An Introduction to Chinese Plant Science

Abstract

Any Westerner seeking to understand Chinese science needs to recognise two facts in particular. The first is the prolific output of Chinese literature which occurred over two millennia. Secondly that a Cambridge scholar Joseph Needham (1900–1995), has organised a truly monumental assessment of this science in the multivolume Science and Civilisation in China. The first volume appeared in 1954 and the eighth is the most recent to appear in 1999. Volume is perhaps a deceptively understated word. The whole venture is a collaborative one involving other contributors but the driving force for the whole project was generated by Needham and is breathtaking in its depth and breadth. Not surprisingly, the résumé offered in this chapter is largely derived from Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology. Given the importance of this volume in the present context, the wider project of which it is a part and one or two unusual aspects of it, the opportunity is taken at this point to introduce it to the reader. It is in three parts whose dates of publication do not follow the expected sequence. Part 1 (1986) by Lu and Huang deals with Botany. Part 2 (1984), by Bray concerns Agriculture. Part 3 (1996), Agro-Industry is sub-divided into Agro-industries: Sugar Cane Technology by Daniels and Forestry by Menzies. It is important to point out that each part contains three types of references — A Chinese and Japanese books before 1800 A. D.; B Chinese and Japanese books and journal articles since 1800 and C, books and articles in Western languages.

Furthermore, the best Chinese agricultural treatises, in our opinion, surpass anything produced before the 18th century in Europe in that systematic presentation of technical detail. Only in the treatment of such specialist topics as viticulture can the great works of Varro and Columella compare with the Chhi Min Yao Shu and its successors for pragmatic details. The Chinese works cover a much wider range of crop plants than Western works, including not only numerous varieties of cereals and fibre crops but also vegetables, fruits, citrus, sugar cane and tea. The number of species, and also of varieties, recorded and described in Chinese agronomic literature is incomparably greater than anything to be found in the pre-modern West. Bray (1984)

Anyone who knows Chinese literature is aware that there was not a single century between A.D. 100 and 1700 that did not see the appearance of at least one new and original work on pharmaceutical natural history, and some which saw many.... in other words Chinese botany had no Renaissance and it had no “dark ages” either Lu and Huang (1986)