John Tradescant the elder
John Tradescant the Elder ( baptized * 1570, † 15 or April 16, 1638 in South Lambeth ) was an English gardener and botanist. His son was John Tradescant the Younger.
Life and work
The origin Tradescants John the Elder is not fully understood. Older dictionaries indicate that he had originated in the Netherlands. Today, however, it is believed that he was born in Suffolk in England. There are indications that he his later reputation as a gardener before 1600 when William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham acquired on the seat of Cobham Hall.
1609 introduced him to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury for the Hatfield House in Hertfordshire as a gardener. In his job he traveled 1610/11 to the Netherlands to purchase tulip bulbs, vines, fruit trees and other plants for him. After the death of Robert Cecil he remained until 1614 in the service of his son William. In the years 1615-1623 he designed for Sir Edward Lord Wotton, privy councilor and treasurer of King James I, the gardens in the area around the St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.
From Gravesend he broke in 1618 with Sir Dudley Digges ( 1583-1639 ), who was appointed ambassador to the Tsardom Russia, on a military expedition to northern Russia. About the journey that took him to Severodvinsk, he wrote a travel diary got us. Arkhangelsk he brought some plants, so Rosa Moscovita, angelica, larches and a geranium way to England. After completion of the castle of Chilham Dudley Digges Tradescant submitted to the local garden.
In 1620 he sailed to the Mediterranean to participate in a military operation against the pirates of the Barbary States, and thus came to the Levant. From this trip he brought the pomegranate, apricot and pistachio back to England.
1621 John Tradescant entered the service of George Villiers 1st Duke of Buckingham, designed the gardens around Chelmsford and again traveled on his behalf in 1624 in the Netherlands. In 1625 he traveled to Paris Villiers, who arranged the marriage of Henrietta Maria of France and Charles I. there. During this stay in Paris he also met with the royal botanist Jean Robin. 1627, he took part in the siege of La Rochelle.
About 1626 he leased in South Lambeth, near the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury Lambeth Palace, the province or the later " The Ark " ("The Ark " ) called building. There he gathered acquired on his travels curiosities Musaeum Tradescantianum which he made available to the public in 1629. The collection is the oldest English curio cabinet and also the first public museum in England. Later the collection was part of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
1630 appointed him to Charles I. overseer of the gardens, vineyards and silk plantations of Oatlands Palace in Weybridge. Shortly before his death, he was in 1637 still overseer of the Physic Garden at Oxford.
To the Musaeum Tradescantianum in Lambeth around a big, also publicly available, plant garden was created. A 1634 out of given plant catalog lists only 40 North American plants. Tradescant is to be the first the self-climbing Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia ), Aquilegia canadensis, Aster tradescantii, Rudbeckia laciniata, who Virginia Spiderwort Tradescantia virginiana and probably cultivated Robinia pseudoacacia in Europe.
John Tradescant died in 1638, when his son was on his first trip to Virginia. His grave is located in Lambeth on which the church of St Mary, where he is buried with his son cemetery.
Ehrentaxon
Heinrich Bernhard Rupp named after the Tradescants the genre of three-masted Flowers ( Tradescantia ) from the plant family of Commelina family ( Commelinaceae ). Linnaeus later took the name.
Writings
- A Viag of Ambusad. 1618th
- Plantarum in Horto John Tradescanti nascentium Catalogus. To 1634.