Talk:Herbarium Amboinense (1690)

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Page scope

This page documents the historical source Herbarium Amboinense (1690): its composition and publication, its cannabis chapter (vol. 5, ch. XXXIV, pp. 208–211, t. 77) and the later botanical reading of that chapter.

Data verification

Discuss readings of Rumphius's Latin and Dutch text, identifications of his plants, and the dates and pages of the works that interpret him here.

Discussion

Sources read

• Rumphius, Herbarium Amboinense vol. 5 (1747), pp. 208–211 and the legend to t. 77, read in both the Latin and the Dutch columns of the Missouri Botanical Garden scan (Wikimedia Commons copy).
• Merrill, An Interpretation of Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense (1917): the introduction (p. 15), the Cannabis entry (p. 199) and the Corchorus entry (p. 353).
• Lamarck, Encyclopédie méthodique, Botanique vol. 1, p. 695 (title page dated 1783; Merrill dates the Cannabis indica entry to 1785).
• Markham's 1913 translation of Orta's Colóquios, the eighth colloquy (pp. 53–56).
• Boorsma, "Over het voorkomen en het gebruik van Indische hennep in Ned.-Indië" (Teysmannia, 1918), p. 325.

Statements taken out of the article

Each of these sat in the article without a source. They are kept here until a source states them.

• "This is the earliest known documentation of cannabis from the Papuan or Sula Islands region." No source ranks it, and the article now states what Rumphius records instead (cannabis brought to Ambon from the Papuan and Sula Islands).
• The Ginji Papoua "has not been the subject of modern botanical or genetic study". Hasskarl based his var. crispata (1866) on Rumphius's description, and Merrill (1917, p. 199) judged that variety "apparently merely a variant of the common hemp". Whether anyone has examined plants of the population itself is a research question, not a statement for the article.
• The Hitu remedies as "the only known documentation of cannabis-based medicine specific to the Maluku Islands from the colonial period". No source ranks them.
• "Cannabis cultivation in Ambon is not documented in modern sources." Replaced by Boorsma's 1918 report that Indian hemp was unknown in Amboina.
• "The status of the varieties Rumphius described … is unknown."
• "Accounts of cannabis in the western Pacific generally place its arrival in the twentieth century and attribute it to Australian and American expatriates in the 1960s and 1970s", with the comparison that followed ("predates that account by roughly three centuries"; "Whether the two records bear on one another has not been examined in the literature"). The sentence named no account; it can return with one.
• "Whether cannabis formed part of this transported landscape has not been directly investigated."
• The paragraph on Australian Bastard Cannabis (first documented near Sydney in the 1970s; small, curled, unserrated leaves) and its resemblance to the Ginji Papoua. The description carried no source, and the resemblance is an observation, not a published comparison. Australian Bastard Cannabis stays under See also.

Corrections made against the sources

• Lamarck and Rumphius. The article said it had not been established whether Lamarck knew Rumphius's use of the name Cannabis indica. Lamarck's own entry answers it: he lists "Cannabis Indica. Rumph. Amb. 5. p. 208. t. 77." as his variety β, "eadem caule altiore" (the same, with a taller stem), and describes the species from pieces Sonnerat brought back from India.
• Ganja sativa. The article said Merrill identifies Rumphius's Ganja sativa (5: 212) as ramie. Merrill identifies it as Corchorus capsularis (jute), p. 353; ramie is Rumphius's Ramium majus (5: 214).
• Blindness. "Reportedly from glaucoma" had no source. Merrill (p. 15) says Rumphius himself put his blindness down to a last series of journeys along the coasts and in the hills, made to compare his species.
• Maslach. Rumphius's equation of Majub with the Turkish Maslach follows a note by Clusius (p. 209), and on p. 210 he defends it against Scaliger's doubt.

Where the sources differ

• The 1674 earthquake. The article, citing Jarvis (2019) and Yoo (2018), says Rumphius's wife and two of his daughters were killed. Merrill (1917, p. 15) says "his wife and eldest child". Both are given as their sources give them.
• Who helped after 1670. The article (Jarvis) names his son and assistants supplied by the VOC; Merrill (p. 15) names his wife and assistants assigned by the Company.