Linneaus Apostle: Pehr Löfling

Young Pehr Löfling set out from Sweden to Spain in 1751, to learn Spanish, and collect plant specimens. His friends and colleagues described him as a tall, slender, manly Swede, who made friends and won hearts wherever he went. Carl Linnaeus called him a beloved pupil and excellent botanist, who kept company with the brightest of his fellow students; and nicknamed him The Vulture, presumably because his sharp eyes spotted excellent plant specimens in the field. Löfling’s good friend, J. O. Hagström, spoke highly of his character – as being graced with virtue, common sense, and uprightness; and as being God-fearing, serious, affectionate, and loyal, with a quick understanding of Nature’s secrets.

Löfling was born in January 20, 1729 in Tolvfors, Valbo, Gästrikland, Sweden. His father was a bookkeeper at the local mill work. Löfling was educated by private tutor, and then entered Uppsala University in 1743 at the age of 14. He worked his way through school, as a tutor for Carl Linnaeus’s son; as a worker at the Uppsala Botanical Garden; and as an assistant for Linnaeus’s own writings. Initially, Löfling studied theology, but later switched to medicine and natural history. In 1751, Löfling graduated as a doctor of medicine (at the time, botany was an important area of study for physicians). He became a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the same year.

Loeflingia hispanica, a small annual herb, named after Pehr Löfling.

In 1750, the Spanish Ambassador in Stockholm asked Linnaeus to recommend a botanist to investigate the flora of Spain. At the time, plants were being discovered all over the world, and studied for economic potential. The King of Spain wanted the native plants of Spain to be so investigated. Linnaeus recommended his prize student, Pehr Löfling. In 1951, at the age of 22, Löfling headed by ship to Portugal, and then Spain to explore Spanish flora, and launch his career.

Learn more:

• The IK Foundation – provides detailed information about natural and cultural history, including Carl Linnaeus and his apostles: http://www.ikfoundation.org/ifacts/pehrlofling.php
• The Linnean Society of London – provides a comprehensive online collection of information, correspondence, specimens, art, and documents: http://www.linnean-online.org/
• Linnaeus The Compleat Naturalist, by Wilfrid Blunt. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford (2004). Chapter 6, “The Apostles,” pages 185, and 190 – 192.

The Linneaus Apostles

The Linnaeus Apostles have intrigued me since reading about them in Linnaeus: the Compleat Naturalist, by Wilfred Blunt. Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) was a Swedish botanist and Professor of Medicine at Uppsala University, and is considered the father of the modern taxonomy. He advocated his classification and binomial naming system for plants, animals, and minerals, and used a sexual system for classifying plants.



Botanical exploration range for four of the apostles, from http://www.ikfoundation.org/ilinnaeus/imaps.php. On the website, you can select one or more apostle to learn more (each one is assigned a number key).

Linnaeus sent out some of his most promising students on botanical expeditions all over the world, with the task to collect, classify, and name new plants, animals, and minerals using the Linnaeus system. Their activities influenced many expeditions of the day, and spread the word about the new taxonomy. As part of my “plants on the move” theme this year, I have selected four of the Apostles to research:

• Pehr Löfling (1729 – 1756): explored Spain and South America (1751 – 1756). See map key 4.
• Pehr Kalm (1715 – 1779): explored North America and Canada (1747 – 1751). See map key 3.
• Carl Peter Thunberg (1743 – 1828): explored South Africa and Japan (1770 – 1779). See map key 12.
• Daniel Solander (1733 – 1782): explored Australia and Iceland (1768 – 1772). See map key 17.

Most of the apostles sent their collections to Linnaeus, creating a comprehensive botanical collection for the Uppsala University. Most of them had plants or species named after them. I look forward to learning more about these individuals, their discoveries, and this era of exploration. 

1941: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Family members, who know of my interest in plants, encouraged me to read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. 1491 is written by journalist Charles C. Mann, and published by Alfred A. Knopf (2005). Not only am I a fan of plants, but I’m interested in anthropology, archeology, and history. In the 1970s, my husband (then boyfriend) and I took a college tour of Mesoamerican, visiting many archeological sites. The book brought back great memories of travelling by tour bus with friends and our Cultural Anthropology professor, Dr. Vince Gil, from Mexico City to Cancun, staying in inexpensive hotels with Old World charm, and exploring fantastic ruins.

The book provides a “fly over” of the Americas before Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1942. Mann’s thesis is that the Americas have been populated much longer than anyone thought (possibly 30,000 years rather than 10,000), and probably in greater numbers. Civilizations were more advanced than thought, in many cases exceeded civilizations in Europe during comparable time periods. They were using the concept of zero long before Europeans, they developed sophisticated textiles (cloth was so tightly woven, that layers of cloth could be used as armor), and they recorded events and accounts using ropes and a series of knots in an almost binary approach. European culture borrowed ideas and technology from interactions with Asia and Africa, whereas culture in the Americas developed independently, often developing unique solutions to technological problems. Since history is written by the conqueror and Europeans assumed their culture was superior, many of the achievements of the Americas were poorly recorded or even destroyed.

Immunities to disease also developed independently, making the populations in the Americas vulnerable to disease carried by European explorers and their livestock. Mann proposes that disease, from early encounters between people in the Americas and European explorers, destroyed much of the population. Later waves of European explorers encountered fewer people and unpopulated land, causing the false impression that the land had always been unpopulated, wild, and pristine. In reality, populations in the Americas had been sculpting the environment for their needs for thousands of years. Mann’s ideas are controversial in the field, but fascinating to read.

As expected, I was especially interested in some of the horticultural aspects of the book. The beautiful botanical gardens of Tenochtitlan amazed the European explorers in the early 1500s, and may have inspired the Padua Botanical garden of Italy – one of the first of its kind in Europe. The soil in the Amazonian rainforest is extremely poor, but the Amazonians had been engineering terra preta soil of charcoal, pottery chards, and other organic material to create rich fields of productive soil that could support large population centers. The terraced fields of Peru, high in the mountains, also supported large population centers. Corn, beans, squash, cacao, potatoes, and peppers originated in the Americas, some of which were the product of selective breeding programs over thousands of years.