From Medicinal Gardens to Artistic Herbaria: A Cultural History

zielnik_helwinga_e.jpg, default, ‘Helwing’s Herbal’ by Georg Andreas Helwing, East Prussia, vol. 2, 1695–ca 1705, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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Scientific plant archives or works of art? We look into old Polish herbals and present the feminine side of botany.

I’m botanizing here! (1)

She filled her holiday breaks from writing with collecting. The flora of the Niemen River (Neman in Belarusian) proved to be a great pretext for conversations with the inhabitants of her native Milkowszczyzna (currently Milkawshchyna, Belarus) and the surrounding area, and her botanical passion combined learning and fun. In her correspondence with friends, Eliza Orzeszkowa shared her enthusiasm:

I dry flowers, leaves, grasses in a way that will cause them to lose as little of their colour as possible, […] pasting them onto coloured cardstock and silk fabrics, from which albums, tables and trays under glass are created.

She advised others on how to compose herbals, dry plants and decorate everyday objects with them; she herself created flower paintings and artistic albums. She meticulously noted down Belarusian folk equivalents alongside their Polish and Latin names (Pulsatilla pratensis, sasanka zwisła, zayachy son), as well as the properties, superstitions and rituals associated with certain herbs. In a letter from 1887 to Jan Karłowicz, she reported: ‘[…] I was very keenly and zealously involved in the world of plants, botanizing with the special aim of learning about the attitude of our people to the nature surrounding them’.

Translating gardens

The earliest Polish herbaria were not herbals at all but pharmaceutical dictionaries. Jan Stanko, who was born in Kraków and received a doctorate in Italy, was a theologian and physician, and he became famous for two things: he cured Jan Długosz of bladder stones and was the first to use Polish terminology in naming flora (523 species of medicinal plants, 433 of which were exclusively native) and fauna (219 species of solely native animals). He included terms such as ‘bosze drzewko’ (god’s tree), ‘diable zebro’ (devil’s rib) and ‘usny gnoy’ (oral dung) in his flagship work, Antibolomenon (ca 1472), preserved only as a manuscript in the Wawel Castle library.

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‘On Herbs & Their Potency, on Distilling Spirits from Herbs, on Preparing Essential Oils, on Overseas Things […]’ by Stefan Falimirz, 1534, Kraków, publ. Florian Vnglerius, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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A proper herbal – or even three – appeared on Polish lands in the 16th century, but there was a problem. The first of the herbaria was written by Stefan Falimirz in 1534 and consists of over 400 folios printed on both sides in Gothic script, decorated with woodcuts presenting the plants discussed (not very complicated drawings that retain the characteristic features of a given species). The individual parts of the book were separated by more elaborate graphics (scenes of herb processing, medical procedures). The most extensive chapter was titled ‘O ziołach i mocy ich’ (On Herbs and Their Potency) – hence the name of the entire collection. In addition, the herbal was a source of information on healing methods (medieval, but still), including the beneficial use of spirits (73 recipes, each with a different effect), and also provided advice for pregnant women. So why did it not gain universal recognition? Well, it was not an original work but only a ‘conglomeration of separate books’ – as Józef Rostafiński sums it up – translated from Latin and popular at the time, especially in Germany and Italy.

The next printed Polish herbal, O ziołach tutecznych i zamorskich (On Local and Overseas Herbs), created eight years later by the physician and botanist Hieronim Spiczyński, was in fact the second, slightly corrected edition of the previous volume. The correction concerned, for example, some names: ‘pepperweed’ (pieprzyczka) from Falimirz’s herbal could have been ‘Italian cress’ (włoska rzeżucha) in Spiczyński’s case, while ‘hawksbeard’ (pępowa) became ‘pigsnout or dandelion’ (świni pysk, Mnich).

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‘Book of Black Elder’, Museum of the Kalisz Region, photo: National Digital Archives / https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl

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Three’s the charm? Not necessarily. The book Herbarz, to jest ziół tutecznych, postronnych i zamorskich opisanie (Herbarium, a Description of Local, Foreign and Overseas Herbs) by Marcin Siennik, published in 1568, which closes the triad of 16th-century Polish herbals, is nothing more than an improved version of the previous ones. In addition, the author was neither a doctor nor a pharmacist. He, however, displayed inventiveness in naming: if Spiczyński had ‘dzięcielina’ (clover), then Siennik has ‘włoski szmer’ (Italian murmur), while ‘gołębia noga’ (dove’s foot) was replaced by ‘żorawie noski’ (cranes noses).

In view of these cosmetic changes, essentially limited to tidying up certain matters, Rostafiński came up with a common name for the herbal trilogy: Unglerowski Ogród zdrowia (Ungler’s Garden of Health). The first herbal, which served as a model for the subsequent ones, was published in the studio of Florian Ungler, a famous Kraków printer from Bavaria, while the publication of the second was supervised by his widow, Helena. This is not the only female contribution to the history of Polish herbals.

I’m botanizing here! (2)

In a letter dated 11 August 1886 to Leopold Méyet, the author’s fellow writer, Orzeszkowa reported on her progress in writing Nad Niemnem (On the Niemen):

For this novel, in the company of farmstead noblemen and noblewomen, I undertook the formal study of local botany and the songs, fairy tales, riddles and legends of the Polish people of the area. I found interesting, wonderful and almost unknown things. If only I can manage to use all of this well!

And she did manage. The writer presented the history of the Polish landed gentry set against the background of picturesque nature, taking due care to provide a diverse representation of plants from the Niemen River area in the novel and to ensure that the descriptions were consistent with reality. We can find a sample of this literary herbal on the pages of the first volume. At times, nature comes alive before our very eyes:

On both sides of every road was a wide strip of lush white chamomiles and the taller flowers of sweet cicely, purple borage was scattered in the grass, hawkbits and greater celandine shone like yellow stars, lilac-coloured field scabiosas poured honeyed fragrances from their hundred-petalled crowns, whole forests of weak and delicate bentgrass swayed, shaggy plantain flowers stood on their tall stems, confirming with their rosy colour and daring form the nickname given to them: cossacks.

[trans. MP]

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‘Helwing’s Herbal’ by Georg Andreas Helwing, East Prussia, vol. 2, 1695–ca 1705, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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At other times, nature is more sedate, powerful, even haughty:

At the Korczyn manor, tall and thick sycamores grew on the vast lawn of the courtyard, surrounded by a shorter thicket of red elderberry, acacias, viburnums and a yet shorter one of mock oranges, spireas and floribunda roses. Poplars, chestnuts and lindens around old, once expensive pickets hid the wooden farm buildings with a wall of dense greenery.

[trans. MP]

A belated success

As many as 765 detailed descriptions of plant species are contained in the life’s work of Szymon Syreński, known as Simon Syrenius. While studying philosophy at the Kraków Academy, he frequently travelled abroad, and visiting private medicinal gardens was considered obligatory when he travelled. He continued his studies in Italy, this time taking up medical studies in Padua, where he also made observations of the local flora. He eventually returned to Poland: first to Lviv, to practice as a doctor (and to document the local flora), then he settled in Kraków, where he lectured on medicine, treated the poor for free and continued working on his Zielnik (Herbal). He collected material for it over a total of 30 years. In 1610, he submitted a herbarium of around 1,500 pages to the printing house of Mikołaj Lob. Syrenius died in the spring of the following year, and his legacy came close to being forgotten forever.

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‘A Herbal Which Is Called a Herbarium in the Latin Tongue: This Is a Detailed Description of the Names, Forms, Nature & Effective Potency of All Manner of Herbs […] in the Polish Language & Presented in Eight Books […]’ by Szymon Syreński, publ. Joannica Gabriel (ca 1565–1613), photo: Nation Digital Library Polona

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The publication of this valuable work was made possible by Anna Wazówna, a Swedish princess from the Vasa dynasty and sister of Zygmunt III Vasa, who was no less fascinated by botany and pharmacy than the author. It was thanks to her funds that the Renaissance herbarium was published in 1613 by Bazyli Skalski’s Kraków publishing house. Its circulation – impressive for the time – was around 1,000 copies. Apart from its scientific value, Syrenius’s book was distinguished by its precise illustrations. Woodcuts sometimes filled an entire page of the herbal, and a detailed presentation of roots or seeds was possible thanks to the use of microscopes, which were constructed at that time. We can therefore assume that Syrenius’s work presenting the vegetation of the Republic of Poland fell into the realm of scientific illustration. And to think that this herbal would not have seen the light of day if not for the involvement of a certain woman…

I’m botanizing here! (3)

After finishing her novel, Orzeszkowa began collaborating with the magazine Wisła (Vistula), where she became known as an expert in herbal medicine and the use of plants on the farm, as well as a keen observer of the symbiosis of humans and nature. Just as she had done in the novels Nad Niemnem, Dziurdziowie (The Dziurdzia Family) or Cham (The Boor), the writer outlined the rural landscape in an extremely suggestive way, often letting her imagination run wild. In one of the last articles of the series Ludzie i kwiaty nad Niemnem (People and Flowers on the Niemen), published in 1888–91, she described the following scene:

Resin dripped in amber drops down the trunks of pines, pale green berries shone on the junipers, strawberries blushed down below, young shoots rose upwards from small, bushy pines like erect candles, with their tops lit in the sunlight. Amidst all this, two peasant women: a small, slow-pacing old woman and a beautiful, dusky one walked side by side under the pines, as philosophers once walked under columns, studying and teaching…

Long live the herbal

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‘Helwing’s Herbal’ by Georg Andreas Helwing, East Prussia, 1695–ca 1705, vol. 1, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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The turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in the field of herbals belonged to Georg Andreas Helwing. Although the first language of the Prussian botanist – as well as pastor and physician, lover of literature, history, archaeology, philosophy and astronomy – was German, he also knew Polish very well. He successfully combined his priestly service with his passion for nature. He founded a botanical garden in Masuria in which he grew native and foreign plants. He carefully documented his research and discoveries and gained fame even abroad: in honour of the pastor from Węgorzewo, a Japanese shrub was named Helwingia japonica.

He became famous in Poland thanks to his herbarium vivum, or living herbal, which he probably created in 1695–1705. Helwing’s work is one of the oldest preserved herbaria in Poland with plants that were dried and not just drawn as previously. Although his Herbarium vivum plantarum sponte in Prussia nascentium (Living Herbarium of Plants Growing Naturally in Prussia) contains many woodcuts – including coloured ones, which was quite a common practice when it comes to herbals – it is the real flowers and herbs that are a true rarity. The compositions seem quite simple (even ascetic, considering the lack of description – they are accompanied only by their names) and random. However, the carefully dried plants have retained their texture and sometimes their colour, so Helwing’s herbarium has not only scientific but also artistic value. The botanist’s heir was Maciej Ernest Borecki, both in the literal sense, because Boretius was his son-in-law, and in the figurative sense, because his father-in-law passed on to him the knowledge of herbalism, which he used in his herbaria.

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‘Helwing’s Herbal’ by Georg Andreas Helwing, East Prussia, vol. 3, 1695–ca 1705, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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While Helwing’s herbal has survived to this day and is in the collections of the National Library in Warsaw, it is not the first herbarium vivum created on Polish soil. The earlier one probably went up in flames during World War II, and its author was Anna Wazówna.

I’m botanizing here! (4)

Orzeszkowa’s literary descriptions of nature did not at all overshadow her practical skills. In the eyes of many, she was an authority on the subject of drying plants, which she proved to the residents of Nowogródek (currently Navahrudak, Belarus) who were preparing a wreath for Adam Mickiewicz’s funeral (the poet’s burial at Wawel Castle took place on 4 July 1890). The writer was asked to select flowers that grew in the poet’s hometown. She included detailed instructions on how to dry them properly in her correspondence with Zofia Mokrzecka: ‘The only way to obtain beautiful cornflowers is by ironing them between two sheets of tissue paper’. Helichrysums, in turn, also placed between sheets of tissue paper, need to be covered with a board and then have some weight applied: ‘they will come out a bit shallow but perfectly yellow and pink and at the same time significantly larger by having been flattened’.

Queens of Polish botany

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‘Directions for Gathering, Describing, Drying Plants & Arranging a Herbal’ by Maria Arct-Golczewska, Warsaw, publ. M. Arct, 1905, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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Wazówna, being intelligent and talented and a speaker of several foreign languages, could not be idle while watching her brother, who was two years older than she and the king of Poland, personally tend the flowers in his garden and take care of the orchard. Nature remained her greatest love, and in Sweden she ran a pharmacy, so she also established her own kingdom of plants around the castle in Golub. She grew medicinal herbs there and, in addition, prepared her own medicines (probably under the supervision of the court physician, Gabriel Joannica, for whom she financed a catalogue of plants in the environs of Kraków), collected dried shoots and created a herbal that was unique because it was the first one composed of ‘live’ herbs. For years it was kept in the Radziwiłł library in Nieśwież (currently Nesvizh, Belarus), and then it was said to be confiscated by the Russians during the first partition of Poland. Ultimately, it was consumed by flames during World War II.

Anna Jabłonowska née Sapieha also had a collection of herbaria, including her own (Jan Krzysztof Kluk, among others, used her herbal when writing Dykcjonarz roślinny [Plant Dictionary]), as did Izabela Czartoryska (the salvaged pages of which are kept in the Princes Czartoryski Library in Kraków).

A herbal of the ‘do-it-yourself’ type was created at the beginning of the 20th century by Maria Arct-Golczewska, the daughter of the famous publisher, herself a translator and the author of botanical and zoological atlases and a botany textbook for secondary schools. She was an activist involved in women’s independence organizations, and she encouraged readers to collect, dry and store plants themselves. After a detailed discussion of their structure, she moved on to practical information: for a botanical trip, you should equip yourself with, among other things, ‘a shovel or a stick with a hoe’, ‘a hooked stick for bending the branches of tall trees or pulling aquatic plants toward you’, a penknife, a magnifying glass, ‘a folder […] made of wire or cardboard walls’ with a dozen or so sheets of grey tissue paper inside for carrying specimens, and the plants should be stored in a ‘botaniser’ (a tin can). The fact that Arct-Golczewska took Wskazówki do zbierania roślin i układania zielnika (Instructions for Collecting Plants and Arranging a Herbal) very seriously is evidenced by the author’s foreword:

The aim of collecting plants should be not only to dry them and arrange a herbal but above all to learn about the life of the plant, its structure and the conditions of its development, and to get to know the vegetation of a given area.

In 1905, she also composed Etykiety do zielnika (Herbal Labels) containing 1,230 names of common and wild plants growing in Poland, from gooseberry, through liverwort to comfrey [alphabetically in Polish: agrest, lśniątka and żywokost, respectively, trans.].

I’m botanising here! (5)

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‘Two Letters by Eliza Orzeszkowa & a Small Herbal with Flowers from along the Niemen’, Grodno, 1888–90, photo: National Digital Library Polona

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Several of the positivist writer’s artistic herbals survived in private collections and found their way from there to the Eliza Orzeszkowa Museum in Grodno (currently Hrodna, Belarus), to the seat of the Marian Fathers near London, to the Museum of Literature in Warsaw and to the Ossolineum in Wrocław, among other places. The herbarium which in 1966 came into the possession of the Poznań Society of Friends of the Sciences (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk) has the features of botanical documentation: it contains 280 plants, information about their appearance and collection, tips on medicinal use and magical meaning – for example: ‘Skrypica – Silene inflata – bladder campion – as the [Polish] name suggests, it was associated with rasping and was actually used as an infusion to treat hoarseness in children’.

Another of Orzeszkowa’s plant archives, this one bound in green velvet and currently in the Wrocław collection, is distinguished not only by its artistry. The author donated it to charity, and she placed an appeal to the residents of Lviv on the first page of the album: ‘Go, my dear Niemen flowers to the Pełtwa [currently Poltva River, outside Lviv, Ukraine] and ask the mighty there for a piece of bread for the poor and hungry!’. The herbal sold for 400 Rhenish gulden and won a gold medal at the General National Exhibition in Lviv.

Translated by Michał Pelczar

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