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Hawai'i's Pioneer Botanist
Meier, Ursula H. Hawai'i's Pioneer Botanist: Dr. William Hillebrand, His Life &Lletters. Honolulu, Hawai'i: Bishop Museum Press. (1525 Bernice Street; Honolulu, Hawai'i 96817) 2005. x, 133 pp., ISBN 1-58178-047-8 9 (hc) ($14.95) App., bib., illus. alk. paper.
In 1850 a stern, and methodical but sickly young physician and botanist from Germany, who would drastically change the ecological landscape and social fabric of Hawai’i, arrived in the “sheltering bay” of Honolulu harbor seeking a healthy climate for his diseased lungs and plants to quench his passionate quest for collecting. Ursula Meier’s slim biography, Hawai’i’s Pioneer Botanist: Dr. William Hillebrand, His Life and Letters, provides an interesting account of the mixed legacy of a man who initiated many changes in his twenty years in Hawai’i.
When Hillebrand arrived Kamehameha III was king and Hawai’i was in the midst of enormous changes. The Great Mahele of 1848 had allowed foreigners to own land, which prompted the rapid development of the plantation industry to replace the declining whaling industry, and the native Hawaiian population was decimated to 84,000.
A fascinating figure in the history of the second half of 19th century Hawai’i, Hillebrand, quickly learned to speak Hawaiian and rapidly established himself in Honolulu society. He gained a Court appointment as physician to the royal family, the chief physician of Queen’s Hospital established for native Hawaiians, a member of the Board of Health, and a staff member of the Insane Asylum.
His medical practice established, Hillebrand devoted his time to his passion for botany. Queen Kalama, wife of Kamehameha III sold him 13 acres of land, later to become Foster Botanical Gardens, in Nu’uanu, mauka of Honolulu. Hillebrand housed his family there and began amassing a collection of plants. A zealous collector, Hillebrand established plant exchanges through correspondences with botanists in the US, England, France, Australia, and Brazil.
Hillebrand was interested in the economic and pharmaceutical value of plants; in a 1857 letter to W. J. Hooker of Kew Gardens he declared an intent to introduce all tropical fruit trees, cereal and pasture grasses, spice trees and plants, trees for timber, any flowering tree or shrub and orchids.
The list of introduced flora and fauna credited to Hillebrand may have caused many ecologists much dismay. Still, although Hillebrand recognized the significance of the Hawaiian archipelago’s isolation and its many microclimates as factors in the “peculiarities” of Hawaiian flora it is helpful to remember that the Origin of Species was published in 1859, ecology was a new science in the second half of the 19th century, and native Hawaiians introduced flora and fauna to support their subsistence and culture before he is scorned for playing a role in the extinction of many endemic Hawaiian plants. To his credit Hillebrand desired to transform dusty Honolulu with beautiful trees, was interested in discovering the potential of new introductions for Hawai’i’s agricultural industry, and he sent a great deal of endemic Hawaiian herbaria, many now extinct, to herbariums around the world. The Melbourne Herbarium, still houses Hillebrand’s only known specimens of this valuable material.
Hillebrand is important to social and medical historians and botanists interested in 19th century Hawaiian history. However, although Meier, a German philologist and author of a novel, provides a bibliography it does not include Hillebrand’s Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, which makes this reviewer wonder if she examined his major life’s work. Meier also does not provide citations for important events in Hawai’i’s history. For instance Meier credits Hillebrand with diagnosing the first case of leprosy in Hawai’i, initiating compulsory quarantine of all arriving ships, advocating for the isolation of people with leprosy and facilitating the first group of Chinese agricultural workers for Hawai’i. Historians may find discrepancies in the dates that Meier provides for the events and actions she attributes to Hillebrand.
Meier’s text also omits the scientific names of plants Hillebrand exported from and introduced to Hawai’i. This omission may be due to the changes in taxonomic classifications in the last hundred years. Hillebrand’s manuscript Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, posthumously published in 1888, was the first floristic of Hawai’i published and remained so until Degener’s Flora Hawaiiensi was published in 1932. Nearly sixty years would pass before Wagner’s comprehensive Manual of Flowering Plants of Hawai’i updated the classifications of native Hawaiian plants allowing better evaluations of threatened and endangered species. Another serious omission is the lack of an index. Nonetheless, Meier includes Hillebrand’s letters to Sir W. J. Hooker director of Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in her appendix and it is perhaps the most valuable historical section of her manuscript.
Notwithstanding Meier’s omissions she writes clearly and produces an engaging portrait of Hillebrand and 19th Century Hawai’i. This reviewer recommends this book with its handsome cover for general readers interested in botany, and Hawaiian history as it has much potential to spark further inquiry.
Works Cited
In 1850 a stern, and methodical but sickly young physician and botanist from Germany, who would drastically change the ecological landscape and social fabric of Hawai’i, arrived in the “sheltering bay” of Honolulu harbor seeking a healthy climate for his diseased lungs and plants to quench his passionate quest for collecting. Ursula Meier’s slim biography, Hawai’i’s Pioneer Botanist: Dr. William Hillebrand, His Life and Letters, provides an interesting account of the mixed legacy of a man who initiated many changes in his twenty years in Hawai’i.
When Hillebrand arrived Kamehameha III was king and Hawai’i was in the midst of enormous changes. The Great Mahele of 1848 had allowed foreigners to own land, which prompted the rapid development of the plantation industry to replace the declining whaling industry, and the native Hawaiian population was decimated to 84,000.
A fascinating figure in the history of the second half of 19th century Hawai’i, Hillebrand, quickly learned to speak Hawaiian and rapidly established himself in Honolulu society. He gained a Court appointment as physician to the royal family, the chief physician of Queen’s Hospital established for native Hawaiians, a member of the Board of Health, and a staff member of the Insane Asylum.
His medical practice established, Hillebrand devoted his time to his passion for botany. Queen Kalama, wife of Kamehameha III sold him 13 acres of land, later to become Foster Botanical Gardens, in Nu’uanu, mauka of Honolulu. Hillebrand housed his family there and began amassing a collection of plants. A zealous collector, Hillebrand established plant exchanges through correspondences with botanists in the US, England, France, Australia, and Brazil.
Hillebrand was interested in the economic and pharmaceutical value of plants; in a 1857 letter to W. J. Hooker of Kew Gardens he declared an intent to introduce all tropical fruit trees, cereal and pasture grasses, spice trees and plants, trees for timber, any flowering tree or shrub and orchids.
The list of introduced flora and fauna credited to Hillebrand may have caused many ecologists much dismay. Still, although Hillebrand recognized the significance of the Hawaiian archipelago’s isolation and its many microclimates as factors in the “peculiarities” of Hawaiian flora it is helpful to remember that the Origin of Species was published in 1859, ecology was a new science in the second half of the 19th century, and native Hawaiians introduced flora and fauna to support their subsistence and culture before he is scorned for playing a role in the extinction of many endemic Hawaiian plants. To his credit Hillebrand desired to transform dusty Honolulu with beautiful trees, was interested in discovering the potential of new introductions for Hawai’i’s agricultural industry, and he sent a great deal of endemic Hawaiian herbaria, many now extinct, to herbariums around the world. The Melbourne Herbarium, still houses Hillebrand’s only known specimens of this valuable material.
Hillebrand is important to social and medical historians and botanists interested in 19th century Hawaiian history. However, although Meier, a German philologist and author of a novel, provides a bibliography it does not include Hillebrand’s Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, which makes this reviewer wonder if she examined his major life’s work. Meier also does not provide citations for important events in Hawai’i’s history. For instance Meier credits Hillebrand with diagnosing the first case of leprosy in Hawai’i, initiating compulsory quarantine of all arriving ships, advocating for the isolation of people with leprosy and facilitating the first group of Chinese agricultural workers for Hawai’i. Historians may find discrepancies in the dates that Meier provides for the events and actions she attributes to Hillebrand.
Meier’s text also omits the scientific names of plants Hillebrand exported from and introduced to Hawai’i. This omission may be due to the changes in taxonomic classifications in the last hundred years. Hillebrand’s manuscript Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, posthumously published in 1888, was the first floristic of Hawai’i published and remained so until Degener’s Flora Hawaiiensi was published in 1932. Nearly sixty years would pass before Wagner’s comprehensive Manual of Flowering Plants of Hawai’i updated the classifications of native Hawaiian plants allowing better evaluations of threatened and endangered species. Another serious omission is the lack of an index. Nonetheless, Meier includes Hillebrand’s letters to Sir W. J. Hooker director of Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in her appendix and it is perhaps the most valuable historical section of her manuscript.
Notwithstanding Meier’s omissions she writes clearly and produces an engaging portrait of Hillebrand and 19th Century Hawai’i. This reviewer recommends this book with its handsome cover for general readers interested in botany, and Hawaiian history as it has much potential to spark further inquiry.
Submitted in April 2007 by Donna M. Maemori, LIS Student; University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Works Cited
- Degener, Otto. 1932. Flora Hawaiiensis; The New Illustrated Flora of the Hawaiian Islands. New York, Hafner Publishing Company.
- Hillebrand, William. 1888. Flora of the Hawaiian Islands: A Description of Their Phanerogams and Vascular Cryptogams. Annotated and published after the author’s death by W.F. Hillebrand. Monticello, N.Y. Lubrecht & Cramer, 1981. (Facsim. reprint of the 1888 ed.)
- Wagner, W.L.; Herbst, D.R.; Sohmer, S.H. 1990 (1999. Rev. Ed.) Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai'i. Honolulu, Hi: University of Hawai’i Press and Bishop Museum Press.
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