The Recognition of Plant Sensitivity by English Botanists in the Seventeeth Century

Abstract

THE detailed experimental study of plant and the examination of the nature of plant sensitivity were two of the important achievements of nineteenth-century plant physiologists. These subjects occupied the attention of many of the most distinguished botanists of the time, including Charles Darwin in England, Julius von Sachs in Germany, and Asa Gray in America. Sachs also wrote a historical account of the investigations of plant in his famous History of Botany,' in which he recognized that plant had been recorded since antiquityparticularly by the herbalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sachs found no evidence that the concept of plant sensitivity was used before the nineteenth century; his assessment has been accepted by subsequent historians of botany. However, it has recently been pointed out 2 that plant received attention in the eighteenth century and that the notion of plant sensitivity was familiar to many biologists by the end of that century, including Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin.3 This article demonstrates that the contributions of seventeenth-century natural philosophers have been seriously underestimated. During this period an experimental study of plant was promoted, which led to the postulation of a theory of plant sensitivity. While the Renaissance herbalists were familiar with plant movements, they had little interest in the explanation of this phenomenon. Thus, they noticed that sleep movements were characteristic of the leaves and flowers of certain species, but they were predominantly concerned with