Van Andel & al. • Are Rolander’s plants still used in Suriname today? TAXON — 18 Jun 2012: 12 pp. This is a draft version for proof purposes only. INTRODUCTION The Swedish biologist Daniel Rolander (ca. 1723–1793) was selected by his teacher Carl Linnaeus to travel to Suriname in the company of Carl Gustaf Dahlberg, a Swedish mercenary officer in Dutch service who had married a wealthy widow with several plantations in this Dutch plantation colony. Rolander was nominally hired as a tutor to Dahlberg’s daughters, but soon dedicated himself entirely to the study of the flora and fauna of the region (Dobreff, 2010). Rolander’s journey was in fact a one-man natural history expedition, although he was probably assisted by Dahlberg’s African slaves during his work. Rolander departed from Sweden on 21 October 1754. His stay in Suriname lasted seven months: from 20 June 1755 to 20 Janu- ary 1756. Working every day but Sundays, he gathered plant and animal specimens during the day, while in the evenings he recorded his observations in detail, prepared plant specimens for preservation in his herbarium and processed his zoological collections. When Rolander returned to Stockholm on 2 Octo- ber 1756, he became the fifth of nine Linnaean ‘Apostles’ to see their homeland again. His return should have been a great victory, but his relation with his former teacher quickly soured. Rolander refused to share his specimens with Linnaeus, as he was determined to use his herbarium, insect collections and his diary (then still in draft form) to leverage himself an academic position or some sort of suitable employment. His efforts seem to have met with no success (Dobreff, 2010). In 1762, Rolander was destitute. His clothing, books, manuscripts and extensive Surinamese herbarium had been impounded due to outstanding debts. The German Professor Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795) agreed to pay Rolander’s debt and provide food and lodging, if Rolander would complete the last draft of his expedition report. When he had finished it in 1763, however, Kratzenstein failed to find a publisher for it. The original holograph, a 700-page Latin manuscript, remains in the library of the Danish Botanical Museum in Copenhagen. It bears its title in Rolander’s hand: Diarium Surinamicum, quod sub itinere exotico conscripsit Daniel Rolander (Dobreff, 2010). The Danish botanist Christian Friis Rottbøll (1727–1797) purchased Rolander’s Diarium Surinamicum and a portion of his herbarium, presumably from Kratzenstein
Abstract The recent English translation of the diary of the Swedish naturalist Daniel Rolander (written 1754–1756) reveals the earliest written records on useful plants of Suriname. Since he did not grant Linnaeus access to his specimens, Rolander never received credit for his work, part of his collection was lost, and his diary never published. Here we compare Rolander’s notes with recent ethnobotanical data from the Guianas and discuss how plant use has changed in the past 250 years. All spe- cies names in the diary with (potential) uses were updated to their current taxonomic status by using modern and historical literature, digitized Rolander specimens, herbarium collections and online nomenclatural databases. Rolander’s diary lists uses for 263 plant names (228–242 spp.). Major use categories are medicine (109 spp.) and food (107 spp.). About 86% of these species are still used in Suriname today, 54% similarly as in the 1750s. Greatest correspondence was found among cultivated food crops, timber and ornamental species. Living conditions in Suriname have greatly improved since 1755, so much ancient famine food is now forgotten; while then popular fruits have become ‘emergency food’ today. Although ideas about health and illness have changed over the past centuries, uses have remained unchanged for 36% of the medicinal species. Rolander’s diary contains first-hand observations on how plant uses were discovered, and how this knowledge was accumulated, transferred or kept secret in an 18th-century slave society. It represents one of the few historical sources that document the transfer of ethnobotanical knowledge among Amerindians, Europeans and Africans, as well as the trial-and-error process by which the enslaved Africans learned to use a new, American flora. Keywords African diaspora; botanical history; ethnobotany; Guianas; Linnaeus; medicinal plants Supplementary Material Tables S1 and S2 (in the Electronic Supplement) are available in the Supplementary Data section of the online version of this article (http://ingentaconnect.com/content/iapt/tax).
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2010). Rottbøll published several plant descriptions based on
Rolander’s diary and plants, quoting medicinal uses and col-
lection information (e.g., Rottbøll, 1778). After Linnaeus had
spread the word that his former student was unqualified and
mentally ill, Rolander never received recognition for his work.
In 1793, he died impoverished and in poor health in Lund,
Sweden (Dobreff, 2010). The Bergius Herbarium in Stock-
holm, Sweden (SBT) has at least 197 Rolander collections,
listed under 360 different scientific names (www.bergianska
.se). The Botanic Museum in Copenhagen (C) preserves at least
10 specimens collected by Rolander in Suriname, while a hand-
ful of specimens is stored at the University of Helsinki, Finland
(H), the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm (S),
Uppsala University, Sweden (UPS), and at the Linnean Society
of London (LINN) (De Moraes, 2012).
The French taxonomist Fusée Aublet (1720–1778) is gener-
ally considered as one of the “founding fathers of Neotropical
ethnobotany”, as he published the first detailed indigenous
uses of South American plants (Plotkin & al., 1991). Rolander
preceded Aublet by 20 years, but even though some of his col-
lections and drawings were selected as type specimens, like
Renealmia alpinia (Rottb.) Maas (Maas, 1977) and Ficus per-
tusa L. f. (Berg, 1992), the existence of his unpublished Latin
diary was until recently unknown among (ethno-)botanists
specialized in the Guianas (De Moraes, 2012). Rolander’s diary
is preceded in Suriname only by Maria Sibylla Merian, who
published her famous paintings of plants and insects in 1705.
Rolander, like many of his contemporaries, did not only focus
on the taxonomy of plants and animals, but also showed a keen
interested in the Surinamese society, their inhabitants and their
use of plants. The publication of the English translation of the
Diarium Surinamicum by Dobreff and co-workers (Rolander,
I have put all what was obviously quoted from printed m a-terials into double quot. m arks - check if all are correct
2008) has revealed that Rolander’s writings represent one of
the earliest written records on useful plants of Suriname. Apart
from the few ethnobotanical notes made by Hendrik Meijer (ca.
1689) in the Hermann Herbarium (Veldman, 2012), Merian
(1705), Stedman (1988), the descriptions of useful plants by
Fermin (1765), the unpublished catalogue of the collections
made by Rolander’s host Dahlberg (n.d.), and Linnaeus’s work
on Dahlberg’s collections (Linnaeus, 1785), there exists only
scanty information about plant use in 18th-century Suriname.
What makes Rolander’s diary interesting from a historical
viewpoint is that it is a first-hand report of a highly trained
Linnaean naturalist, who was not only suddenly submerged in
Suriname’s rich flora and fauna, but also became an unexpected
eyewitness of an 18th-century Dutch colonial society. The diary
is much more than a scientific description of plants and animals.
It also provides an ornate portrait of how European plantation
owners earned fortunes from coffee, sugar and cocoa. Rolander
contrasted the self-indulgent lifestyle of the Dutch planters with
the dreadful conditions endured by their black servants (Pain,
2007). He was shocked by the brutal punishments inflicted on
the slaves, sometimes for committing only a slight mistake like
the breaking of a saucer. The “repeated lashes of whips hissed
daily throughout the city homes […] a type of punishment that is
horrendous to hear and wretched to view”, he wrote in his diary
on 1 July 1755. Rolander arrived in Suriname just as a growing
army of escaped slaves were fighting a successful guerilla war
against their former owners. Their frequent attacks on planta-
tions terrified the white population, and military expeditions
were sent out to find the blacks and to destroy their settlements
(Stedman, 1988). Most of these actions were unsuccessful, and
Rolander describes their failures in detail. During his travels
around the city of Paramaribo and along the Commewijne and
changed to genitive
Fig. . Rolander and Dahlberg on
expedition in Suriname. Drawing
by Jamaer (1935), using a wrong
date.
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lower Suriname River, Rolander met white planters, Portuguese
Jews, Amerindians, Creoles and African-born slaves (Fig. 1).
He describes their physical appearance, food habits, agriculture,
rituals and herbal medicine. He dined with “fine white ladies”,
peeked inside a newly arrived slave-ship, entered an Amerindian
dwelling, met an escaped African slave who had become the
chief of an Indian tribe and had six wives, and was present when
slaves celebrated their holidays with traditional African music
and dances. For all the plants he saw during his seven-month
journey through Suriname he composed detailed Linnaean de-
scriptions, and recorded how the Indians, Europeans or African
slaves used them as food or medicine.
Historical documents report that slaves were often allowed
a space to cultivate food in their spare time, but prior to the
publication of Rolander’s diary, we hardly knew which crops
they planted, what dishes they ate or which wild fruits they
gathered from the forests bordering the plantations (Price, 1991;
Carney & Rosomoff, 2009). Nor did we have a clear idea on
what ecological knowledge they exchanged with nearby indig-
enous communities, and how they became familiar with the
alien landscape surrounding them (Voeks, 2009). Rolander’s
diary provides some answers to the following questions: What
plants were being used by whom in Suriname during the 1750s?
Which species were cultivated in gardens and which ones col-
lected in the wild? In this paper, we compare Rolander’s diary
with recent ethnobotanical data from Suriname, and discuss
what plant uses have remained the same, changed or disap-
peared, and speculate on the reasons why.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We traced back the species names for useful plants men-
tioned in the English translation of Rolander’s diary to their
current taxonomic status by using De Moraes & al. (2009,
2010), De Moraes (2012), Rottbøll (1778), Uittien’s hand-
written copy of Dahlberg’s unpublished catalogue (of which
the original is held by the Linnaean Society in London) and
Alm’s dissertation on Dahlberg’s alcohol collection (Linnaeus,
1785; De Moraes, 2012). We also consulted the Linnaean Plant
Name Typification Project website (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
research-curation/research/projects/linnaean-typification/, last
accessed 23 March 2012), studied Rolander’s digitized speci-
mens from the Bergius Herbarium website (www.bergianska
.se/index_samlingar.php, last assessed 23 March 2012), the
Flora of the Guianas and Suriname, and the botanical check-
list of the Guiana Shield (Funk & al., 2007). Plant names that
did not appear anywhere in the literature were traced back by
comparing Rolander’s Latin descriptions with the NHN her-
barium collection (L), which houses 215,000 specimens from
the Guianas. To compare Rolander’s ethnobotanical records
with more recent plant use data in the Guianas, we used the
database (ca. 3300 uses of ca. 450 species) compiled by the first
author during fieldwork in Suriname (partly published in Van
Andel & Ruysschaert, 2011), and additional information from
Aublet (Plotkin & al., 1991), Stahel (1944), Ostendorf (1962),
Van Andel (2000), and DeFilipps & al. (2004). Apart from
URL not working - check
is this a book? website?
the eight species that were annotated by the second author in
1985, we were unfortunately not able to examine Rolander’s
original plant collections. In this paper, we will only focus on
plants mentioned by Rolander during his stay in Suriname.
These include both native species and plants introduced from
elsewhere. Species that were mentioned by Rolander during
his travels in Europe or the Antilles were not part of our study.
RESULTS
Plant names and uses. — Most of Rolander’s observations
and collections were made around Paramaribo and along the
Commewijne and lower Suriname River, in the surroundings
of the plantations Capoerica (Dahlberg’s property), Woesingia,
Wajamo, Klein Chatillon, Overbridge (Owerbrugg), Salem,
Scroeder, and the Jew’s Savannah. There are some 614 plant
names listed in the diary, which belong to approximately
570 species. Information is provided on the (potential) uses
for 263 plant names, corresponding to 228 to 242 species
(Table S1 in the Electronic Supplement). Four plant names
we could not trace back to a reliable generic level, and for one
name even the family remains unknown. Of the 242 useful
plant species (including the ones that remained unidentified
or had non-specified uses), 109 species (45%) had medicinal
applications, 107 (44%) were used as food plants, 16 (7%) as
ornamentals, 15 (6%) for construction, and 46 species (19%)
for miscellaneous purposes (e.g., poison, household equip-
ment or rituals). About 40% of the useful plants represented
introduced, domesticated species; the remaining 60% were
native South American plants. Unfortunately, Rolander was
not always well-informed on the geographical origin or the
domestication state of the plants he observed. He must have
considered the introduced tuber crop Colocasia esculenta to
be a local weed, as he remarked: “Arum esculentum, an herb no
les common along ditches and in damp, clayish meadows than
it is pleasing to white residents […] thus it is also cultivated
in most vegetable gardens” (10 September 1755). On the other
hand, Rolander’s observations show us how fast species that
were introduced to Suriname escaped from cultivation. He
saw, for example, that the introduced African herb Leonotis
nepetifolia “grew frequently on the edge of the visible forest”,
suggesting its status as a wild plant. Some plants that Rolander
saw being grown in vegetable gardens (e.g. Cynodon dactylon,
Waltheria indica) now only survive as weeds in Suriname.
At the beginning of his stay (June 1755), Rolander did not
understand the Dutch Creole (‘Sranantongo’), that still serves
as a lingua franca in the country today. A month after his
arrival, however, he mentioned the first translations, while in
September 1755, he addressed people in the “Black English
tongue”. Despite the fact that he had learned to communicate in
Sranantongo and Dutch during his stay in Suriname, he listed
only 43 local names in those languages and two (coenatepie and
acajou) in the Arawak Indian language. More than half of these
names are presently still in use for the same species (Table S1).
About 208 (86%) of the 242 useful plant species listed in
the diary are also used in one way or another today (Table S2
m ultiple uses possible?
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in the Electronic Supplement). At least 131 (54%) of Rolander’s
plants have one or more uses today that correspond to those of
the 1750s. The greatest match was found among ornamental
(13 spp., 81%) and timber species (11 spp., 73%), followed by
domesticated food crops (51 species, 72%) and medicinal plants
(39 spp., 36%). Of the 131 species that have similar uses today,
36 (27%) are wild plants native to Suriname, 26 (20%) are New
World crops domesticated by Amerindians (e.g., Bixa orellana),
28 (21%) are species introduced from Africa (e.g., Hibiscus
sabdariffa), although some might have an earlier origin in Asia,
and 21 (16%) are species that were introduced by Europeans
(e.g., Brassica oleracea). In the following paragraphs, we will
illustrate several remarkable differences and similarities be-
tween present-day and 18th-century plant uses.
Forgotten foods from the s. — In the first weeks of
his stay in Suriname, Rolander wandered around Paramaribo
and visited the city’s spacious gardens and several plantations
in its outskirts. He observed how the white residents tried to
grow European spices, vegetables and fruits in their gardens,
with mixed success. Many of these species (e.g., dill, chervil,
parsnip, chicory, European fig, grapes, thyme) are nowadays
not grown anymore in Suriname, while some (e.g., parsley,
white cabbage, carrots) were cultivated until recently (Stahel,
1944) and others are now imported from Asia (e.g., anise seed,
black pepper, fennel seed). Rolander was apparently not famil-
iar with tomatoes. He remarked that the “entire herb’s odor is
fetid and nauseating. The Jews and blacks eat the ripe fruit, both
raw and cooked, and suffer no ill effects from it” (23 December
1755). Nor did he fancy the “pompelmoes” (Citrus maxima),
which were “so sour and bitter, that they cannot be eaten by the
whites”. On the other hand, he was surprised by the little esteem
the locals had for oranges, which were so abundant that they
were left to rot under the tree. He discovered that the reason
why people refrained from eating these “nearly divine fruits”
was the misconception that their daily consumption “scrapes
away the mucus of the intestines and induces ileus, dysentery
and other diseases” (24 June 1755).
In 1755, rice was not the important plantation crop as it
is today, but was imported from the United States. Rolander
discovered some rice culms (Oryza sativa) “by chance” be-
tween the coffee shrubs on a plantation, “though the residents
didn’t even know its name” (13 September 1755). At present we
know that African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud.) must have
been cultivated on a small scale by slaves and runaways in that
period (Carney & Rosomoff, 2009; Van Andel, 2010), but this
apparently escaped Rolander’s eye. Most of the tropical tubers,
fruits and vegetables that were cultivated in the 1750s (e.g., cas-
sava, Colocasia, papaya, bananas, Citrus fruits, sweet potato,
pineapple, pumpkin) are still part of everyday diet in Suriname.
Rolander gave a vivid description of a “sweet, gelatinous (okra)
soup” favored by “fine white ladies” and said to provide “ex-
traordinary health benefits to convalescents and underweight
seniors […] revitalize those exhausted by sex” and “generate
mild humors, energize the entire body and increase the quantity
of semen” (15 July 1755). Okra soup is nowadays considered
as a typical element of the Creole kitchen. Surprised about
the native people’s eating habits, Rolander noted that “bitter
in original text or by
you for explanation?
vegetables, even poisonous ones, seem to aid these peoples
(Indians and blacks) to extend their lives” (16 August 1755).
Little seems to have changed since that time: bitter vegetables
were listed among the most popular traditional herbs for health
promotion and disease prevention among Surinamese migrants
in the Netherlands in 2007 (Van Andel & Westers, 2010).
Some tropical species that were commonly grown for
food in Rolander’s time are no longer found in gardens today
(Table S2). The cultivation of Merremia dissecta, of which the
roots were boiled like sweet potatoes, is now only known from
Argentina (Austin, 2007). It has been forgotten in Suriname,
although the plant is still a common weed in agricultural fields.
The African herb Cleome gynandra was commonly grown and
eaten raw or cooked like spinach in 18th-century Suriname.
This plant is not eaten anymore, but is naturalized as a weed in
Suriname and French Guiana (Funk & al., 2007). Still a popular
vegetable in West Africa (www.prota.org), C. gynandra might
be one of the ‘forgotten foods’ that was introduced to the New
World by means of the slave trade. The same accounts for the
West African food plants Phoenix reclinata, Solanum inca-
num and S. rudepannum. Other food plants of African origin
mentioned by Rolander, such as pigeon peas (Cajanus cajan),
sesame (Sesamum indicum) and watermelon (Citrullus lanatus),
are still commonly grown in Suriname.
The mamee apple (Mammea americana) often appears
in the diary, both as a popular fruit crop on plantations and
growing wild along the rivers. The reader is warned that eat-
ing too much of this large, musky-smelling fruit would cause
headaches, diarrhea and dysentery (23 July 1755). Mammea
americana, however, is not indigenous to the Guianas, so all
mamee apple trees that Rolander saw must have been planted.
The other two observed ‘species’ of this fruit (‘M. alternifolia’,
‘M. asiatica’) do not occur in the Guianas (Funk & al., 2007), so
it is likely that these must have been wild species of fruit-bearing
trees of the Clusiaceae (e.g., Platonia insignis or Moronobea
coccinea). Mamee apple is now hardly grown anymore in
Suriname (Van Andel & Ruysschaert, 2011). Several other ed-
ible fruits mentioned in the diary are not eaten anymore today.
Seeds of Triplaris weigeltiana, once “ground and boiled down
into a tasty porridge” (29 September 1755) are not consumed
anymore in Suriname. Fruits of Vismia spp., Annona glabra,
Bromelia karatas, and coffee berries have also lost their edible
function. In the 1750s, some fruits were only eaten occasion-
ally by Amerindians and fugitive slaves “when extreme hunger
compels them”, like the “fiery, bitter fruits” of the common
swamp plant Montrichardia arborescens (26 July 1755). Still
devoured by Stedman’s soldiers some decades later (Stedman,
1988), M. arborescens fruits are no longer consumed anywhere
in the Guianas. The berries of the various Melastomat aceae
shrubs, popular in Rolander’s time, are still eaten by Amerin-
dian children in the interior of Guyana, although despised by
their parents as “bird food” (Van Andel, 2000). The capsules and
seeds of Renealmia alpinia provided both food and medicine to
the Amerindians, as they were said to “excite Venus, recall lost
appetite, strengthen stomach and forestall contagious diseases”
(3 November 1755). Rolander’s collection of R. alpinia is kept at
the Bergius Herbarium (Fig. 2A, B). He suggested rolling them renum bered
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Fig. A. Infructescence of Renealmia alpinia, collected by Rolander
(specimen SBT 1.3.12.13). — Picture: Bergius Herbarium, Stockholm.
renumbered
do you have permission to use all figures?
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in sugar to enhance their flavor and export them to Europe.
More than 250 years later, people only use the fresh aril around
the seeds to color their rice dishes.
In the 18th century, the starchy rhizomes of Canna in-
dica were cooked and eaten by Amerindians. The crop was
also planted in great quantities to feed the slave population.
Runaway slaves used the hard, globular seeds of this plant as
ammunition for their guns. Rolander mentioned that “hos-
tile blacks industriously cultivate Canna at the mountain foot
to have many seeds”. Nowadays, C. indica is an occasional
ornamental in Paramaribo gardens, but, just as C. glauca,
mostly considered a weed, as it blocks ditches and waterways.
The Maroons, however, descendants of the runaway slaves,
still hold these plants in high esteem. They grow C. indica
to make porridge from its rhizomes, and employ the seeds of
both C. indica and C. glauca in ritual herbal baths to protect
themselves against their enemies. The ancient function of the
seeds as ammunition to shoot the whites has now changed into
a magic medicine.
Experimenting with the flora of Suriname. — The most
striking of Rolander’s ethnobotanical observations are the
numerous cases of poisoning. “Indeed, nothing is considered
more dangerous than to explore the powers of plants in this
part of the world by mastication. To be sure, innumerous mor-
tals have hastened their own demise by heedlessly licking or
eating such plants; the result is that people have learned to deal
cautiously with plants here”, he remarked on 21 January 1756.
Rolander’s first account of such a ‘trial and error’ incidence
was given even before he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. On 30
December 1754, when he was traveling with his patron Dahl-
berg through Germany on their way to Amsterdam, he wrote:
“The black slave accompanying us on his journey from Swe-
den to Amsterdam tasted the scarlet berries of Ilex aquifolium
L., assuring that they tasted well and that he had eaten them
many times in Suriname. Having swallowed a few berries our
arrogant jester, misled by the color, got a headache and started
vomiting.” Unfortunately, the diary does not reveal with which
Surinamese fruit the toxic holly fruits were confused. Rolan-
der described two cases of black children that were poisoned
by mistaking the red fruits of ‘Doliocarpus volubilis’ (prob-
ably D. major) for coffee berries. Although the fruits had a
pleasant taste at first, the children contracted a high fever and
their bodies swelled up. One of them recovered after receiving
an “emetic antidote” (vomiting agent), the other was restored
to health by an infusion of Aristolochia trilobata. This vine
was used by Amerindians as an antidote to poisons of all sorts,
including snakebites, contagious diseases, and incipient fever
(1 November 1755). The poisonous leaves of Dieffenbachia
seguine had caused several victims who mistook them for
the edible Colocasia esculenta. People sometimes just ate the
wrong part of the plant. The edible fruits of Annona muricata
were devoured by those who knew them. The consumption
of the fleshy flowers of this tree, however, had killed several
black children who mistook them for fruits (11 July 1755).
African slaves were not the only ones that experienced the
drawbacks of trying out a new flora, as was illustrated by the
description of the shrub Solanum mammosum, common along
the Surinamese sea shore. Its orange, fleshy, but poisonous
berries were confused with Citrus fruits by the hungry, newly
arrived sailors and soldiers. In no time these individuals would
swell up and “discharge body fluids from both fore and aft”.
If they had consumed the fruits in considerable amounts, they
usually breathed their last breaths in a short time. Although
newcomers were warned by the natives to abstain from all
orange fruits growing near the coastline (24 June 1755), this
advice was apparently not very effective, as identical poison-
ing cases with S. mammosum were reported a few decades
later by Stedman (1988).
Fig. B. Label belonging to
Rolanders collection of Reneal-
mia alpinia. — Picture: Bergius
Herbarium, Stockholm.
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Van Andel & al. • Are Rolander’s plants still used in Suriname today?
TAXON — 18 Jun 2012: 12 pp.
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