Adam Zalu?ansky ’s “De sexu plantarum” (1592): an early pioneering chapter on plant sexuality

摘要

In the history of botany, Adam Zalu?ansky (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus’s first biographers, for example, only knew Zalu?ansky from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalu?ansky is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalu?ansky’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalu?ansky. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalu?ansky’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the wellknown De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalu?ansky’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.