What is the story of Elias by Land?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 16, 2001
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There is a difficulty in backtracking events when we can not imagine the times, when few records were kept and many lost in the intervening years. But stories linger and it becomes a task of sorting facts from fabrications. Modern legends say that Elias was a fool with an irrational fear of water and, perhaps, that is why Linnaeus named a genus of epiphytes after him.
The Gulf of Bothnia sits north of the 60th parallel, a place where tectonics has torn the land apart. The south end of the gulf lies between Stockholm, Sweden and Abo, Finland. It is a cold stretch of sea full of granite islands and treacherous shoals. In September of 1714,
Czar Peter (the Great) lost one-third of his fleet to the storms of Bothnia.
In Gray's Manual of Botany, there is a note about Elias, "as a student crossing directly from Stockholm, was so seasick that he returned to Stockholm by walking more than 1000 miles around the head of the Gulf of Bothnia..." Elias was from Finland, left home for school in Stockholm, and returned home during a school break. So what could have happened on that particular voyage that he vowed never to cross water again? The Manual continues, "...and hence assumed his surname (by land)" or in Swedish, till lands.
Elias Tillands became a professor in Abo. He died at 53 years of age in 1693, fourteen years before Linnaeus was born, twenty-one years before Peter the Great lost many of his ships. If he actually walked around the Gulf of Bothnia, then he probably knew more about the plants of Scandinavia than anyone else.
Since the 1500s, plants were shipped back to Europe from the Americas. Wealthy Europeans amassed great collections of the rare and unique, and the stranger the plant the better. When Linnaeus was 30, he received a commission to catalog the botanical collection of George Clifford in Amsterdam.
Among Clifford's plants were epiphytic bromeliads called caraguata by Native Americans. Because of their epiphytic nature, they were believed odd mistletoes and that they disliked or even feared water.
Linnaeus catalogued the epiphytes, but he changed their previous designation. Perhaps, he thought of the story of the botanist who feared water. Maybe he just wanted history to remember a man who spent his life teaching and collecting plants. In Hortus Cliffortianus, Linnaeus wrote, "The name, Caraguata Plumerieri, is American & barbarian. In its place (Tillandsia) is substituted in memory of ELIAS TILLANDS, a great & unique botanist from Finland."
The first bromeliad named after Elias Tillands, is now an endangered species. The University of Florida has a photograph of Tillandsia utriculata taken in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. To view the photograph, click on the link:
http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/orn/mcallizona01.htm
Tillandsia tectorum was discovered and named 184 years after the death of Elias Tillands. To view the Tillandsia of roofs, see the Plant of the Week, November 12, 2001.
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) Plant of the Week - May 17, 2004
Tillandsia cyanea Plant of the Week - January 27, 2003
Why was it called a pine apple? What's in a Name? - April 19, 2002
Tillandsia ionantha Plant of the Week - September 30, 2002
What is the Evil Weevil? Renfield's Garden - January 28, 2004
What plant is a penthouse in the canopy? Renfield's Garden - January 23, 2002
Why did seafarers plant pineapples? Plants that Changed History - April 16, 2002
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