Florula Javanica [Java]

Java, the most populous island on Earth, also has one of the richest and most varied floras in the world. Dominated by a chain of mountains running east-west, its ecosystems range from tropical rainforests to dry savanna. This diversity of plants new to European science is the focus of this university dissertation written by Professor Carl Peter Thunberg. In 18th- and 19th-century Europe, professors wrote the dissertations; the student’s job was to explicate and defend it and pay for its publication. SIL holds dozens of these botanical and zoological papers by the great systematist Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) at the University of Uppsala and his student and successor Thunberg.