Appendix
Georg Christian Edler von Oldenburg Oeder (1728-1791), German physician, economist, social reformer, professor of botany in Copenhagen, and in 1753 the founding author of Flora Danica, a massive work initially designed to cover all plant species in the crown lands of the Danish King, including Norway with its North Atlantic dependencies Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which was only completed 153 years later. He studied medicine at the University of Göttingen under Albrecht von Haller who in 1751, after he had been practicing medicine in the town of Schleswig, persuaded King Frederick V to appoint him as Professor botanices regius (Royal Professor). He soon established a botanical garden and began work on the Flora Danica. Oeder served on many commissions and was involved in agrarian and social reforms. Because of the crisis in state finances and the strengthening of anti-enlightenment and anti-German conservative circles around 1771, Oeder lost his professorship, and this was the period when Christian VII's mental illness became a state crisis, and the country was basically taken over for a couple of years by his royal physician Johann Friedrich Struensee who had an affair with the queen and in 1772 was arrested and executed. Two years before Oeder's death he was ennobled by Holy Roman Emperor Emperor Joseph II. The genus Oedera in the Asteraceae was published in 1771 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Oeder is also commemorated with Plagiopus oederianus. The taxa Lobostemon oederiaefolius and Senecio oederiaefolius would also refer to his name, although indirectly, the specific epithet meaning basically 'with leaves like Oedera.' (Hugh Clarke, pers. comm.)
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Oldenburg
Oldenburgia
Oldenburgia
Franz Pehr Oldenburg (1740-1774), Swedish soldier employed by the Dutch East India Company, amateur botanist and plant collector for Kew Gardens, and a companion of the botanists Carl Peter Thunberg and Francis Masson on their travels to South Africa. He arrived in the Cape in 1765 and collected specimens for Joseph Banks in London and Bergius in Stockholm. Thunberg declined an invitation by Governor Joachim van Plettenberg, to go to Madagascar as ship’s surgeon and itinerant botanist and recommended Oldenburg, who accepted the position and collected for a while on Madagascar and the Comoro Islands before dying of fever in 1774. The genus Oldenburgia in the Asteraceae was published in 1830 by German botanist Christian Friedrich Lessing. (PlantzAfrica; The Zoological Exploration of Southern Africa by L.C. Rookmaaker)
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Olin
Olinia
Olinia
Johan Henrik Olin (1769-1824), Swedish botanist, student of Carl Peter Thunberg, and author. He studied theology in 1789 and obtained a BA degree in 1793, became an assistant at the Botanical Garden in Uppsala during which he obtained further degrees and a Licentiate in Medicine in 1797. He was the acting medical officer in Växjö in 1800, the district medical officer in Eksjö in 1802, district medical officer in Växjö in 1815, and the nation's curator in Växjö 1794-1796. He translated from German to Swedish Paul Erdman Isert's Journey to Guinea and the Caribbean Islands in Colombia in 1788. He was also the author of Plantae svecanae in 1797 and Dissertatio arnica in 1799. Some sources give his birth year as 1764. The genus Olinia in the Oliniaceae was published by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1800. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names
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Orpheus
Orphium
Orphium
Orpheus, in Greek mythology a poet and musician, and one of the Argonauts. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)
Orpheus is the 'type' of the singer, musician and poet. He plays the lyre and the citharam which he is often said to have invented. Orpheus could sing so sweetly that wild beasts would follow him about; trees and plants would bow down to him and the wildest of men would become gentle.
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Orpheus is the 'type' of the singer, musician and poet. He plays the lyre and the citharam which he is often said to have invented. Orpheus could sing so sweetly that wild beasts would follow him about; trees and plants would bow down to him and the wildest of men would become gentle.
(Ch, PG)
Osmund
Osmunda
Osmunda
CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names says "Uncertain attribution, French osmunde, English osmund, of unknown origin, possibly after the Saxon Osmunder, a name for Thor, the god of war, or for Osmundus, c. 1025, a Scandinavian writer of runes, or after Osmun, Bishop of Salisbury, d. 1099."
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Osmunda Regalis (1" S. ii. 199.)—Having occasion a few days since to look at the description of " Osmunda regalis " in Moore's Popular History of British Ferns, I there found at p. 141. an answer to the Query proposed by J. M. B., and which I cannot find has been at present answered. The legend is to the following effect: —
" Legend Of Osmund The Waterman. — At Loch Tyne dwelt the waterman old Osmund. Fairest among maidens was the daughter of Osmund the waterman. Her light brown hair and glowing cheek told of her Saxon origin, and her light steps bounded over the green turf like a young fawn in his native glades. Often, in the stillness of a summer's even, did the mother and her fair-haired child sit beside the lake to watch the dripping and the plashing of the father's oars, as he skimmed right merrily towards them on the deep blue waters. Sounds, as of hasty steps, were heard one day, and presently a company of fugitives told with breathless haste that the cruel Danes were making towards the ferry. Osmund heard them with fear. Suddenly the shouts of furious men came remotely on the ear. The fugitives rushed on, and Osmund stood for a moment, when, snatching up his oars, he rowed his trembling wife and fair child to a small island, covered with the great Osmund Royal, and, assisting them to land, enjoined them to lie down beneath the tall ferns. Scarcely had the ferryman returned to his cottage, when a company of Danes rushed in; but they hurt him not, for they knew he could do them service. During the day and night did Osmund row backwards and forwards across the river, ferrying troops of those fierce men; and when the last company was put on shore, you might have seen Osmund kneeling beside the river's bank, and returning heartfelt thanks to Heaven for the preservation of his wife and child. Often in after years did Osmund speak of that day's peril; and his fair child, grown up to womanhood, called the tall fern by her father's name."
Harvard College library; Notes and Queries: Memorandum of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, ETC; Second Series – Volume Eighth; July to December 1859.
The fact that Osmunda is a genus of ferns lends some credence to this story. PlantzAfrica states that the name may derive from "combining the Latin os (= mouth) and mundus (= clean), as it was reputedly used to clean the mouth. Another possibility is that it was named after King Osmund, who reigned over the South Saxons about 758 A.D." So this is another of the many mysteries of the botanical nomenclature of Southern Africa. The genus Osmunda in the Osmundaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)
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Osmunda Regalis (1" S. ii. 199.)—Having occasion a few days since to look at the description of " Osmunda regalis " in Moore's Popular History of British Ferns, I there found at p. 141. an answer to the Query proposed by J. M. B., and which I cannot find has been at present answered. The legend is to the following effect: —
" Legend Of Osmund The Waterman. — At Loch Tyne dwelt the waterman old Osmund. Fairest among maidens was the daughter of Osmund the waterman. Her light brown hair and glowing cheek told of her Saxon origin, and her light steps bounded over the green turf like a young fawn in his native glades. Often, in the stillness of a summer's even, did the mother and her fair-haired child sit beside the lake to watch the dripping and the plashing of the father's oars, as he skimmed right merrily towards them on the deep blue waters. Sounds, as of hasty steps, were heard one day, and presently a company of fugitives told with breathless haste that the cruel Danes were making towards the ferry. Osmund heard them with fear. Suddenly the shouts of furious men came remotely on the ear. The fugitives rushed on, and Osmund stood for a moment, when, snatching up his oars, he rowed his trembling wife and fair child to a small island, covered with the great Osmund Royal, and, assisting them to land, enjoined them to lie down beneath the tall ferns. Scarcely had the ferryman returned to his cottage, when a company of Danes rushed in; but they hurt him not, for they knew he could do them service. During the day and night did Osmund row backwards and forwards across the river, ferrying troops of those fierce men; and when the last company was put on shore, you might have seen Osmund kneeling beside the river's bank, and returning heartfelt thanks to Heaven for the preservation of his wife and child. Often in after years did Osmund speak of that day's peril; and his fair child, grown up to womanhood, called the tall fern by her father's name."
Harvard College library; Notes and Queries: Memorandum of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, ETC; Second Series – Volume Eighth; July to December 1859.
The fact that Osmunda is a genus of ferns lends some credence to this story. PlantzAfrica states that the name may derive from "combining the Latin os (= mouth) and mundus (= clean), as it was reputedly used to clean the mouth. Another possibility is that it was named after King Osmund, who reigned over the South Saxons about 758 A.D." So this is another of the many mysteries of the botanical nomenclature of Southern Africa. The genus Osmunda in the Osmundaceae was published in 1753 by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. (CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names)
(I3, Ch)