous Herball () by John Gerard () was an adaptation of
Dodonaeus Stirpium historiae pemptades. Since Gerards text is fundamentally the same as that of Dodonaeus Herbal, one can consult it for
references to the work of the Flemish botanist. Calceolus Mariae,
or the Ladys Slipper, is described in Gerards Herbal in bk. , ch. .
Gerard, p. .
. One of those tireless compilers that belong to the earlier history of natural science, Conrad Gesner () had a dicult youth.
When Gesner was still a teenager, his father, a follower of Zwingli,
was killed, along with Zwingli, at the Battle of Kappel on October ,
, and young Conrad was left without sucient nancial resources.
But he succeeded in his studies in Paris, and in Montpellier, where he
attended the lectures of Rondolet. The stamina of people like Gesner is amazing. He traveled a great deal, no sinecure in the sixteenth
century, practiced medicine (in fact, while administering to victims
of the plague in Basel, he succumbed to the disease himself ), and
helped various colleagues. Yet before he was thirty he published his
huge Biblioteca universalis, a catalog of all past writers in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, and at the age of twenty-four he was appointed a professor of medicine, physics, and ethics in Switzerland. He was a scholar
of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, a botanist, and the owner of a curi-

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osity cabinet that contained items he had collected during his many
travels. His very important botanical work was not well known for
quite some time. In he published a Catalogus Plantarum Latinae, Graecae, Germaniae et Galliae, which was used for at least two centuries. In
he published De hortis Germanicae, which contains ve orchids. Gesner
collected plants for years and made more than drawings, of
which he published only a few during his life, notes Jacquet (p. ).
These drawings were not found until the early part of the twentieth century and not published until the last quarter. On the basis of
drawings of several orchid species, Arditti concluded that Gesner was
the rst to draw orchid seeds, but Rumphius remains the rst to describe them. For Gesner see Jacquet, pp. . For Gesner and orchid
seed, see Wehner, Zierau, and Arditti, Plinius Germanicus and Plinius
Indicus.
. - is the Doric name of , the hyacinth.
The ancient Greek name included several dierent owers. Kosmos
here does not mean world or universe but ornament, decoration, or embellishment. Hence the expressive phrase for this ower
means Embellished Sandal. Lawler reports that experts have suggested this plant was the orchid Ophrys ferrum-equinum Desf. See Lawler,
esp. p. . Others have suggested Cypripedium calceolus L.; see Jacquet,
p. .
. Pausanias ourished around .. He was a Greek traveler and
geographer who knew Italy, Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine. He
is especially remembered for his Description of Greece. The plant
was mentioned in the following context. During a chthonian festival at
Demeters sanctuary in Corinth, a procession was held that included
children who wore wreaths. Their wreaths are woven of the ower
called by the natives cosmosandalon, which, from its size and colour,
seems to me to be an iris; it even has inscribed upon it the same letters
of mourning. Pausanias, Description of Greece, :.
. - is the plant mentioned by Dioscorides, in his Materia medica, .(). The polemonion plant is described
by Dioscorides as follows (illustration included):

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Polemonion.

Polemonium coeruleum Polemonia, but some call it Philetaeria,

ye Cappadocians call it Chiliodynamis. It has little thin branches,
winged, but leaves a little greater than Rue, but longer aunswerable
to those of Polygonum, or of Calaminth, but on ye top of them
are as it were Corymbi, in which is a black seed. Ye root a cubit
long, whitish, like to Struthium. It grows in hilly and rough places.
The root of this is drank in wine against venemous beasts, & ye
Dysentery, & ye Dysurie, and the Sciatica, with water. It is given
to ye splenicall, as much as a dragm, with Acetum. And ye roote of
this is hanged about one against ye stroke of a Scorpion. And they
say that they which have this shall not be beaten & though they
be smitten, yet they shall suer nothing; & being chewed it easeth
also ye toothache. (Quoted from: The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, pp.
.)
This is not an orchid but a species, Polemonium coeruleum, of the genus
Polemonium, Polemoniaceae family, also known as Greek Valerian. It is
native to temperate climes.

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. This means Tiger Flower. One of the vernacular names for

the orchid under discussion was Tiger Orchid.
. See Gerard, p. .
. Hieronymus Tragus is the Latinized form of the name of the
German botanist Jeremy Bock (). His herbal, Neu Kretter Bch,
was published in and was not illustrated. Illustrated editions appeared in and . The edition mentions eighteen orchids.
Rumphius might be referring to the following edition: Hieronymi
Tragi, De stirpium, maxime earum, in Germania (Strasbourg: V. Rihelius,
).
. Athanasius Kircher () was not a botanist. A German
scholar who became a Jesuit in , he assumed the post of professor
in Wrzburg until the Thirty Years War forced him to ee to Avignon
in France. The pope summoned him to Rome, where Kircher taught
mathematics at the Collegium Romanum, and, later, studied hieroglyphs and archaeology. He was the rst scholar to draw attention to
hieroglyphs. He wrote a large number of books, among which one on
ChinaChina illustrata (published in Amsterdam in )and one on
Egyptian hieroglyphsOedipus aegyptiacus ( vols., published in Rome
between and )are perhaps the most signicant. Kircher had
a great interest in Oriental languages, and when he was teaching in
Rome, he interviewed many of the missionaries returning from China.
His compilation of information on China became famous and very inuential. A Dutch translation appeared in , a French one in ,
and a (partial) English translation in .
The book Rumphius is referring to, Mundus subterraneus (published
in vols. in Amsterdam in ), was a very strange text about
what one might call telluric sciences, aspects of the earth. Rumphius
must have owned a copy and knew it well. He also quotes from it in
his Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet.
. Kirchers strange tale echoes the then prevalent theory of spontaneous generation (abiogenesis) for these plants. Propagation by
means of seed was still unknown. Kirchners notions were based on
the then prevalent belief that insects, such as bees or wasps, generated

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from dead bulls and horses, a notion derived from Virgil and the Old
Testament. I also think Kircher and others were specically thinking
of the genus Ophrys, which includes plants that are small and like to
grow in places such as meadows and heath, i.e., places where cattle
roam. Furthermore, species of Ophrys are remarkable for their mimicry
of insects. The lips of various Ophrys species look very much like bees,
wasps, or ies. The plant mimics because it lacks nectar and needs to
entice insects to come and inadvertently remove pollen, which they
then transmit to a neighboring orchid that also looks like an enticing insect. From the passage preceding these quotes, one can deduce,
without hesitation, that Rumphius had his doubts about such peculiar notions of provenance, and inclined to his own (correct) intuition
about orchid seed.
. Coagulum terrae is mentioned by Pliny in ..:.
The translator, W. H. S. Jones, considers this plant earth rennet
while the index (p. of vol. ) glosses it as probably bedstraw [or]
Galium verum. The botanist Kreutzer assumes this same plant to be
Neottia nidus avis (L.) Rich. See Jacquet, p. .
. Dr. Henk van der Wer came to my rescue here. Gesner mentioned Orobanche in Historia plantarum et vires ex Dioscoride, p. .
Theophrastus rst mentioned orobanche in his Enquiry into Plants,
bk. , ch. ; see Enquiry into Plants, Loeb ed., :. Theophrastus
orobanche seems to have been a plant called dodder in English
(Cuscuta europea). Dioscorides (bk. II, no. ) had most likely the modern botanical notion of broom-rape (a root parasite) in mind. Pliny
(bk. , Latin paragraph , and bk. , Latin paragraph ) used the
name both ways; the rst mention is orobanche as dodder, the second
as broom-rape. Properly, orobanche is the latter, a root parasite.
How could Rumphius consider Orobanche related to an orchid?
Van der Wer provides the following comment. Orobanche, the root
parasite, is not unlike some terrestrial orchids. Terrestrial orchids
can be saprophytic (i.e. they are parasitic on fungi), lack chlorophyll
completely, and are also leaess. Orobanche also has rather elaborate
owers and I can certainly see a supercial resemblance between Oro-

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banche and some terrestrial orchids. Of course, from a point of view

of plant classication, Orobanche is very far removed from orchids
(written communication).
. Jean Bauhin () came from a Parisian medical family that
converted to Protestantism and ed to Switzerland. Bauhin studied
in Basel and became a protg of Gesners in . He also studied in
Montpellier under Rondolet and obtained his medical degree in .
Between and he had a medical practice in Lyons, where he
survived the plague epidemic. In he settled down for the rest
of his life in Montbliard in the French Jura at the court of the Duke
of Wrtenberg. Bauhin established several botanic gardens. His main
work, presumably the one Rumphius is referring to, was Historia Plantarum Universalis, which he started working on in and left unnished
at his death. It was not published until .
. Today Viscum is a genus of semi-parasitic plants like mistletoe.
. Struik in the original, which normally means shrub, but
which once (though the usage is now obsolete) could refer to the trunk
of a tree (WNT ).
. Most chapters in Rumphius Herbal ends with a Comment
Aanmerking in Dutch and Observatio in Latin. They were written
by Johannes Burman (), a professor of botany and director
of the Municipal Botanical Garden in Amsterdam. Burman translated
Rumphius Herbal into Latin, and was responsible for getting it published (with great diculty) between and , in an edition that
printed his Latin translation in columns of text parallel to the Dutch
original. I would surmise that his comments were rst written in Latin
and then translated into Dutch. They are little more than botanical
notes on taxonomy, hence often cryptic. He was the rst to compare
the ora of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which he had indexed alphabetically
in in his Thesaurus Zeylanicus, with that of the Hortus Malabaricus by
Van Reede tot Drakenstein. (See next note.)
. This is a reference to the Hortus Malabaricus, the only work of
tropical botany to rival Rumphius, which was published in twelve volumes in Amsterdam between and . Its author, who was really

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a facilitator more than anything else, was Hendrik Adriaan van Reede
tot Drakenstein (). Of Dutch nobility, Van Reede became a
high ocial in the service of the Dutch East Indies Company, better
known by its acronym VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).
Most of his ocial career was spent in India (the Malabar coast) and
Ceylon. He lived extravagantly, yet his superiors chose him in to
act as a kind of inspector-general to root out corruption in the Companys ranks. He died on board ship on the way from Ceylon to India
and was rumored to have been poisoned by his enemies. He was buried
with great pomp in Surat.
For his magnum opus, Van Reede used something of a college of
local Malabar Brahmin experts, and solicited the support of Malabar
nobility. The botanical information they supplied was reviewed and
indexed by European experts, such as the Carmelite Monk Matthew
of St. Joseph, Paul Hermann, a professor of botany, the physician
(and hence, by necessity, botanist) Willem ten Rhijne in Batavia (the
VOCs capital on Java), and others, and the manuscript conveyed to
the Netherlands. There it was reviewed once again and augmented
with botanical information by yet another tier of experts, such as Jan
Commelin. Because of his political clout and connections, Van Reede
saw most of his text published during his lifetime, something that
Rumphius was never able to enjoy. The best study, and in English, on
Van Reede and his Hortus Malabaricus is by J. Heniger, hereafter referred
to as Heniger, with page number(s). Future references to the Malabar
herbal will be to Hortus Malabaricus, with the volume and page number(s). Rumphius knew the rst ten volumes and compared more than
plants with Van Reedes plants (Heniger, p. ). Orchids are listed
in the last (twelfth) volume of the Hortus Malabaricus, but Rumphius
never saw volumes and .
The reference to Ansjeli Maravara, the plants Malayalam name, is
Hortus Malabaricus, : (rst illustration), which Linnaeus () listed
as a species of the genus Epidendrum.
. Jan Commelin () was the second commentator of the
Hortus Malabaricus, and the editor of volumes through . His notes

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were printed in the text. His nephew, Caspar Commelin (),

became a renowned botanist, but Jan Commelin himself was not a professional botanist, though, like many of his compatriots at the time, he
became a passionate and quite competent amateur. He made a career
in the lucrative apothecary business and gradually rose in Amsterdams
municipal hierarchy. He published several catalogi on Dutch ora and
in was appointed managing director of the newly established medical botanical garden in Amsterdam. It soon rivaled its predecessor in
Leiden. See Heniger, pp. .
. This was a literal translation of Commelins Latin inscription in
the twelfth volume of the Hortus Malabaricus: Orchis Abortiva Aizoides
Malanariensis, ore odoratissimo variegato, intus aviculam repraesentante.
. I presume this refers to Caspar Commelin, Flora Malabarica sive
Horti Malabarici Catalogus Exhibens Omnium ejusdem Plantarum nomina (Leiden, ).
. Sir Hans Sloane (), a physician and naturalist, accompanied Monck. to Jamaica from to , and became Queen Annes
physician in . He was president of the Royal Society from to
, and his library and herbarium provided the foundation for the
British Museum. The abbreviation refers to Sloanes Catalogus plantarum
quae in insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt (London: D. Brown, ).
. Hans Sloane, A voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, vols. (London: printed for the author, ).
Chapter Two
. Original text in ..:.
Phalaenopsis amabilis (L.) Blume. Smith proceeds to note that the other
two forms of this monopodial orchid as distinguished by Rumphius
are referable to the same species. It is well known that the owers of
Phalaenopsis amabilis (L.) Blume vary considerably in size, in the form of
the sepals, petals, lip, and especially in the size and markings of the
yellow area on the lip. Specimens with the sepal purplish on the out-

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side are not rare. De Wit, however, begs to dier; see nn. and . This
orchid was chosen as Indonesias national ower; see Comber, p. .
. This text contains some tricky translation problems. The original here was chordelen, which I presume to be a variant of gordelen,
to encompass with a belt or ceinture.
. For verward, which normally means confused, but this is
botany.
. For wild.
. For met donker-bruine linien gespikkelt. There is a contradiction here. Gespikkelt can only mean speckled, dotted, spotted,
and the like. Globular markings cannot correspond to lines (linien), so
I dropped the main Dutch verb in my rendition.
. Smith states this is the same species but De Wit (p. ) wonders if it might be related to Phalaenopsis deliciosa Rchb. f. (Phalaenopsis hebe
Rchb.f.).
. De Wit again demurs and wonders if this might be Dendrobium
crumenatum Swartz (p. ). I should add here that De Wits text reads as
if he considered Rumphius passage starting with Name as referring
to this contested species. But its real antecedent is Phalaenopsis amabilis.
. This means the Great White Orchid. The rst Malay phrase
mans the same thing.
. Bombo is a misprint for Pombo, a local word for dove. Terbang is standard Indonesian for ying, hence Flying Dove, a name
adopted in Dutch.
. Luhu was a region on Hoamoal or Little Ceram.
. Kinar was the Ambonese name for the tree Kleinhovia hospita L.
described by Rumphius in ..:.
. Mango tree.
. Zeel in the original, which has a large number of very specic meanings, of which rope is the most generic and which recalls the
phrase forest rope that Rumphius uses for the (at the time unknown
noun) liana.
. Small White Angrec is Dendrobium ephemerum J. J. Sm. (M,
p. ).

[]

. For gefronst.
. Riddersporen in the original. Delphiniums.
. For ingelaten, a dicult usage here.
. For luchtig. Strange usage. The primary and most common
meaning of luchtig is airy, which has little signicance here; the second most common meaning is cheerful, which is also inappropriate.
I think what Rumphius meant was either a hill without dense tree
coverage, or cool, the latter a specic meaning during his century
especially common among sailors: i.e., a cool breeze (een luchtig windje).
I opted for the former.
. Melaleuca leucadendron L. trees that produce the once protable
medicinal oil.
. For bygewas. Parasitic was not commonly used until the
eighteenth century.
. Tufts of hair for lokken.
. This tropical fern is most likely the plant reduced by Merrill to
Drynaria sparsisora (Desv.) Moore (M, p. ), and described by Rumphius
in ..:.
. Indonesian for Small White Orchid.
. This does indeed mean poor anggrek, but in the sense of pity
or compassion. It is an expression heard countless times by anyone
who has lived in the Indies. An equivalent is the Spanish pobrecito. However, I do not quite know what Rumphius has in mind here. See next
note.
. Cassian, now kasian, is invoked by the Dutch word slecht,
which is intended to describe the plants shape. Now slecht commonly
has a clear pejorative meaning, but I do not think that this is what
Rumphius meant to convey. Originally the word meant no more than
simple, normal (the old sense of ordinary), orderly, guileless.
This is what Rumphius may have intended, thinking of comparing
this ower with the more extravagant beauty of its fellow orchids.
. De Wit (p. ) suggests this might be Dendrobium suaveolens Schltr.
and might be closely allied to Dend. ephemerum, but there is no certainty.

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. Daun subat is, according to De Wit (p. ), a Dendrobium sp.,

probably Dendrobium acinaciforme Roxb. See ch. .
. This is spelled Ponnampou-marvara in Hortus Malabaricus, :
, third illustration.
Chapter Three
. Original text in ..:.
Smith (M, p. ) lists this as Renanthera moluccana Bl.
. Zeeliger in the original, hence the comparative of zeel, for
which see n. of the previous chapter. Roping was a noun used in
Rumphius century for a ropy or rope-like formation (OED).
. For the original in t kreupel bos tussen de ruigte.
. A span was the equivalent of about nine inches, hence the stem
is about twenty-two inches long.
. The Red Orchid; the Indonesian phrase means the same thing.
De Wit (p. ), though not disagreeing with J. J. Smith, thinks that
this epiphyte could also be Renanthera coccinea Lour.
. Now spelled acar, this refers to pickles or anything preserved in
an acid liquid.
. From the Latin, originally Greek, capparis, here a kind of tropical
capers. Rumphius writes that the fruits of a small tree (Carissa carandas
L.) were eaten either raw or, most often, after having been pickled. He
describes it in the Auctuarium or . .:.
. This plant has not been identied.
. See ch. .
Chapter Four
. Original text in ..:.
Smith (M, p. ) lists this orchid as Vandopsis lissochiloides (Gaudich.)
Ptz.
. The Latin means: The Fifth Orchid or the Small Inscribed
Orchid.

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. Merrill (M, p. ) classies this mangrove tree as Sonneratia caseolaris (L.) Engl., which is described by Rumphius in ..:.
. Waccat was the Ambonese name for the tree just mentioned,
also spelled Wahat merah or Wakat merah.
. Now rendah, this Indonesian word means humble or submissive.
. See n. of ch. .
. De Wit (p. ) gives the following identication for this tree:
Pisonia grandis R. Br. var. sylvestris (T. et B.) Heim, while Merrill (M,
p. ) gives Pisonia grandis R.Br.
. Gomuto, also spelled gemutu or gumuto, is the ber, resembling horsehair, of the sugar palm Areca pinnata (Wurmb.) Merr.
a synonym for the more familiar name Arenga sacchariferaonce used to
make rope or thatch.
Chapter Five
. Original text in ..:.
The Sixth Orchid, the Musk or Odoriferous Orchid. Comber
identies this as Dendrobium bicaudatum Reinw. ex Lindl. De Wit (p. ),
however, opts for Dendrobium strebloceras Rchb.f.; Mr. Comber informed
me that the latter is only known on Halmahera.
. Houseleek is huislook in modern Dutch, but Rumphius had the
more expressive older name for this succulent of the genus Sempervivum:
Donderbaart, which means Thunderbeard. Indeed, the plant was
once also known as Barba Iovis (Sempervivum tectorum L.).
. Spadulen in the original. The d is in the Latin as well, but
I am assuming this is a misprint for spatulen or spatulas. Spatule,
which entered English from Middle Dutch, was a common form in
English in Rumphius time, regularly used by such writers as Holland (translator of Pliny), Evelyn, and Sir Thomas Browne. By the way,
with Surgeons we are talking of Barber Surgeons, not our modern
medical mechanics.

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Tongspatel inv. Nr. . Copyright Museum Boerhaave in Leiden.

Photograph by Tom Haartsen.

. Cananga is the favorite kenanga ower of the Canangium odoratum

tree, described by Rumphius in ..:.
. The owers of the Tanjong (now tanjung) tree, Mimusops elengi
L., which, as Rumphius asserts, were considered the Princess of treeFlowers in his day. He described it in ..:.
. De Wit (p. ) thinks this orchid might be Dendrobium moschatum
Swartz.
. Rumphius meant Siva. The Balinese are Hindus, more specically Sivaists. The Hindu god, whose name means auspicious, has
, epithets. Rumphius Dewa is the Vedic word for a celestial
power or supreme being, deva.
. That is to say musk.
. Professor Arditti informed me in writing that this is most likely
another rst, explaining it as follows: In most orchids the sepals,
petals and gynostemium (column) wither, die, and disappear. But in
a few these parts turn green and persist. There are also cases, as described here by Rumphius, in which these parts may die but they still
persist.

[]

. Casturi is kasturi or kesturi in Indonesian, that is to say civet,

obtained from either ambergris, the civet cat, or the musk shrew.
. See ch. .
. See n. of ch. .
. See nn. and of ch. .
. The Seventh Orchid is Dendrobium bicaudatum Reinw. ex Lindl.
Smith contends that he does not see a signicant dierence between
the plant depicted on plate and the second gure on plate (M,
p. ).
. An ell is about twenty-seven and a half inches.
. Horsel in the original. Spelled horzel in modern Dutch, of the
family Tabanidae.

. See n. .
. The well-known champaca ower, Michelia champaca L., described
by Rumphius in ..:.
. This is another interesting observation because, as J. Arditti
pointed out to me in writing, orchid owers exhibit many interesting pest pollination phenomena [and the] closing of owers is one of
them. . . . Color changes are also common pest pollination phenomena.
This is clearly another rst for Rumphius.
. The Seventh Orchid.
. The Champaca Orchid.
. Mangroves.
Chapter Six
. Original text in ..:.
The Eighth or Dusky Orchid (M, p. ) is Vanda furva (L.).
. See ch. : the Small White Orchid or Dendrobium ephemerum.
. See ch. : Renanthera moluccana.

[]

. The phrase means: Small dark Orchid. Glap should be gelap,

for dark, somber, black. The chilling phrase mata gelap, or mental
derangement, literally means darkening of the eye as if a black cloud
of madness obscured sensible vision.
. See ch. .
. This sympodial epiphyte is now Dendrobium bicaudatum Reinw. ex
Lindl., as J. B. Comber informed me.
. A large genus of eshy plants of the Crassulaceae family; he was
probably referring to the houseleek again.
. See ch. .
. Mimusops elengi L. See n. of ch. .
. According to De Wit (p. ), this might be Dendrobium acinaciforme.
. Capaha was the name of a steep mountain near Hitus northern coast, east of the Ela River. It was a seemingly impregnable stronghold for the Islamic forces of Tulukabessi, who were ghting the VOC.
See Rumphius, Ambonsche Landbeschrijving, pp. .
. The Small Lemon Orchid.
. The Tenth or Narrow-Leaved Orchid is (M, p. ) Luisia confusa Rchb. f.
. Canarium species.
. Perhaps Vigna sinensis (L.) Hassk., described by Rumphius in
..: (see gure on page ).
. For weiniger.
. Bontius, Historiae Naturalis & Medicae Liber Sextus. De Plantis, & Aromatibus, pp. . Bontius plant is most likely a Vanilla
species, as Henk van der Wer informed me.
. What we know as preserve or preserves.
Chapter Seven
. Original text in ..:.
For geil. The dog odor that Rumphius smelled has been likened
by others to the smell of goats. The owers of the Satyrium orchid

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Vigna sinensis, (L.). Savi, ex Hassk.

From J. J. Ochse, Tropische Groenten.

do indeed contain caproic acid, which has an unpleasant smell of

goats. See Arditti, Caproic Acid, American Orchid Society Bulletin, pp.
.
. The Eleventh or Dog Orchid is, according to Smith (M,
p. ), Dendrobium anosmum Lindl.
. Now spelled anjing, the phrase means the same as the Latin:
Dog Orchid. One should remember that dogs were never favorites
in Asia and, generally speaking, have a negative connotation.
. Kleinhovia hospita L.; see n. of ch. .
. The only pursed Angrek in the next, interpolated chapter, is
no. IV, which Rumphius called, in Latin, Angraecum angustis crumenis or Narrow-pursed Orchid and which Smith identied as Eria
moluccana. Smith states (M, p. ) that the illustration does not depict
Eria moluccana, but that the second gure on plate is Dendrobium papilioniferum J. J. Sm.

[]

The Fifty Seventh Chapter of the Auctuarium

. Original text in .:. The title tells us that this represents ch. of the Auctuarium or Addition to the Herbal (for convenience sake known as volume ). This was written after the rst six
volumes were nished and was added without worrying about textual
integration. The present text was originally intended for the Auctuarium but was lifted and placed here, leaving the following statement
to represent ch. in volume : Some new species of Angrek, which
were described and depicted before in Book eleven, Ch., vol. .
. Angraecum nervosum is not a nervous plant; this means the
Sinewy Orchid and was listed by Smith (M, p. ) as Coelogyne rumphii
Lindl. De Wit (p. ) also suggests Coelogyne celebensis J. J. Sm. for this
species.
. Kinar was the Ambonese name for a common tree, which
Rumphius also called cattimarus. It is classied as Kleinhovia hospita L.
and was described by Rumphius in ..:. He knew this tree
well because he had tried the sap of its leaves as a remedy for his deteriorating eyesight. And the Native Masters dripped the sap of the
selfsame leaves into my eyes, when my sight began to give way, in order
to cleanse the eyes, and I did not feel anything at rst, but shortly
thereafter I felt a piercing sharpness that shot up into my brain, and
it did not help me, perhaps because the disease was too pertinacious
(:).
. Once popularly known as Moluccan Ironwood, this tree is
listed by Merrill (M, p. ) as Intsia bijuga (Colebr.) Kuntze. Rumphius
described it in ..:.
. See n. of ch. .
. See n. of ch. .
. The description of plate was written by Burman, not Rumphius.
. Plukenet, Almagesti Botanici Mantissa.
. This refers to a Mexican orchid and a work on the natural history of Mexico. The Aztecs and the Maya were quite familiar with

[]

orchids and cultivated the vanilla orchid in pre-Columbian times. The

Aztec elite, especially Emperor Montezuma, avored their chocolate
with the fruits of the orchid which they called tlilxochitl, meaning black
ower, which most likely was Vanilla planifolia. Xchitl is the word for
ower in Nahuatl. The vanilla orchid was probably the rst tropical orchid to become known in Europe. The Spaniards brought vanilla
(and the tale of its provenance) to Europe in , and Clusius published the rst European botanical description of it in his Exoticorum
libri decem, printed in . Another scholar from the Netherlands (encountered in these pages and peripherally associated with Rumphius)
who is part of the history of the vanilla orchid is Willem Piso (
), the Leiden doctor who published Bontius texts. He was the rst
to use and print the word vaynilla in his seminal work on the natural
history of Brazil, De Indiae utriusque, published in (see Lawler, p. ).
Present usage of the noun vanilla derives from Piso. One can tell
from these rare reports of tropical orchids and from the dates when
these occurred how, once again, incredibly early and comprehensive
Rumphius was.
The Mexican orchid mentioned by Burman, Chichultic Tepetlauxochite, is most likely a misprint for Chichiltic tepetlauhxochitl as
Hernandez had it. I would venture the guess that the rst half of the
second word is the Nahuatl teptlatl, which means hard ground and
suggests that this orchid was a lithophyte, perhaps Laelia speciosa (which
is how Berliocchi, The Orchid in Lore and Legend, identies it in the caption
on p. ; for Berliocchis book see n. of The Petola Leaf, below).
The work in which this particular orchid was pictured was executed by
Francisco Hernndez () and printed in a collaborative eort
by several authors, with Recchi as the customary main author: Nardo
Antonio Recchi, Rerum medicarum Nouae Hispaniae thesaurus, seu, Plantarum
animalium mineralium mexicanorum historia (Rome: Vitalis Mascardi, ).
. Comber identies this as Cleisostoma subulatum Bl.
. A low beach tree, Excoecaria agallocha L., that contains a blinding
sap. Rumphius described it in ..:.
. . . . beginnende Moer-nagel in the original, where the rst

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word literally means beginning. I assume he meant budding. The

four dierent stages of the clove ower are shown here.
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]

. De Wit (p. ) states that J. J. Smith, in an article published in

, classied this lithophytic orchid as Vanda saxatilis J. J. Sm. In Merrills index from , Smith merely said that it was a species of Vanda
(M, p. ), while in his earlier study of Ambonese orchids (), he
had classied it as Vanda crassiloba (Orchideen, pp. ).
. Hortus Malabaricus, vol. , p. , gure : Tsjerou-mau-maravara.
Again, these comments were written by Burman, not Rumphius.
. Plukenet, Almagestum Botanicum.
. This is a literal translation of what Plukenet added in his commentary on the Hortus Malabaricus.
. Plukenet, Phytographia.
. Hermann, Paradisus Batavus.
. This Narrow-Purse Orchid is Eria moluccana Schltr. & J. J. Sm.
. Smith judges this plant to be unrecognizable (M, p. ). De
Wit conjectures a fern, either Drymoglossum piloselloides (L.) Presl. or Cyclophorus nummularifolius (Sw.) C. Chr. (p. ).
. See n. of ch. .
. This vine is most likely Hoya rumphii Blume, as Merrill asserts
(M, p. ). Rumphius described it in ..:.
. Smith oers only Bulbophyllum sp. for Rumphius Single-Flower
Angrek, but adds: The description of this plant in almost every
point applies to Bulbophyllum grandiflorum Blume, but so far as I know
Blumes species has not been recorded from Amboina (M, p. ). De
Wit (p. ) adds the possibility: Bulbophyllum uniflorum (Bl.) Hassk.

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. See ch. .
. Smith (M, p. ) reduced this to Liparis treubii J. J. Sm. De Wit
(p. ) thought that it might be Liparis condylobulbon Rchb. f. His reason
was that the genus Liparis in the Moluccas and Indonesia is very much
in need of revision.
. The Gajang tree, more often gajam or gajanus, is a tall tree,
Inocarpu sedulis Forst. (M, p. ). Rumphius described it in ..:.
. Rumphius really called it the Indies Lily, and Casi selan
he spelled in the chapter describing it..:casse selan,
otherwise written kasslan, which is presumably Balinese. This plant
is Pancratium zeylanicum L.
. Kattensteert in the original. Burman takes this literally to be
a cats tail (ut totus caulis caudam felis referat longam), but I think
Rumphius had the botanical meaning in mind. However, katten-steert
refers to so many dierent plants that I will not hazard a guess as to
which one he had in mind.
. Rumphius might be talking about a valley near a river on Hoamoal, Serams western peninsula, otherwise known as Little Ceram,
about two or three miles above Luhu.
. For the very rare usage of slensen; the WNT quotes Rumphius to
illustrate the verbs usage.
. Smith (M, p. ) oers only Dendrobium sp.
. Eugenia sp.
. Smith (M, p. ) says only that the plant described by Rumphius evidently belongs in the Sarcanthinae. De Wit has nothing to add.
Taenia (which Latin took over directly from Greek) originally meant a
hairband, a ribbonby extension a kind of sh, a tape worm, even a
reef.
. Rumphius uses the diminutive riempje, which I translate as
thong, in the older sense of a very thin strip of leather, used as a
lace or strap.
. This Woolly [or Downy] Orchid is a species of Eria (M, p. )
according to Smith. De Wit oers: Eria monostachya Lindl. (p. ).

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. I am sure Rumphius had a heraldic lion in mind: rampant, with

a long, curved tongue sticking out of its open (i.e., roaring) mouth.
Such rampant lions were common armorial bearings in the Low Countries.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

. Perhaps a strange spelling of Tulehu, a town on Hitus eastern

coast, across from Haruku Island.
Chapter Eight
. Original text in ..:.
Smith (M, pp. ) says only that this is a species of Dendrobium.
De Wit (p. ) oers no alternatives.
. Eugenia sp.
. A reddish pigment obtained from a layer around the seeds of
(what is now) a common tall shrub, Bixa orellana L. Rumphius called it
the Paint Tree, also Galuga, and Pigmentaria in ..:.
. This means the Purple or Bare Orchid.
. The Jambu Orchid.
. The Cassomba Orchid.
. Smith (M, p. ) has no doubt this is Dendrobium purpureum Roxb.

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. This second species Rumphius called the Purple Forest Orchid.

. What we call the banyan tree, Ficus benjamina L., described by
Rumphius in ..:.
. Perhaps the cemara tree, Casuarina equisetifolia L.
. The clove tree, Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & Perry, is described at length by Rumphius in ..:.
. Literally sh eye, it can also refer to a wart or pockmark. For
whitlow see n. of ch. .
. See ch. .
. Hortus Malabaricus, vol. , p. , g. .
Chapter Nine
. Original text in ..:.
This sense of a toady existed in Rumphius day, but not the botanical connotation of a parasite living o the nutriment of another
plant. The latter usage was not recorded until after his death, during
the rst quarter of the eighteenth century.
. Smith (M, p. ) identied this orchid as Dendrobium moluccense
J. J. Sm. Rumphius Latin phrase means: Small Suppliant Plant.
. This was spelled geel in the original text, a word that means
yellow in Dutch, but which I construe to be a misprint for heel.
. A wonderful phrase in the original: lange in haar wezen blyvende. Arditti comments that this is clearly a succulent orchid [and]
longevity of succulent leaves is a known characteristic at present (personal communication).
. Mai bloempjes in the original. An old word for Convallaria
majalis. No longer in use.
. De Wit (p. ) states that this is more likely a deep red.
. Subat as a verb was colonial usage for to coax or wheedle,
in the sense of butter up. Derived from sobat (friend) and spelled
soebatten, it became part of continental Dutch, but it is not proper Indonesian.

[]

. In ..:, where he called it Gramen supplex (a phrase he

uses below) and rompot or daun subat. De Wit (MV, p. ) lists it
as Digitaria adscendens (H.B.K.) Henr.
. Smith (M, p. ) labels the First Large Suppliant Plant Dendrobium acinaciforme Roxb.
. Parampuan is properly perempuan, the word for woman.
. Yver in the original, which today commonly means eort,
diligence, perhaps ardor in a gurative sense. But in Rumphius day
it could well mean lust, desire, a passionate love. The word itself
derives from the German eifer, a substantive that did not become current in Germany until Luthers vernacular translation of the Bible. It
entered Dutch along with the vernacular Bible.
. Elsewhere Rumphius calls this Hieroglyphic Grammar a
Grammatica Symbolica. What he has in mind is a language of owers, whereby each particular plant represents an emotion or desire, a
common knowledge shared by the native populace. A code based on
natures ora, it is a perfect example of semiotics since such a language
of owers is a system that enable[s] human beings to perceive certain
events or entities as signs, bearing meaning: Scholes, Semiotics, p. ix.
A note of caution: I am not speaking of emblematic or religious moralizing, which is how most scholars will discuss, for instance, Dutch
ower painting. See Tyler, Dutch Flower Painting , esp. pp.
. Even though Rumphius was a practicing Protestant, he was not a
simple morals monger. He rather liked this oral stenography, a shorthand for illiterate people who needed to convey their desires without
calling attention to their enterprise. In the text on the grass Gramen
supplex, mentioned in n. , he praises the economy of this semiotic
code. He states that this grass had no particular use except that the
Malay and Ternatan women include it in their Grammar (Letterkunst)
since if they want to write a Request to someone, wherewith they
want to beg for forgiveness for some faults, something we have to do
with many letters and Compliments, they accomplish this quite simply
by sending a single twig of this grass, since its folded and attened leaf-

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lets, represent the folded hands of whoever is begging for forgiveness

(:).
Such a oral code was once also used in Europe, and in the United
States, particularly in the nineteenth century. It was particularly useful
to lovers. See Osgood, The Poetry of Flowers. On p. Osgood states
the usage of owers in this manner as follows: they were ingeniously
made emblematical of our most delicate sentiments; they do, in fact,
utter in silent eloquence a language better than writing; in this way
owers make it possible to quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of news, without ever inking the
ngers (p. ).
. I think he is referring to mamacurs or makurs, glass armlets
held in great esteem by the Ceramese Alfurs. See ACC, pp. .
. Perhaps a Dendrobium sp. but Smith judges the description to
be so vague that it is not even certain that the plant described by
Rumphius belongs in the genus Dendrobium (M, p. ). De Wit (p. )
is even doubtful that an orchid was described. In any case, no illustration is given.
. See n. .
. In the original: zy staan ook in malkander geschikta troublesome phrase. I take schikken here to be a synonym for voegen or passen,
to t.
. Another dubious identication. Smith says a Dendrobium sp.,
only venturing the guess that it is probably a species of Dendrobium of
the section Rhopalanthe (M, p. ).
. This plant also earns nothing more denite than Dendrobium sp.
(M, p. ), though Smith feels that the description of the ower is
strongly suggestive of Dendrobium confusum Schltr., but so far as I know
Schlechters species never attains the length noted by Rumphius (M,
p. ).
. Seventeenth-century shoes (see page , top).
. Smith (M, p. ) identies this plant as Dendrobium calceolum
Roxb.

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Mans shoes from southern Germany; end of seventeenth century.

Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

. The second illustration on plate .

. Smith (M, p. ) states that the rst illustration on plate can
scarcely belong with the plant described as Herba supplex prima. He does
not know what plant it might be.
Chapter Ten
. Original text in ..:.
He means the previous twelve epiphytes.
. Standelwort was Standel-kruid in the original, also known
as Standergrass in England. Gerard insists these plants were known as
Dogs Stones (ch. , pp. ), that is to say Dogs Testicles,
due to the shape of the root bulbs. The latter hints that this plant is
one of the Orchidaceae. Standelwort came into English from Middle
Dutch, and was a native Dutch name for a local orchid, Orchis mascula.
The WNT reports that there are twenty-eight species of orchids in the
Netherlands.
. Rumphius First Terrestrial Orchid is listed by Smith (M,
p. ) as Spathoglottis plicata Blume.

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

. A kora kora was a vessel particular to the Moluccas. It was in

essence a large orembaai with very big outriggers. These boats had a wide
beam, with an ample amount of space, and very high, decorated stem
and stern. In the center was a covered platform. The kora kora was
propelled by a large number of oarsmen, sometimes as many as two
hundred; some even sat on the wide outriggers. It could carry sail, but
no more than one tanja sail (a canted rectangular sail) on a tripod mast.
With a sti wind, that sail became a liability because the kora kora was
not very seaworthy, and many of them foundered. They were armed
with small-caliber ordnance and with sidearms. The oarsmen rowed to
the rhythm of tifa drums and gongs. In the rst half of the seventeenth
century, the VOC assembled eets of kora kora to conduct hongi raids,
armed naval patrols intended to ensure that the Companys monopoly
of the spice trade was maintained and honored. In the second half of
the same century, when hostilities had largely ceased, the yearly kora
kora eets were launched primarily for show. These large vessels no
longer exist.
. Probably Curcuma petiolata (M, p. ). Rumphius discusses nine

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forms of Curcuma (a kind of curry plant) in ..:. The Curcuma Silvestris or wild curcuma is mentioned on pp. .
. A yam, Dioscorea esculenta, described by Rumphius in ..:
.
. Acquelyen in the original, a bizarre spelling of akelei, Dutch for
the Columbine ower (Aquilegia vulgaris L.). This ower was the symbolic emblem of many rederijkkamers, literary clubs of rhetoricians, in
seventeenth-century Holland.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

. Tydeloze in the original, tijdeloos in more modern Dutch. It

was more often spelled tijloos, and originated in Middle Dutch. It
literally means timeless and referred to a ower that bloomed at
an unusual time, for instance, in very early spring. Although at least
ve dierent species of plants were called such, the most common
plant with which the term was associated was Colchicum autumnale L.
or Meadow Saron, a most remarkable plant for temperate climes
in that it produces leaves in spring and seed pods in summer, and
it blooms in autumn. Gerard describes these owers extensively in
...
. Kropgans in the original. A compound noun assembled from
krop (crop) and gans (goose). Burman was fooled and translated this bird
with anseris, which means goose in Latin, but then he probably never
saw a pelican.
. See n. of ch. .

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. Smith (M, pp. ) assigns it Phaius gratus Blume. He is unsure of his classication because this species is unknown to me (M,
p. ).
. Tuber for knol, a rather generic term in Dutch. Tuber did
not enter the language until the latter half of the seventeenth century but, even if not frequent usage, it is appropriate here because
Rumphius distinguishes between this outgrowth and a root.
. See ch. .
. The Latin means the First Purple or White Terrestrial Orchid.
. Misspelling of kora kora.
. Tanah means land, earth, soil (also in a gurative sense), hence
this phrase means Earth Orchid.
. This plant is not an orchid, but a member of the Amaryllidaceae: Merrill (M, pp. ) calls it Curculigo capitulata (Lour.)
Kuntze., and De Wit (p. ) Molineria capitulata (Lour.) Herb.; hence the
Ambonese were wrong.
. Rumphius also spells this Ambonese grass Hulang and describes it in ..:. Merrill (M, p. ) lists it as Andropogon amboinicus
(L.) Merr.
. Not identied.
. Saguer or saguire or sagwire is the palm wine called
toddy by British colonials, extracted from the Arenga pinnata palm.
. See plate (top) and n. of ch..
. Rumphius First Ground Angrek or Angraecum terrestre
primum, which Smith lists as Spathoglottis plicata Bl., is not illustrated
here or on any other plate in the Herbal. According to Smith (M, pp.
) the rst gure on plate depicts Phaius amboinensis Bl., which
is described in the next chapter.
. Figure on plate is (M, p. ) Phaius gratus Bl. or what Rumphius called in the present chapter his second kind, Angraecum terrestre primum album.
. Figure on plate is the orchid described as Flos triplicatus
in ch. , Calanthe triplicata (Willemet) Ames.

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Chapter Eleven
. Original text in ..:.
The Pinang is the fruit of the well-known Areca catechu palm, described in ..:.
. Veratrum, according to De Wit (p. ).
. A genus of tropical herbs of the family Zingiberaceae, which
includes turmeric. This species is described by Rumphius in ..:
.
. Smith (M, pp. ) argues that this Other Ground Orchid
is Phaius amboinensis Bl.
. Indonesian for Ground Orchid.
. This is incorrect. The present orchid, Phaius amboinensis Bl., is depicted on plate , g. . Fig. on plate shows Phaius gratus Bl.
. Hortus Malabaricus, vol. , pp. , g. .
. This refers to the commentary Caspar Commelin added to the
entries in the Hortus Malabaricus in his text: Commelin, Flora Malabarica.
. Perhaps Burman is referring here to his own work: Joan Burman,
Flora Malabarica (Amsterdam, ).
. Plukenet, Amaltheum Botanicum.
Chapter Twelve
. Original text in ..:.
Merrill (M, pp. ) identies this as Curculigo capitulata (Lour.)
Kuntze. The Latin involucrum refers to something that is used to wrap
things in. This plant is not an orchid but a species of the Amaryllidaceae. Its leaves look like those of orchids.
. See n. of ch. .
. Globba or galoba refers to a genus of the Zingiberaceae, described by Rumphius in ..:.
. Kolf[ke] in the original. The word spike, meaning a form of
inorescence, was current in Rumphius day. In modern botany this
is the spadix.

[]

. It would seem that Rumphius coined this word himself; at

least he states as much in his description of Lampujang (Zingiber
sp.) in ..:. The Dutch noun for it, he says, would be onderwas or ondergewas. He derived Hypophyton from the Greek verb
, which, according to Liddell and Scott, means to make to
grow from below. What I think he has in mind is sucker, a word current in the sixteenth century, when it already meant a shoot thrown
out from the base of a tree or plant, which in most cases may serve for
propagation; now esp. such a shoot rising from the root underground
(OED).
. What he called Globba durion mera, more commonly galoba
durian merah, is the plant Amomum roseum Roxb. Rumphius discussed the
plant in ..:.
. Bonkus, elsewhere spelled bonckos, are native cigarettes.
Rumphius was not familiar with this way of smoking, so he noted it in
particular when he discussed the tobacco plant in ..:. This
is how he described them: After the green leaves [of the tobacco plant]
are dried in the wind, and cut into narrow strips, they are wrapped in
dry and smoothed Pissang [=banana] leaves, about ve to six inches
long, and as thick as ones little nger. These small rolls are called
Bonckos by the Malay, and are lit at their ends, placed in the mouth,
and sucked on (:).
. The seeds of the kanari tree, Canarium commune L., an important
staple in the Moluccas in Rumphius day. He described this important
tree in ..:.
. Busagtig in the original, most likely a misprint for buisachtig, that is, something that is round and hollow.
. Amomum cardamomum Willd., described by Rumphius in ..:
.
Chapter Thirteen
. Original text in ..:.
Comber identies this as Calanthe triplicata (Willemet) Ames.

[]

. See n. of ch..
. Gentiana is today the type genus of the Gentianaceae, comprising
numerous herbs.
. Plantago normally refers to forms of plantain; Plantago is the
name of the genus. Henk van der Wer informed me that the reason
for Rumphius comparison is that orchids have leaves with parallel
venation, that is to say, their leaves have several veins of more or less
equal thickness which run from the base to the tip of the leaf parallel
to each other. Plantago has, like many orchids, parallel venation; the
lower leaf surface is also ribbed by the raised veins. Hence plantago
leaves resemble the leaves of terrestrial orchids in terms of venation
and shape.
.

Zodiacal sign of Aries.

. Triple Flower.
. Ambonese Hellebore.
. Three-layered Flower. Bunga is ower, tiga means the number
three, and lapis is a layer or stratum (among other meanings).
. Stands of Melaleuca leucadendron trees, which have a white bark,
hence are bright (ligt in the original) when seen in the otherwise
relentlessly green tropical landscape.
. This fern, listed by Merrill (M, p. ) as Gleichenia linearis, is described by Rumphius in ..:. He states that people used the
black stems of these ferns instead of goose quills when writing Arabic
script, because they were rmer.
. Bangle is banglai or bangl, a ginger, Zingiber cassumunar, described
by Rumphius in ..:.
. De Wit (p. ) says this is Syzygium aromaticum, i.e., the clove tree.
. The betel-nut palm, Areca catechu L.

[]

Chapter Fourteen
. Original text in ..:.
See n. of ch. .
. Orchis was rst used by Theophrastus, and thereafter by other
classical botanists such as Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny.
Orchis is now a genus of European terrestrial orchids, comprising some
thirty-ve species.
. For standelwort see n. of ch. .
. Described in ..:. Included here following ch. .
. This is Polianthes tuberosa L. and described in ..:. It
was cultivated specically for its marvelous scent.
. Rumphius Latin phrase means: Large Ambonese Orchid, with
a root that looks like ngers. This is a species of Eulophia, but Smith
(M, p. ) is by no means certain which one.
. Spathoglottis plicata Bl., described in ch. , the rst kind.
. Lampujang, now lempuyang, a plant related to ginger. Merrill
(M, p. ) reduced it to Zingiber zerumbet, and Rumphius described it in
..:.
. This is a coral, Isis hippuris L., as identied by Bayer (MV, ).
For the comparison see Rumphius description in ..:.
. The Latin phrase means: Large Ambonese Orchid, with a Root
resembling a Radish. This is not an orchid, but, according to Merrill
(M, p. ), Curculigo orchioides Gaertn. It is related to what Rumphius
called Involucrum or the Wrapper in ch. , and which is Curculigo
capitulata.
. Rumphius spells this strange phrase tommon contsji in the
title of his chapter describing it, in ..:. Now spelled temu
kunci, this medicinal plant is listed by most as Gastrochilus pandurata
(Roxb.) Ridl., but Merrill (M, p. ) reduces it to Kaempferia pandurata
Roxb.
. Satyrium is an ancient name associated with orchid species,
derived from Satyr because of the plants alleged erotic powers. In

[]

, Olof Swartz made Satyrium the name of a genus of European

terrestrial orchids (Lawler, p. ).
. As before, this merely means Ground Orchid.
. I think alea is halia, the Indonesian word for ginger.
. Hitam means black.
. For lugtig.
. Snygras in the original. This refers to the well-known, but
infamous alang-alang grass, a very sharp grass that will cut travellers
traversing the sometimes large expanses of it. It is a species of Imperata.
. Ubi is a general word for tubers, but Rumphius probably had
in mind the yam he called the common ubi or Ubium vulgare, in
..:. Merrill lists it as Dioscorea alata L. (M, p. ).
. Combili or kombili, is an edible tuber, Dioscorea esculenta, described by Rumphius in ..:.
. Bernsteen in the original. The Dutch noun bernsteen refers only
to the fossil resin that is the true Baltic amber, not to the substance
obtained from the sperm whale; see ACC, p. , n. .
. Apostematie in the original, which was an inated synonym
for aposteem, and meant the same thing: abscess or pustule.
. In the original negen-ogen, which literally translates as nine
eyesa nasty boil, called such, it seems, because it often begins as a
number of small pimples.
. Buro malacco was the Ternatan name of the plant Rumphius
called Oculus astaci or, in Malay, Matta udan, that is to say
Shrimp eye, and described in ..:. Merrill lists it as Cissus aristata Bl. (M, p. ).
. That is to say, the plant that belongs to the Amaryllidaceae,
Curculigo orchioides.
. The orchid Habenaria rumphii, discussed in the next chapter.
. A form of the orchid genus Peristylus, for which see the next
chapter.

[]

Chapter Fifteen
. Original text in ..:.
Smith (M, p. ) lists this orchid as Habenaria rumphii (Brongn.)
Lindl. This is the same plant as the second one (the little orchid)
mentioned in the next chapter, entitled The Susanna Flower (from
..:).
. That is to say the orchid inorescence, which is usually a raceme.
We associate this noun mostly with corn, but that is not intended here.
Rumphius means a spike of owers. The original word was air,
variant spelling of aar, the spike or head of European cereal plants.
. For weinig.
. The edible tuber Dioscorea esculenta.
. To indicate the seasons in tropical regions is tricky because
of the great variability in wind direction and geographical features. I
think one might safely say that the tropical year is roughly divided
into three periods. The wet or East monsoon in Rumphius region appears to be from May to August, with September and October as the transition months to the dry or West monsoon, which
is roughly from November to February, with March and April as the
transition months to the wet monsoon. This division would be dierent in other parts of the archipelago, in some places the exact opposite. For instance, on Java, the dry monsoon is from May to August,
with September and October as the kentering months to the wet monsoon, which is from November to February, with March and April
as the kentering months to the dry season again. The four transition
months (another nice expression for them was twijfelmaanden or indecisive months), March, April, September, and October, are called the
kentering in Dutch, a very specic term not encountered for this purpose in other languages. Kenteren is clearly related to the verb kantelen,
to turn over. Kantelen was originally used for the time period when
the tides change. Those kentering months can cover a shorter time, seldom longer. Generally speaking, April and October are the inevitable
kentering months in the Indian Ocean. That period was also the most

[]

perilous for ones health and notorious for a higher incidence of death
than at any other time of the year. This is true for the rest of Asia and
for Africa as well. See Ludeking, Schets, p. .
On this basis, one would have to say that this orchid blooms,
roughly, sometime between August and November.
. The Latin means simply Small Ambonese Orchid.
. The Malay is even simpler: Small Orchid.
. See n. in ch. .
. Red Mountain or Batu merah was a hill northeast of Victoria
Castle, the VOCs main fortress in the region. The Batu merah district
was Muslim.
. This second kind is, according to Smith (M, p. ), a species
of Peristylus, but he does not know any species like it from Amboina.
De Wit (p. ) ventures the guess Peristylus goodyeroides (D. Don) Lindl.
. This stem is a maximum of / inches.
. Eight inches of bare stem.
. Just over half an inch.
. See ch. .
. For the original stam which normally, in modern Dutch,
means trunk and is commonly not used for a part of a ower or
plant. But in Dutch botanical literature stam (truncus in Latin) very specically refers to woody stems of plants which live longer than one
year, while the stem of a plant that lives only for one blooming season is called a stengel (caulis in Latin), according to the WNT, under stam.
Since Rumphius had not used it before in this orchid context, I kept
it, thinking he had this specic meaning in mind.
. Jacob Breyne, Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarum Plantarum Centuria Prima (Danzig, ).
. See n. of ch. .
. See n. of ch. .
. Hortus Malabaricus, vol. , pp. , g. .

[]

The Susanna Flower

. Original text in ..:.
This is Pecteilis susannae (R.Br.) Raf. as identied by Comber, Orchids
of Java, p. .
. Throughout Rumphius writings on orchids, orchis, orchides, satyria, and angrec (now anggrek) are synonyms.
. See n. of ch. . The reference is most likely to Stirpium historiae
pemptakes sex sive libri XXX (Antwerp: Plantijn, , ).
In the contemporary English translation of Dodoens herbal, orchids are discussed in book , ch. (pp. ), under the name of
Standelwort or Standergrass. He distinguishes ve kinds: ) Cynosorchin, sive canis testiculum, ) Testiculum Morionis, ) Tragorchin, ) Orchin Serapian, and ) Testiculum odoratum or Testiculum pumilionem. The plant with which Rumphius compares his
Flos Susannae is described as having leaves that are somewhat long,
broad, and smooth, and a stalk that is a foote long, on which groweth
here and there in a spikie bush on top, certain pleasant white oures,
somewhat like Butteries with a little taile hanging behind, in which
is a certaine sweete juice or moisture like honie in taste. Quoted from
Dodoens, A New Herball, p. . See also, Jacquet, pp. .
. Weegbere in the original, which should be weegbree, plants of
the genus Plantago. It is dicult to say if Rumphius is referring to the
European plantain or to the plant he considered a tropical variety. He
called it Plantago aquatica or Water Lettuce (..:) which
Merrill, (M, p. ) identied as Pistia stratiotes L.
. Latinization of the Indonesian name for the orchid: anggrek.
. Bunga is the general Indonesian word for ower, while it is also
used in a variety of wonderful phrases meaning the owering of something, for instance bunga api or re ower (a spark or reworks);
musim bunga or ower season (spring); bunga karang or ower of the
coral reef (sponge); bunga can also mean interest on ones money, the
owering of ones money.
. This appears to be the only mention we have of Rumphius rst
wife; I have been unable to discover anything else. We know only her
[]

rst name, and I do not even know for sure that Rumphius was married to Susanna. The word that refers to her in this moving sentence
is Gezellinne, which in a general sense meant companion but also
could specically refer to a mans spouse. And yet, at the time the noun
huisvrouw was a more common and legal locution for ones wife. The
fact that only her rst or Christian name is given might suggest that
she was not Dutch but a local woman.
. This means earth orchid, in Indonesian, that is to say, one of
the terrestrial orchids.
. The southern peninsula of the two that together form the
island of Ambon.
. Melaleuca leucadendron L. is the tree that produces the essential oil,
distilled from its leaves, known as cajeput oil. Rumphius was the rst
to describe the tree and its product: . .:. In the Moluccas the island of Buru was particularly known for the production of
cajeput oil; see the ne novel by Beb Vuyk entitled Het laatste huis van de
wereld (). It was translated by Andr Lefevere with the title The Last
House in the World and published in Two Tales of the East Indies (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, ).
. In his Flora of Manila, Merrill spells it Macabuhay and identies it
as Tinospora reticulata. It is a climbing vine with pale-green owers indigenous to the Philippines, where it blooms from March to May. See
Merrill, A Flora of Manila, p. .
. This little orchid is Habenaria rumphii (Brongn.) Lindl., and is
described at length by Rumphius in ..:. See previous chapter.
. Rumphius includes many references to China in his work, both
scholarly and based on personal communication. As to the rst, he uses
most frequently a once celebrated work by the Italian priest Martinus
Martini (), entitled Novus atlas Sinensis, published in Amsterdam
in , commonly referred to as Atlas Sinensis. Martini had been a
Catholic missionary in China, so that his writing was based in fact.
Rumphius most likely encountered Martinis work in the substantial
borrowings made by Martinis teacher, Athanasius Kircher (),
mentioned in the rst chapter. Kircher included Martinis information
[]

in his famous China illustrata, published in Amsterdam in . Kircher

never went to Asia.
Rumphius other source for Chinese information was a substantial Chinese emigrant population in the islands capital, Kota Ambon. Towards the end of Rumphius century, the total number of the
towns citizens was not quite six thousand. In , for instance, VOC
personnel, including their families, numbered ,, with other
Europeans. But there were also Chinese citizens. See Knaap, A
City of Migrants, Indonesia (), , esp. p. . According to
Rumphius own testimony (:), these Chinese people largely emigrated to the Indies from southern China, particularly from the two
coastal provinces of Guangdong (formerly romanized as Kuangtun,
and spelled Quantung by Rumphius) and Fujian (formerly Fukien,
spelled Fockien by Rumphius). Whenever Rumphius quotes Chinese
that is not from printed sources, it is a southern dialect form.
It is, therefore, quite normal to nd a Chinese reference in his work;
the surprise is that there were no others in his orchid texts, especially
when one knows that the earliest records about orchids are alleged
to come from China. The controversy about the rst conrmed mention of orchids in Chinese literature does not concern us here, but
there seems to be some consensus that the rst specic literary mention of orchids is from the Han period (about .. to .. ; see
Lawler, pp. ). Needham (Science and Civilization in China, vol. , part ,
p. ) asserts that the rst of the monographs consecrated entirely
to orchids was produced . . . by Chao Shih-Kng, a ninth-generation
descendant of the imperial house, who conceived a passion for these
plants and wrote in + his Chin-Chang Lan Phu (A Treatise on the
Orchids of Fukien). . . . Fukien was the home territory of some of the
Ambonese Chinese, and that they might have seen a resemblance to
a Chinese plant is not surprising considering the fact, noted by Chen
and Tang, that the orchid ora of southern China is closely related to
that of Malaysia. Chen and Tang concluded that there are genera
and species in China, genera and species are terrestrials, and
genera and species are epiphytes. The remaining genera and
species are saprophytes (Chen, pp. ).
[]

It is dicult if not impossible to be absolutely certain which Chinese plant Rumphius has in mind. This, and many other seventeenthcentury printed texts, had several layers of obfuscation built in where
foreign languages were concerned. In Rumphius case there was, rst, a
contemporary phonetic approximation of the informants pronunciation, second, the transcription of that oral estimate by a scribe ignorant of the language, and, nally, the inevitable misprints of the already
dubious product on the printed pagea nightmare for editors and
commentators.
In this case we have Pu Sang-Tjan, which Rumphius translates as
meaning either mother without child, or child without mother, in
other words an orphan.
. Paul Hermann () obtained a medical degree at Padua
in . From to he worked as a botanist for the VOC on
Ceylon; subsequently he became professor of botany at the University of Leiden and director of its botanical garden. The cited work is
Hermann, Paradisus Batavus.
. Plukenet, Almagesti. The sentence is not clear in the original.
The Petola Leaf
. The original text was ..:. The other important item
is plate , which appeared at ..:, the end of ch. .
Smith (M, p. ) identies the orchid that is described as Anoectochilus reinwardtii Blume. It is depicted, according to Smith, on plate ,
g. . Smith thinks that gure on plate might represent Zeuxine
amboinensis (J. J. Sm.) Schltr. Rumphius did not describe it, and Smith
adds that the illustration shows a sterile plant (M, p. ).
. In his text, Rumphius seems to say they are the same; see
..:.
. I think he says this because this species of Commelina lies with
its green, soft, and round stems on the ground (:).
. I think he is referring to Commelina benghalensis L., as Merrill has
it (M, p. ), although Rumphius did not give it a specic name before
(see :).
[]

. Begonia tuberosa Lam. according to Merrill (M, p. ). Described

by Rumphius in ..:. The connection is once again that it
creeps with its round, and fat stems, which are not very long, over
rocks, or along the ground (:). Its fruit is described the same way
as the orchids.
. The Latin means the Petola Leaf [or Plant], and the Malay
means the same thing.
. The word petola or patola presents something of a problem
in orchid lore. Rumphius name survived in the label Macodes petola, but
Smith is adamant that Rumphius orchid Folium petolatum is not
the same plant (M, p. ). However, the word petola has inspired
some strange tales. In a recent popular text (Berliocchi, The Orchid in Lore
and Legend, p. ) it is stated that Macodes petola comes from the Javanese
vernacular and means letter paper. Its leaves are covered in a network
of metallic veins bearing an extraordinary resemblance to the script of
its native land, so much so that Rumphius adopted the name as long
ago as [sic! ], calling this orchid Folium petolatum in his Herbarium
Amboinense. Lawler (p. ) also says that this plant was called letter
leaf because the leaf markings were held to resemble Javanese letter
symbols (see also n. on that same p. ). Now the leaves of this
orchid have these markings:

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Photograph courtesy of J. B. Comber.

[]

Javanese script (either Kawi or more modern and not romanised) looks
like this:

Source: Raes, The History of Java, vol. : plate opposite p. . This

script looks more like the markings of Grammatophyllum scriptum pictured
in ch. than the present orchids leaves.
One might dismiss this as a judgment call, but there is still the word
petola or patola itself. Hornes Javanese-English Dictionary glosses patola as a
ne soft silk material, but does not say anything about its decorative
patterns. Wilkinsons Malay-English Dictionary lists it under Rumphius
spelling as petola, gives as its rst meaning: brightly marked, and goes
on of gaily colored cloths described by old writers as Indian coloured
cottons and silks much prized at Malacca. Hence the word chiey
refers to what was originally a woven pattern in cloth, specically silk.
This cloth was very desirable and expensive, which can be ascertained
from invoices printed by De Haan of lists of textiles given as presents
to Javanese aristocracy in . Petola silk (spelled patholen zijde)
is invariably the most expensive textile item. See De Haan, :
. Wilkinson states that petola (patola) is a word from Malayalam, a
language from the Dravidian family, spoken on Indias western coast,
which contains many Sanskrit words. This was the language of the
Brahmins Van Reede tot Drakenstein recorded in his Hortus Malabaricus.
In the seventeenth century, most of Indias piece-goods (as the British
called them) were shipped from that coast. Hence one can safely say
that petola or patola never had any association with orthography, but
always referred to a textile pattern. Patola derives from Sanskrit pata,
which the Sanskrit-English Dictionary glosses as woven cloth, cloth, a
painted piece of cloth. See Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary.
This silk cloth was not a common commodity but quite familiar to
[]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Patola cloth from Gujarat in India.

Silk, double ikat, from the end of the nineteenth century.
/ Collection Wereldmuseum Rotterdam.

the higher VOC ocials, as the De Haan entry proves. Rumphius was
well acquainted with it as well, as the quote in the present chapter testies. And there are other contexts; for instance, in ..:,
he devotes considerable space to descriptions of species of dishcloth
gourds (Luffa), all of which he labels under the sort-name Petola because of the resemblance of the gourds to a particular silk cloth, called
such, that is painted with various owers, gures, and spots (:).
In ..:, he mentions that a large snake prefers to live in the top
of coconut palms. He calls it Ular Pethola (note the same spelling that
De Haan transcribed) and writes that he does so because it is beautifully covered with patches of white and black, with a little yellow
mixed in, almost like a silken cloth called Pethola. The snake is the
large Python reticulatus. Then there is a shell which Rumphius named
[]

Cochlea petholata in Latin and Bia pethola in Malay, now considered a turbo shell, Turbo petholatus L. Rumphius writes that he gave it
that name because it is decorated in several colors, like Pethola cloths,
or the large Ular pethola Snake (ACC, p. ).
An orchid, gourds, a snake, and a shell all share the sobriquet petola
because their markings resembled a woven pattern in a familiar cloth,
not a highly sophisticated script known only to a small intellectual
elite. By the way, Lawler prints a totally dierent version of why Macodes
patola was called such (one that tallies with my argument) on p. :
The Javanese regard this plant as of divine origin and relate the following legend: Long ago a radiantly beautiful goddess, Petola, was
sent by the gods to Java to show the uncivilized natives the right and
good ways. Her gentleness did not persuade them, and they chased
her away to a rocky outcrop in the deep forest. She returned the next
day in an angry mood and the people then subjected themselves to
her. They pleaded for her beautiful scarf as a sign of her forgiveness, but she could not leave it. She returned to the rocky outcrop
and while asleep laid her scarf on the ground. Soon the ground was
covered with lovely plants that bore on their leaves the pattern of
the heavenly scarf; and so originated the daun petola of Java, brought
there by a goddess. Soon the news of the divine owers spread, and
people came from far and near to collect them for themselves. All
these plants, however, began to die. The goddess magically restored
them to the rock, breathed life into them, and left them in the care
of the mountain fairies. The Javanese explain that this is why the
plant cannot be grown away from the place of its origin.
I should note that Berliocchi mentions Rumphius prominently but
inadequately in several places in The Orchid in Lore and Legend. His biographical sketch (pp. ) is full of errors: for instance, Rumphius
obviously completed his Herbal before his death (one could even say
that the Auctuarium, or seventh volume, was merely a volume of addenda); in its nal form the work was in six volumes plus the Auctuarium (or volume seven), not twelve, and by no stretch of the imagi-

[]

nation can it be said that two of [the twelve volumes] are devoted to
orchids (p. ), as the present work clearly indicates. The orchid chapters are part only of book eleven in volume six, with a couple of chapters scattered in other books in other volumes. On p. Berliocchi
prints a picture of Pecteilis susannae, and has no idea that Rumphius was
the rst to describe it and that he named it after his (presumed) wife.
On p. a statement about Phalaenopsis should be emended to read that
Rumphius was the first botanist to describe any species of this genus.
And so on.
. Widely spaced for the troublesome locution ydel, which, I
think, here means that those trees do not grow close together.
. This passage is very important. It proves that Rumphius did
produce his own illustrations before he became blind, either in pen and
ink or in watercolor. Secondly, he also seems to have assembled a herbarium of sorts, either in its own right, or as adjunct samples, as was
the case here. Hence we can say for sure that the original illustrations
for this Herbal were made by Rumphius and that they were destroyed
in the re that on January , , burned down the European quarters
of Kota Ambon, the islands capital, including Rumphius house and
belongings.

[]

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[]

INDEX

Acosta, Cristobal, xviii, xix

Africa, xvii
Algae, xl
Almagesti Botanici Mantissa
(Plukenet), , ,
Alsina Indica,
Amaltheum Botanicum (Plukenet),

Amaryllidaceae, n.
Amber,
Amboinsche Kruidboek, Het
(The Ambonese Herbal)
(Rumphius), xix, xx, xxxi,
xxxii, xxxiii, xxxvxxxvii,
xxxviii
Amboinsche Rariteitkamer, D (The
Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet)
(Rumphius), xxxi, xxxvi
Ambon, xxi, xxix, xxx, xxxi,
Americas, xvii
Amica nocturna (Polianthes tuberosa),

Amomum roseum (Globba durion),

Angr(a)ecum album majus (Phalaenopsis amabilis), xlvixlvii,

Angr(a)ecum album minus (Dendrobium ephemerum),

Angraecum angustis crumenis,
Angraecum caninum (Angrec angin,
Dog Angrek), ,
Angraecum decimum,
Angraecum lanuginosum,
Angraecum nervosum, ,
Angraecum nonum (Dendrobium
bicaudatum), ,
Angraecum nudum,
Angraecum octavum sive Purvum,

Angraecum pungens, ,
Angraecum purpureum silvestrum,

Angraecum purpurum,
Angraecum quintum (Fifth Angrek),

Angraecum rubrum (Red Angrek),

, ,

[]

Angraecum saxatile (Rock Angrek),

Angraecum sediforme,
Angraecum septimum,
Angraecum sextum Moschatum,
Angraecum taeniosum,
Angraecum terrestre alterum (Phaius
amboinensis), ,
Angraecum terrestre primum (Daun
corra corra, Spathoglottis plicata),
, ,
Angraecum terrestre primum album
(Phaius gratus), ,
Angraecum uniflorum,
Angrec angin (Angraecum caninum,
Dog Angrek), ,
Angrec gajang,
Angrec jambu,
Aquilegia vulgaris (Columbine),
Arachis hypogaea (Catjong, Katjang,
peanut),
Aru islands, xli
Arundinella latifolia,
Asia, xvii
Australasia, xvii
Averrhoa carambola (Blimbing),
Bacian, xli
Bali, xl, xli, ,
Banda islands, xl, xli
Bangle (Zingiber cassumunar),
Batavia, xxvii, xxviii
Bauhin, Jean, xxii,
Beseeching plant, ,
Big Sleep, The (Chandler), xvi

Blimbing (Averrhoa carambola),

Blume, Carl Ludwig, xlvixlvii
Bonga tanjong (Mimusops elengi ),
,
Bontius, Jacobus, xix,
Book of Songs, xvi
Borneo, xx, xli
Brassavola nodosa (Epdendrum
nodosum), xviii
Brazil, xxv, xli
Breyne, Jacob,
Bupleurum,
Burman, Johannes, n.
Buro malacco (Oculus astaci ),
Buru, xl, xli, n.
Buton, xli
Cacopit bird, , ,
Caju puti (Melaleuca leucadendron),
, ,
Calappus tree (coconut),
Calbahaar puti (Isis hippuris),
Calceolus mariae, ,
Camoens, Luis de, xviii
Camphuys, Johannes, xxxvi
Cananga (Kananga; Canangum
odoratum), ,
Canarium commune (Kanari nuts,
Kanari tree), , , , ,
Capaha mountain,
Cardamom,
Carex grass, ,
Casi selan (Javanese lily, Pancratium zeylanicum),
Catalogus plantarum (Sloane), ,
[]

Catjang tsjina,
Catjong (Kacang, Katjang; Arachis
hypogaea, peanut),
Cattleya labiata, xv
Celebes (Sulawesi), xli,
Cephalenthera, n.
Champaca (Michelia champaca,
Tsjampacca),
Chandler, Raymond, xvi
Chiliodynamis (Greek Valerian,
Polemonion coerulium),
China, xvi, xx, xli,
Clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum),

Clusius, xviixviii, xix, xxi,

Coagulum,
Coeloglossum bracteatum, n.
Colchicum autumnale (Meadow
saron),
Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris),
Comber, J. B., xx
Combili (Dioscorea esculenta), ,
, ,
Commelin, Jan, ,
Coral, xxxix
Crassulaceae, n.
Crinum asiaticum (Dart root,
Spatwortel),
Curaao, xviii
Curculigo capitulata (Involucrum,
Wrapper),
Curcuma silvestris, , ,
Dart root (Crinum asiaticum,
Spatwortel),

Daun corra corra (Angraecum terrestre primum, Spathoglottis plicata),

, ,
Daun subat (Dendrobium), ,

Dendrobium bicaudatum (Angraecum

nonum), ,
Dendrobium ephemerum (Angrecum
album minus),
Dioscorea esculenta (Combili), ,
, ,
Dioscorides, xvi, n. ,
n.
Dodonaeus, xxi, , ,
Dog Angrek (Angraecum caninum,
Angrec angin), ,
Dressler, Robert, xvi
Dutch East India Company
(VOC), xxvii, xxviiixx,
xxxivxxxv, xliii
Dutch West India Company,
xviii
Elleborine amplexicaulis multiflora, xlvi
Empetrum acetosum,
England, xxxvi
Epdendrum nodosum (Brassavola
nodosa), xviii
Epiphytes, xvii, xxi, xlv
Equisset (Horse tail), ,
Eugenia (Jambu ower),
Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarum Plantarum Centuria Prima
(Breyne),
Exoticorum libri decem, xix

[]

Gajang tree (Inocarpus edulis),

,
Galen, xvi, n.
Gentiana (Gentianaceae), ,
Gesner, Conrad, xxi, xlvi,
Gleichenia linearis (Filix calamaria),

Globba durion (Amomum roseum),

Grammatophylum speciosum, xv
Greek Valerian (Chiliodynamis,
Polemonion coerulium),

Helleborus albus, , ,
Helleborus Ambonicus (Flos triplicatus,
Triple ower), ,
Herba supplex major prima, ,
Herba supplex major quarta,
Herba supplex major secunda,
Herba supplex major tertia,
Herba supplex minor,
Herba supplex quinta,
Hermann, Paul, xviii, , ,
n.
Herpestus javanicus, xxxviixxxviii
Hesse, xxii, xxiii, xxvi
Hila, xxx, xxxiixxxiii
Hippocrates, xvi, n.
Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, xviii
Historiae Naturalis & Medicae (Bontius),
Hitu, xxx, xl,
Horse tail (Equisset), ,
Hortus Malabaricus (Van Reede),
xix, xx, xxi, , , , , ,
Houseleek, , ,
Hulong grass (Imperata cylindrica),

Hyacinth,
Hypophyton, ,
Hyris,

Habenaria rumphii (Orchis Amboinica

minor), ,
Halmahera (Gilolo), xli
Hanau, xxiv
Helleborines, , , ,

Idstein, xxvixxvii
Imperata cylindrica (Hulong grass),

India, xix, xxi

Indo-China, xli

Fagel, Casper, xviii

Ficus benjamina (Waringin tree), ,
,
Fifth Angrek (Angraecum quintum),

Filix calamaria (Gleichenia linearis),

Flos susannae (Pecteilis susannae),

xxxii, ,
Flos tigridis,
Flos triplicatus (Helleborus Ambonicus,
Triple ower), ,
Folium petolatum (Petola leaf ),

France, xxxvi

[]

Kircher, Athanasius, xxi, ,

n.
Kleinhovia hospita (Kinar), , ,
Kora kora (ship), n.
Kota Ambon, xxiv, xxxiv, xxxvi,
xxxviii, n.

Indonesia, xix, xx
Inocarpus edulis (Gajang tree),
,
Inscribed Angrek (Angraecum
scriptum, Helleborine Molucca),
,
Involucrum (Curculigo capitulata,
Wrapper),
Ironwood tree,
Isis hippuris (Calbahaar puti),

Lampujang,
Larike, xxxxxxi
Larkspur, , ,
Leitimor, xxx, xl,
Lianas, xxxix
Lily of the Valley,
Linnaeus, Carl, lli
Louis XIV, king of France, xxxvi
Luhu region,
Lusiad (Camoens), xviii

Jambu ower (Eugenia),

Japan, xvi, xli
Java, xix, xx, xxvii, xxix, xl, xli,
xlvii,
Javanese lily (Casi selan, Pancratium zeylanicum),
Javanese mongoose, xxxvii
xxxviii
Kacang (Catjong, Katjang; Arachis
hypogaea, peanut),
Kalappus tree,
Kananga (Cananga; Canangum
odoratum), ,
Kanari nuts, Kanari tree
(Canarium commune), , , , ,

Katjang (Catjong, Kacang; Arachis

hypogaea, peanut),
Kei islands, xli
Keller, Anna Elisabeth, xxii
Kinar (Kleinhovia hospita), , ,
Kipling, Rudyard, xxxvii

Maccabuhay (Tinospora reticulata),

Mace,
Madagascar, xli
Malabarin Orchis,
Malacca, xli
Malaysia, xx,
Mangi-Mangi (mangrove), , ,
,
Mangium caseolare, , ,
Mango (Manga; Mangifera indica),
, ,
Manipa, xli
Martini, Martinus, n.
Meadow saron (Colchicum autumnale),

[]

Melaleuca leucadendron (Caju puti),

, ,
Merrill, E. D., xl
Mexico, xvii, xli, n.
Michelia champaca (Champaca,
Tsjampacca),
Mimusops elengi (Bonga tanjong),
,
Mistletoe,
Moluccas, xxvii, xli, xlvii
Monardes, Nicolas, xix
Monomotapense carophyllus,
Monsoons,
Montezuma, xvii, n.
Mundo Subterraneo (Kircher),
Myrmecophytic orchids, xlvi
Narcissus,
Nassau-Siegen, Johan Maurits
von, xviii
Natural History of the West Indies
(Oviedo), xix
Netherlands: orchid varieties in,
xvi; colonization by, xviii; as
botanical center, xx; at war
with France, xxxvi
Nummularia lactea,
Nusa Tenggara, xli
Nutmeg, ,
Octavum sive furvum,
Oculus astaci (Buro malacco),
Opera Botanica, xlvi
Orchis Amboinica major,

Orchis Amboinica minor (Habenaria

rumphii ), ,
Orobanche,
Orta, Garcia da, xviii, xix
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernandez, xix
Pancratium zeylanicum (Casi selan,
Javanese lily),
Papua New Guinea, xx, xl, xli
Paradisus Batavus (Hermann), xvii,
,
Pausanius,
Peanut (Arachis hypogaea; Catjong,
Katjang),
Pecteilis susannae (Flos susannae),
xxxii, ,
Peru, xli
Petola leaf (Folium petolatum),

Phaius amboinensis (Angraecum terrestre alterum), ,

Phaius gratus (Angraecum terrestre
primum album), ,
Phalaenopsis amabilis (Angrecum album
majus), xlvixlvii,
Philippines, xli
Phytographia (Plukenet),
Pinang, ,
Piso, Willem, xviii, n.
Pisonia grandis (Sajor puti),
Plantago (Plantain), ,
Platystele, xv
Pliny the Elder, xvi, xxii, xxxi, ,
n. , n. , n.

[]

Rumphius, Paulus Augustus

(son), xxxii, xliii
Rumphius, Susanna (wife), xxxii,

Plukenet, Leonard, , , ,
Polemonion coerulium (Chiliodynamis, Greek Valerian),
Polianthes tuberosa (Amica nocturna),
Polypodium,
Portugal, xxvxxvi
Proust, Marcel, xv
Purple Angrek, ,
Pursed Angrek, ,
Ranunculaceae, n.
Recchi, Antonio,
Red Angrek (Angraecum rubrum),
, ,
Rerum medicarum Nouae Hispaniae
thesaurus (Recchi),
Rock Angrek (Angraecum saxatile),

Rumpf, August (father), xxii,

xxiii
Rumphius, Georgius Everhardus,
xvixvii, xix, xxixxii; birth
and education of, xxiixxiv;
military career of, xxvxxvi,
xxviixxix; as Bauschreiber,
xxvixxvii; on Ambon, xxix;
marriage of, xxxii; blindness of, xxxiiixxxv, xlvii,
xlix; works revised by, xxxvi
xxxvii; death of, xxxviii;
ethnobotanical methods of,
xlxlv; innovations of, xlv
xlvi; prose style of, xlviixlviii

Sacrophytic orchids, n.
Saja baki, ,
Sajor puti (Pisonia grandis),
Samaria tree,
Saprophytes, n.
Schlechter, Rudolf, xxi
Sempervivum,
Seram (Ceram), xxix, xl, xli,
Sloane, Sir Hans, ,
Smith, Joannes Jacobus, xxi,
n.
South Africa, xli
Southeast Asia, xviii
Spathoglottis plicata (Angraecum terrestre
primum, Daun corra corra),
, ,
Spatwortel (Crinum asiaticum,
Dart root),
Standelwort, ,
Sula islands, xli
Sumatra, xx, xxix, xli
Sumbawa, xli
Syzygium aromaticum (Clove tree),

Tanjong (Bonga tanjong, Mimusops elengi ), ,

Ten Rhijne, Willem, n.
Ternate, xl, xli, , , , ,

[]

Texel, xxv
Theophrastus, xvi, n. ,
n.
Thirty Years War, xxiii, xxvi,
xxviii
Tidore, xli
Timor, xli
Tinospora reticulata (Maccabuhay),

Tobacco, n.
Tommon cantsje,
Tragus, Hieronymus (Bock,
Jeremy), xxi,
Treatise Concerning the Drugs and
Medicines of the East Indies
(Acosta), xix
Triple ower (Flos triplicatus,
Helleborus Ambonicus), ,
Tsjampacca (Champaca; Michelia
champaca),
Tubers,

Vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia),

xviixviii, n.
Van Reede tot Drakenstein,
Hendrik Adriaan, xix, xxi,
n.
Viscum Indicum,
Voyage to the Islands (Sloane),
Waringin tree (Ficus benjamina), ,
,
Weather, , n.
Wetterau region, n.
White double angrek (Angraecum
album), ,
Wrapper (Curculigo capitulata,
Involucrum),
Yellow Angreks,
Zingiberaceae, n. (chap. )
Zingiber cassumunar (Bangle),

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