Botanical description of the Benjamin tree of Sumatra / [Jonas Dryander].

  • Dryander, Jonas, 1748-1810.
Date:
[1787]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Botanical description of the Benjamin tree of Sumatra / [Jonas Dryander]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Read at the ROYAL SOCIETY, May 17, 1787, r THOUGH Garcias ab Horto, Grim, and Sylvius, were acquainted with the real tree from which Benjamiii or Benzoin is collected, their defcriptions of it are fo imperfect anil infufficient for its botanical determination, that fucceeding botanifts have fallen into many errors concerning it; and it is remarkable, that although this drug was always imported from the Eaft-Indies, moft of the later writers on the Materia 1 Medica have conceived it to be collefted from a fpecies qf !■ Laurus, native of Virginia, to which, from this erroneous > fuppofition, they have given the trivial name of Benzoin. This miftake feems to have originated with Mr. Ray, who in his Hiftoria Plantarum, Vol. II. p. 1845. at fhe elld of his account of the Arbor Benivifera of Garcias, fays: “ Ad nos fcripfit D. Tancredus Robinson Arborem refiniferam odo- “ ratam foliis citrinis praedi&ae haud abfimilem tranfmiflam “ fuiffe e Virginia a D. Banister, ad illuftriflnnum Prae- “ fulem D. Henr. Compton, in cujus inftruftifiirno horto [ cc culta eft.-Arbor ifta Virginiana Citrii, vel Limonii foliis “ Benzoinum fundens, in horto reverendiffimi Epilcopi culta.” This error was detedfed by Linnaeus, but another was fubftituted by him in its place; for in his Mantiha Plantarum Altera, *
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