Linnaeus as an Economic Botanist

Abstract

Summary The interest of Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) in the uses of plants as manifested in his travel books and dissertations was much influenced by the urge of his country, war-impoverished Sweden, for national recovery and self-sufficiency. His official Swedish journeys of 1741–1749 were primarily economic surveys, giving much attention to locally used dye-plants. The dissertation Pan Suecicus (1749) details experimental feeding of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats with native Swedish plants: it also represents an important stage in the development of the Linnaean binomial method for naming species.