scholarly journals The Story of the Tulip That Went Wild: Tracing the History of Introduction of Tulipa Sylvestris in Sixteenth-Century Europe

Author(s):  
Anastasia Stefanaki ◽  
Tilmann Walter ◽  
Tinde van Andel

Abstract Tulipa sylvestris, commonly called the “wild tulip”, was introduced from the Mediterranean to northern Europe in the sixteenth century and became widely naturalized. Research has focused on tulips that came from the Orient, but the introduction path of this native European, early ornamental tulip is unclear, and so is its taxonomic status: three subspecies are provisionally accepted, sometimes treated as species. Here we elucidate the history of introduction of T. sylvestris and discuss its taxonomy based on our historical findings. The first bulbs came from Bologna (northern Italy) and Montpellier (southern France) in the 1550s-1570s. Several renown botanists were involved in their introduction, namely Gessner, Wieland, Aldrovandi, De Lobel, Clusius, and Dodoens. There were various introduction routes, including one from Spain which was apparently unsuccessful. The strong sixteenth-century Flemish botanical network facilitated the introduction and naturalization of T. sylvestris across Europe. Based on the latest tulip taxonomy, the diploid subspecies australis is native in the Mediterranean, and the tetraploid sylvestris is naturalized over Europe, but our historical findings show that both sylvestris and australis were introduced. This underlines the need to reconsider the taxonomic status of T. sylvestris, highlighting the importance of botanical history in understanding the complex taxonomy of naturalized cultivated plants.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. P. Bondarev

The name Flexopecten glaber ponticus (Bucquoy, Dautzenberg & Dollfus, 1889) is generally used for the only Pectinidae representative inhabiting the Black Sea. It is registered in the Red Book of the Republic of Crimea as endemic subspecies reducing in amount. F. glaber ponticus is listed in WoRMS MolluscaBase as the only accepted subspecies of Flexopecten glaber (Linnaeus, 1758). In the past its taxonomic status has been changed from a geographic variety to valid species. The purpose of this study is to establish its correct taxonomic status. The study is based on a comparative analysis of conchological features of Flexopecten glaber and F. glaber ponticus in relation with the brief natural history of population in the Black Sea. Sampling was performed by snorkel equipment in Kazach’ya Bay (Black Sea, Crimea, Sevastopol) at 2–6 m depths. A total of 100 scallop specimens were sampled in September 2017. To assure a better understanding in a broader context those results are compared with the previously published morphological data based on the analysis of a large amount of material from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea – Marmara Sea regions. Comparative analysis of conchological features of F. glaber ponticus from the Black Sea with F. glaber from the Mediterranean region has not revealed any distinct differences between them. Thus, there are no evidenced data for the diagnosis of F. glaber ponticus as a subspecies. Species F. glaber appeared in the Black Sea not earlier than 7,000 years ago and formed a well developed population less than 3,000 years ago. We have to conclude that the specified divergence period is not long enough to form a subspecies. As a result of the present survey the subspecific status of F. glaber ponticus is not retained and the name is placed in synonymy of the parent species Flexopecten glaber.


2019 ◽  
Vol 125 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Balao ◽  
María Teresa Lorenzo ◽  
José Manuel Sánchez-Robles ◽  
Ovidiu Paun ◽  
Juan Luis García-Castaño ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and Aims Inferring the evolutionary relationships of species and their boundaries is critical in order to understand patterns of diversification and their historical drivers. Despite Abies (Pinaceae) being the second most diverse group of conifers, the evolutionary history of Circum-Mediterranean firs (CMFs) remains under debate. Methods We used restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) on all proposed CMF taxa to investigate their phylogenetic relationships and taxonomic status. Key Results Based on thousands of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we present here the first formal test of species delimitation, and the first fully resolved, complete species tree for CMFs. We discovered that all previously recognized taxa in the Mediterranean should be treated as independent species, with the exception of Abies tazaotana and Abies marocana. An unexpectedly early pulse of speciation in the Oligocene–Miocene boundary is here documented for the group, pre-dating previous hypotheses by millions of years, revealing a complex evolutionary history encompassing both ancient and recent gene flow between distant lineages. Conclusions Our phylogenomic results contribute to shed light on conifers’ diversification. Our efforts to resolve the CMF phylogenetic relationships help refine their taxonomy and our knowledge of their evolution.


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Edmund Burke

There is something seriously flawed about models of social change that posit the dominant role of in-built civilizational motors. While “the rise of the West” makes great ideology, it is poor history. Like Jared Diamond, I believe that we need to situate the fate of nations in a long-term ecohistorical context. Unlike Diamond, I believe that the ways (and the sequences) in which things happened mattered deeply to what came next. The Mediterranean is a particularly useful case in this light. No longer a center of progress after the sixteenth century, the decline of the Mediterranean is usually ascribed to its inherent cultural deficiencies. While the specific cultural infirmity varies with the historian (amoral familism, patron/clientalism, and religion are some of the favorites) its civilizationalist presuppositions are clear. In this respect the search for “what went wrong” typifies national histories across the region and prefigures the fate of the Third World.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gagné

AbstractMethods for counting war deaths developed alongside structural changes in the ways that states enumerated mortality (for both fighters and citizens) between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. This paper argues that an alternative way to interpret observers’ comments on the magnitude and novelty of war damages during the Italian Wars (1494–1559) is to trace the history of enumerating mortality from the fourteenth century, using the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death as departure points. Military heralds counted dead soldiers in Northern Europe and civic record keepers registered public mortality in Italy. Numbers carried cultural value. In war, disputants and observers used numbers rhetorically to argue political cases and to emphasize the scale of victories and defeats. By 1500, the proliferation of specific mortality numbers in public discourse — amplified by printed war reporting — forced observers to reckon with their meaning. The article concludes by illustrating how numbers entered memorial culture: monuments from the Italian Wars featured numbers as an index of the perceived magnitude of war in the sixteenth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Janken Myrdal

This article analyzes all extant agricultural treatises produced before the sixteenth century throughout Eurasia, in order to highlight their importance for the study of agricultural praxis, their significance for constructing a transnational intellectual history of the medieval globe, and their relevance for the development of pragmatic literacies. Such texts emerged both in China and around the Mediterranean before 200 BCE, and somewhat later in India, but few have been preserved and many are difficult to date. Thereafter, the medieval transmission of agricultural knowledge moved via several different regional trajectories and traditions, with Anglo-Norman England becoming a fourth and largely independent birthplace of the agricultural treatise genre during the thirteenth century. The proliferation of these texts becomes evident throughout Eurasia around 1000 CE and increases further from the fourteenth onward. Throughout this longue durée, the contents of these treatises reflect real changes in agricultural technologies, dominant crops, and climate.


Rough Waters ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Silvia Marzagalli ◽  
James R. Sofka ◽  
John J. McCusker

In his path-breaking study of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean world, Fernand Braudel identified the “invasion” by Atlantic ships and merchants as one of the major, long-lasting events in the history of the Mediterranean Sea in early modern times.2 According to Braudel, the arrival of English, Flemish and French Atlantic vessels and their captains began discretely in the early sixteenth century as a result of an increased Mediterranean demand for cheap transport services. Within a few decades, however, northern Europeans evolved from a complementary to a commanding position in the region. Atlantic shipping and trade came to dominate the most lucrative Mediterranean trades, and the Atlantic powers steadily imposed their rules and politics on Mediterranean countries, progressively subordinating the region to Atlantic interests. Their ...


2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 218-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cordelia Warr

In Italy, the years around 1500 were fraught for a number of reasons. There were renewed fears about the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to a sense of instability and impending doom. In this climate many people became increasingly concerned about their fate in the afterlife and the need to be prepared for death and judgement. Central to this was the doctrine of purgatory. Yet, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, ideas surrounding purgatory were highly contested as heretical ideas from northern Europe began to filter into northern Italy. This paper investigates Catholic beliefs about the alleviation of purgatorial suffering through a case study of one holy woman from the north of Italy, the Dominican tertiary, Stefana Quinzani, who, according to a letter of 4 March 1500 written by Duke Ercole d’Este, endured every Friday ‘the whole of the Passion in her body, stage by stage, from the Flagellation to the Deposition from the Cross’.


1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-276
Author(s):  
Michael E. Williams

NOT FAR from Cadiz there is an English property that has remained Catholic for close on five hundred years. Its history goes back to pre-reformation days, indeed to the thirteenth century when the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda was recaptured from the Moors by the Guzman family who later became the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. Strategically Sanlucar was an important port because it was at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and as well as capturing the Seville trade it also commanded the traffic from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and eventually it was the point of departure for ships leaving for the New World. Among the various nations using the port the English were conspicuous and their merchants were granted various privileges by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century there is evidence of a sizeable colony in the town; in fact the English were the largest single group of foreigners and many English names appear in the baptismal registers as both parents and godparents. At least one of them held high public office in the town. On the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England, the situation further improved as he abandoned the neutrality of his father and allied himself with Spain against France. So it was that in 1517 a new charter of privileges for the English merchants in Sanlucar was drafted. A grant of land by the river was made so as to provide a chapel and a burial place for Englishmen. The chapel was dedicated to St. George and it was to be looked after by a confraternity. The chaplain was to be appointed by the Bishops of London, Winchester and Exeter, since it was from these dioceses that most of the merchants came. Although there have been rebuildings, this site has remained English ever since.


Zootaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4809 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-392
Author(s):  
LAZARO W. VINOLA-LOPEZ ◽  
PHILIPPE BOUCHET

This nomenclatural note addresses the problem regarding the taxonomic status of the extinct large nimravid Pogonodon Cope, 1880 (Chordata. Mammalia, Nimravidae), from the Oligocene of North America and its junior homonym, the recent triphorid marine snail Pogonodon Bouchet, 1997 (Mollusca, ) from the Mediterranean. Here we propose Ionthoglossa nov. gen. as a substitute name for the latter and provide a brief history of the two taxa from the literature available.


1959 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 156-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Mallett

The first quarter of the fifteenth century, which saw, for the first time, the emergence of Florence as a seapower with its own fleets and ports, was particularly important in the history of the city. The conquest of Pisa in 1406, the purchase of Leghorn and Porto Pisano in 1421, and the launching and despatch of the first communal galleys in 1422, were all events that were acclaimed in Florence as jointly constituting the achievement of a cherished wish, and the birth of a new era of prosperity. Prior to this the Florentines had had to rely on the benevolence of the Pisans and the Sienese for their western outlets to the sea, and on foreign or on hired shipping for the carriage of their trade. Now they planned to launch a galley system comparable to that of the Venetians, to link up trading colonies throughout the Mediterranean, and to establish a reliable vehicle for exploiting the markets of Northern Europe and for bringing in the supplies of English wool so valuable to the Florentine woollen industry.


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