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The Herbal of Rumphius
F rom 1653 until his death in
1702—most of his adult life—
Georgius Everhardus Rumphius lived on
Ambon in eastern Indonesia, where he
described its plants. At the time, Vereni-
gde Oost-Indische Compagnie (the Dutch
East India Company) was the largest
private business enterprise in the world;
it reflected the mercantile power of the
far-flung Dutch Republic and controlled
much of the trade between Europe, the
“Spice Islands” and many ports of Asia.
The Company headquarters at Am-
bon—one of the Molucca islands that are
today part of Indonesia—became a bus-
tling outpost of the “civilized world.”
The contrast between the marum-grassy
dunes, incessant booming waves, over-
cast skies, cold and damp cobbled streets
of Amsterdam and the verdant, lush,
mountainous backdrop of sunny warm
Ambon was extraordinary. The paucity
of useful species of flowering plants in
the gloomy north contrasted with the
prodigious green landscapes of Indo-
nesia. The goal of Rumphius was not
to bring himself fame or fortune but to
communicate the wisdom of the place,
to describe for the literate world the
plethora of plants and their uses.
The colorful ways of natives, the
abundance of fish and lack of meat, the
soft tones of the many indigenous lan-
guages, the wafting odors of the sporu-
lating molds and camellias, the ships,
rafts and boats festooned with salty
ropes and seaweeds, the beautiful diver-
sity of sea shells—remains of myriad be-
haviors of life at the edges of the sea—all
Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Profes-
sor in the Department of Geosciences at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts, Amherst. Peter Raven is
President and Director of the Missouri Botanical
Garden. Both are past presidents of Sigma Xi, Mar-
gulis 2005–2006 and Raven 2003–2004. Address
for Margulis: University of Massachusetts, Depart-
ment of Geosciences, Morrill Science Center, 611
North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01003-9297.
Internet: celeste@geo.umass.edu
© 2009 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
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with permission only. Contact perms@amsci.org.
Macroscope
Lynn Margulis and Peter Raven
A 17th-century
Dutch naturalist
established the
botanical foundations
of the flora
of Indonesia
interested Rumphius. He was impressed
and described the ways in which the
ancient modes of life depended entirely
on local habitat. The vegetation, diverse
and overwhelming, that served nearly
all the needs of the people is described in
his great work, the “herbal.”
Beyond plants for food—grain and
feed, fruit and nut—were plants to
heal and to send the spirit soaring.
Plants formed the basis of transport,
of buildings, of parasols and of cloth-
ing. Orchids and bean pods, camellia
teas and other stimulating and sooth-
ing infusions were the stuff of barter,
of inebriation, of soothing infants and
intestinal cleansing, of wound-healing,
of dying cloth and of preparing fiber.
A former Hessian mercenary soldier,
Rumphius saw clearly and early in his
half-century stay that Ambonese habits
were keyed closely to the tropical forest
and seashore. Most of the people’s liv-
ing and livelihood were bound to plants
and algae. He collected copious notes on
everything, especially the category that
we call plant science: plant geography,
floristics and ethnobotany. Rumphius
recorded names and descriptions of
more than 1,200 plants, of which nearly
all are represented in his herbal.
“Natural History,” wrote Harvard
psychologist William James more than
200 years later on an unspoiled conti-
nent unknown to Rumphius and his
adopted compatriots, is the “simple
duplication by the mind of a ready-
made and given reality.” Such accurate
and precise documentation of South
East Asian “natural reality” and com-
munication of it to ordinary people
who might benefit from knowledge of
the ages impelled the gargantuan force
of Rumphius’s genius.
Never Before in English
Rumphius’s 7-volume 7,000-page Am-
bon herbal, mainly of land plants, with
each entry accompanied by a name in
Latin, 17th-century Dutch, Malay, Chi-
nese and, most importantly, local ver-
nacular, is virtually unknown to bota-
nists and other scientists of the “civi-
lized world” today. Never before the
recent extraordinary translation and
commentary by the late Eric Montague
Beekman has the work been available
in English. Modern science has much to
learn from Rumphius’s magnum opus.
His verbal descriptions of etchings still
open for us moderns the practical use
of the 1,200 entries.
Plant stuffs were employed in many
ways: fence posts, lunt, kindling, food
and feed, hallucinogens, dyes, cloth-
ing, fiber, cordage, ampules, ebullients,
twine, housing and furniture, other
building materials and so forth. Heal-
ing and medicinals included treatment
for venereal disease and abortants to
terminate pregnancy.
Our respect soars for the wisdom and
skills of the indigenous peoples of pres-
ent-day Indonesia as we encounter the
accumulation of botanical knowledge
already chronicled by Rumphius during
his half-century in Ambon. We note that,
nearly alone in his scholarly pursuits,
he organized his description in a mod-
ern way. Plant entries are ordered into
groups mainly by their reproductive
structures (flowers, fruits, seeds or lack
of them). Today botanists use these crite-
ria to recognize botanical inclusive taxa.
Plant “phyla,” “orders” and especially
2009 January–February 

The Ambon Herbal of Rumphius describes 1,200 Indonesian plants in ethnobotanical detail.
Rumphius’s work preceded that of Carolus Linnaeus by decades and was likely known by the
Swede. The seven-volumne set, recently translated by E. M. Beekman, will be published by Yale
University Press and the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Spring 2010. This illustration is
courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden, which owns a copy of the Herbal first published 50
years after Rumphius’s death.
“families” such as Graminae or grasses,
Leguminoseae (peas and beans with
their two-seamed pods), Liliaceae (such
as onion and garlic), Rosaceae (pears,
apples, plums, roses, almonds …) pro-
vide the bases for groupings.
Surprisingly close to his material,
Rumphius used the flower-fruit clas-
sification scheme still so appropriate.
Indeed, he continued a version of the
“binomial nomenclature” (Genus spe-
cies) naming-of-organism scheme whose
origin is universally attributed to Carl
von Linné (Carolus Linnaeus), the
Swede from Uppsala. Although some-
what looser in format and less strictly
limited to only two terms (Genus species,
then the scientist credited with the plant
discovery), many binomial or trino-
mial-style names were used in the 17th
century by Rumphius (and even some
predecessors). Beekman makes clear
that the great life-form naming tradition
adopted by the Latin-literate world of
science preceded the 18th century. The
immensely detailed Ambon work, long
after Rumphius’s death but prior to its
publication, was “borrowed“ for botani-
cal taxonomy and nomenclature by the
ambitious Swede. Linnaeus especially
used Rumphius’s tropical botany notes.
Indeed, during the lengthy delays and
spurts of Rumphius’s publication (in
Amsterdam 50 years after his death), Lin-
naeus, the “moth-eaten student,” lived
in the house of Johannes Burman, who
enjoyed access to the immense herbal
manuscript. Apparently Linnaeus, who
described 10,000 plants in his Systema
Naturae, “borrowed” from the great Am-
bonese-Dutch scholar with impunity!
By comparing extant modern Am-
bon plant cover to that described in
Rumphius’s opus, estimates can be
made of the pace of decimation, habitat
destruction and extinction in the past
400 years near the old haunt. In the
proximity of his compound the botani-
cally depauperate surroundings may be
compared with the immense plant di-
versity on the less-settled slopes above.
Such observations support Beekman’s
claim that Rumphius’s prodigious gift
to modern science is of great value, as it
is to human history as well.
Rumphius founded far more than
ethnobotany. The details he accumulat-
ed inform history, philosophy, ecology,
several other botanical fields, medicine,
natural-product chemistry and the bo-
tanical origins of many modern indus-
trial processes. He provides potential
practical guides to the discovery of me-
dicinals new, not to people but to phar-
macological and chemical companies.
With Beekman’s informed translation,
the whole natural world of the Spice
Islands is newly opened up.
Unlike those handling this vast sub-
ject today, Rumphius was a holistic
thinker who made an extraordinary at-
tempt, ultimately successful, to impart
practical alleviation of physico-spiritual
ailments and quotidian knowledge to
ordinary families. He became an advisor
to the women healers who ultimately
sought him as a source of knowledge.
The Dutch-Indonesian Malay culture in
which he practiced became more Asian

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 American Scientist, Volume 97
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and less European through his work.
Surgery or other invasion of the body
he rejected as ineffective barbarism, as
did his adopted countrymen. Unlike the
surgeons of Le Havre, Amsterdam and
Antwerp, the holistic thinker Rumphius
deeply respected the life of the spirit.
The penetration of the skin to breach the
continuity of the whole mind-body was
philosophical anathema. Plant leaves,
flowers, bark or root extracts were ap-
plied to the skin as poultices or drunk
as infusions. Practical details for sexual
soothing, modes of abortion and even
infanticide, infant and nipple sunscreen
and other skin protection, stomach calm-
ing, antidiarrhetics, treatment of scabs
and wounds and the like were com-
municated to both sufferers and healers
frankly, swiftly and effectively. Efficacy
was the goal: No esoteric privileged
class gained by exploitation of the ill.
We must accept that, for at least the
tropics, Rumphius deserves much of
the fame now accorded to Linnaeus. Yet
without multiple acts of wisdom and
dedication, the wealth of Rumphius
could have been lost to all. The entire
original manuscript en route from Am-
bon to the Dutch publisher was lost at
sea, the victim of a French squadron,
when Rumphius was in his sixties. For-
tunately, Joannes Camphuys, Governor
General of the Company, had paid for a
private copy of the first six books of the
herbal for his own delectation, which,
by this happenstance, became the only
surviving text; the dramatic story of the
entire herbal tells us very clearly how
important to the future of culture are
generous acts of public service.
Blinded, probably by cataracts, sepa-
rated permanently for half a century
from his place and people of origin un-
til he died at the age of 72 in 1702, and
with the inestimable aid of his com-
mon-law wife Susanna, this indefatiga-
ble Dutch genius showed the rest of the
world such a rich tropical natural his-
tory that he founded several academic
fields (for example, economic botany,
tropical forest taxonomy and ethno-
graphic documentation) before they
reached the status of “field of study!”
One Year per Volume
Working alone for more than seven
years with the invaluable support of the
National Tropical Botanical Garden and
on a Guggenheim Fellowship (2001)
that barely financed one year, Profes-
sor Beekman himself, like his object of
study Georgius Everhardus Rumphius,
© 2009 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
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with permission only. Contact perms@amsci.org.
E. M. “Monty” Beekman, who died on November 4, 2008, shortly before this issue went to press,
devoted more than seven years to translating into English from Latin and Dutch the Ambon
Herbal of Rumphius.
astounds us. His unique linguistic abili-
ties (aside from fluency in Latin, Dutch,
German and English, he was an accom-
plished poet), his perseverance, intel-
ligence and newly acquired botanical
expertise, are requisite to this work. We
suspect the timing was optimal; it is un-
likely that anyone else was competent
and generous enough to complete this
enormous undertaking.
It is E. M. Beekman’s labor of love
that finally disseminates the efficacious,
popular yet scholarly knowledge of
Rumphius to so many of us nature-lov-
ing Anglophones such that neither the
natural history nor the future of botany
will be the same. In its current form, no
doubt, the entire seven-volume work
will be a necessary acquisition for ar-
boreta, herbaria, horticultural, medical
and paleontological museums, and all
science libraries. We are likely also to
see specialized derivative books and ar-
ticles sprout from Beekman’s giant seed
like that of the orchids of Rumphius The only known live-posed portrait of Geor-
already published in 2002. gius Everhardus Rumphius was drawn by his
We are grateful, as we suspect you son, Paulus Augustus, between October 1695
will be, for the existence of the trans- and July 1696 on Ambon. The governor at the
time wrote the encomium, which translates,
lation and commentary on the Dutch
“Though he be blind, his mental eyes are
17th-century work by Rumphius. We
so sharp that no one can best him at inquiry
welcome with delight the completion or discernment. Rumphius is a German by
of this 21st-century work of nearly the birth but his loyalty and pen are completely
same scholarly magnitude by our late Dutch. Let the work say the rest.” This image
University of Massachusetts–Amherst appeared in the 1999 Yale University Press
colleague. book, The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet.
2009 January–February