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34 penetrated Spanish consciousness, the government decided to send Löfling, together with other experts, on an expedition that should explore Venezuela. This expedition bore little results, due to the premature death of Löfling in the region of the Orinoco river, but above all because the Spanish government refused to lend or even show Linné the material collected by his pupil and especially the manuscripts that he compiled during his brief stay in America. To this day, nobody knows what happened to Löfling’s herbarium, one of the first collections made in America. The advantages that Enlightenment saw in utilitarian science were expressed by Linné: “Various nations consider it a raison d’etat to hide their advantages, especially in the distant colonies. But Señor Carvajal was too great a statesman to let himself be deceived by these motives. He knew that the rich resources of nature are inexhaustible and that, using them with the necessary knowledge, one had no need to fear their lack. He saw how the French and English, in many varied ways, had learned to exploit their colonies after having learned to know their territories and products in a better manner” (Rydén, 1957: 204-205. The quote is from the prologue of Linné in his Iter Hispanicum, 1758). Though its beginnings were tortuous and slow, Spanish botany entered an era of excited ferment in the last half of the eighteenth century (Steele, 1964: 46). The Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid was founded in 1755. On October 17, 1755, Fernando VI signed a royal order: “Wishing the King the furtherance of the Arts and Sciences, and especially those whose progress promise great advantages to the health of his subjects, has he come to grant to his Royal Protomedicate the use of his garden at Migascalientes with the purpose of forming there a Royal Garden and improving in these Kingdoms the important study of Botany” (Fig. 11, E—F). José Quer (1695-1764) was named as its first professor of Botany. He would publish, between 1762 and 1764, the first Spanish flora, in four volumes, which was left unfinished at the time of his death (Quer, J., 1762, Flora Española o Historia de las plantas que se crían en España, Madrid) (De San Pío Aladrén et al., 2005: 23). Moved by the necessity of reviving the Spanish economy and reducing unemployment, the Count LANKESTERIANA LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. of Campomanes, in his famous Discourse on the furtherance of popular industry (1774), mentioned the importance of studying natural history. Thus was the idea born to send expeditions to the principal regions of the empire. In 1777 the expedition of Ruiz and Pavón departed for the Viceroyalty of Peru, followed in 1787, 1789 y 1799 by those of Sessé and Mociño to New Spain, Malaspina to the Pacific and Mutis to New Granada. All this research, made during twenty years in the most fertile regions of the new continent, has not only enriched the domain of science with more than four thousand new species of plants; it has also contributed greatly to spread the taste for natural history among the inhabitants of the country (Steele, 1964: vii, who cites Alexander von Humboldt, in his Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (1811). Under the influence of the ideas of Enlightenment and the political events that shook France and the English colonies in North America, Spain experimented in the last third of the XVIII century a cultural and scientific renaissance that, ironically, would be a principal cause for the loss, few years later, of its American empire. King Charles IV, great promoter of the botanical exploration of America, and his wife María Luisa, where honored by Ruiz & Pavón in the naming of the genus Carludovica, from the family of the Cyclanthaceae (From the Latin Carolus = Charles, and Ludovica = Luisa, Louise) 13 . The expedition of Alessandro Malaspina to the Pacific (1789-1794). On July 30, 1789, after many months of careful planning, two small corvettes left the port of Cádiz. Commanding some 200 men, Alessandro Malaspina (1754-1810), one of the most brilliant officers of the Spanish Navy, went ahead with the most ambitious project of Spanish enlightenment: the scientific exploration of the American coasts and of the greater part of the islands of the eastern Pacific (Fig. 12). Malaspina had been born in Italy but was educated in the Company of Naval Guards in Cádiz, which was at that time the most prestigious naval school in Europe. He took part in the Spanish-English wars and in 1782 began a brilliant career in the Spanish Armada. Between 1786 and 1788, commanding the frigate Astrea, he circumnavigated the globe by order of the 13 The type species for Carludovica is Carludovica palmata Ruiz & Pavón, the well known “paja toquilla” from which the famous ‘Panama’ hats are made.
ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America Figure 12. Alessandro Malaspina (1754-1810). Navy Museum, Madrid. LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. 35
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