History
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro - JBRJ - was founded on June 13, 1808. It arose from a decision by the then Portuguese prince regent D. João to install a gunpowder factory and a garden for acclimatizing plant species from other parts of the world. Today, the Research Institute Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden - the name it received in 1995 - is a federal agency linked to the Ministry of Environment and is one of the most important research centers in the world in the areas of botany and biodiversity conservation.
As we follow the history of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden until today, it is possible to see that it has always been closely related to the agenda of interests and concerns at a national and global level. The very initiative of its creation was a response to the economic and political context in which Portugal and Brazil, as its colony, were inserted in the early nineteenth century.
Below you can find more information about the several phases of the BJRJ's history.
Brazil Republic - JBRJ under the direction of João Barbosa Rodrigues
The emergence of botanical gardens
Botanical garden of padova founded in 1545
The first botanical gardens appeared in Europe, in the 16th century, with the purpose of studying medicinal plants. By cultivating and herborizing species with therapeutic potential, they sought to identify and prove their properties. Thus, the first collections of plants for scientific purposes were formed. Since then, botanical gardens have broadened their scope of action, but have not abandoned their initial vocation: flora research.
Jardin du roi, founded in 1635, in an engraving by Frédéric Scalberge (1936)
In Portugal, since the mid-eighteenth century, the identification and study of plants from the colonies was mainly the responsibility of the Botanical Garden of Ajuda, in Lisbon. Its main objective was to investigate plants that would have an economic return. Botany, at the time, was strongly linked to the usefulness of plants. Agriculture was not clearly differentiated from botany; it was generally referred to as the "art", i.e., the application of botanical knowledge.
The reconciliation between the main purposes of botanical gardens in general gave rise to institutions with specific trajectories that require a different analysis from that of other scientific establishments.
The creation of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro started its activities in 1808, within the guidelines previously elaborated in Portugal. The first challenge was to acclimate the so-called spices from the East: vanilla, cinnamon, pepper, and others. Thus, it was initially a place of experiments with plants sent from other Portuguese provinces, besides those from the Botanical Garden La Gabrielle, in French Guiana, recently invaded by Luso-Brazilian troops.
In general terms, acclimatizing a plant species meant, first, to perfect the transportation of seedlings and seeds, often brought from other continents on voyages that lasted months; then, to build nurseries to sow them; and finally, to transplant the plants to the soil in different areas and observe each one's need for sun, shade, water, etc. Since these experiments were based on literature produced mainly in Europe, research was needed on the adaptation of plants to the Brazilian climate and soil.
During the reign of King João VI, there was a special incentive to plant Camellia sinensis, from which the so-called black tea is produced.
To acquire knowledge about the tea culture, the Prince Regent sent the Chinese to Brazil, as they had ancient knowledge about the culture and processing of the product. The Botanical Garden was chosen as one of the places to plant the tea and centralized the stages of production until the consumption phase. In the 1820's and 1830's, around 340 kg of tea leaf was harvested there annually. But the main objective in the implementation of this culture was the study and the production of seeds and seedlings in order to distribute them among the provinces of the Empire, encouraging the planting for exportation. However, the taste of the plant was not approved in the international market and the cultivation declined in the following decades.
Other crops were the object of technical and scientific research in the Botanical Garden at the time, in an effort to obtain raw materials for the production of profitable goods, such as the straw of the bombonaça (Carludovica palmata), for making the so-called Chilean or Panama hats, and the mulberry trees (Morus nigra), to feed the cocoons of the silkworm.
Concomitantly with the research on plants, the arboretum area was being expanded to also serve as a leisure area for the population and, thus, it was adorned with lakes and waterfalls, and the swamps were filled and drained in order to expand the area. However, rules were established for a leisure different from the one practiced in public parks, revealing the concern to contemplate and organize the two institutional aspects: leisure and scientific research areas. The Botanical Garden gave the Court an air of "civility" and helped to propagate the beauty and exuberance of Brazilian nature, even to foreigners who came to the city.
The institution's first botanists
The 1820s were a key decade for the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro because its direction was entrusted to Friar Leandro do Sacramento, one of the most important science figures in Brazil at the time. When he took over the institution, in 1824, Friar Leandro was a member of several European academies of sciences and was recognized internationally. His respectability was important for the Botanical Garden to gain the status of a reference institution among foreign scientists who sought knowledge about the Brazilian flora.
Friar Leandro was a professor at the Academy of Medicine and Surgery. The chroniclers of the time narrated in detail the friar's scene teaching at the Public Promenade. Next to the students, the curious crowded to hear the practical botanical lessons. As director of the Botanical Garden, Friar Leandro continued his pedagogical mission and tried to teach his knowledge of natural history to those who were interested in the subject, whether they were farmers or rural owners, especially about tea plantation.
After Friar Leandro's death, in 1829, his disciple Bernardo Serpa Brandão took over the direction of the Botanical Garden, a position he held until 1851. Despite the scarce information about Serpa Brandão and the period of his administration, it is due to him the construction of the main symbol of the institution, the alley of palm trees (Roystonea oleracea).
According to one of the legends about the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, the imperial palm began to bear fruit in 1829. Serpa Brandão, with the intention of preserving the institution's monopoly over the species, determined that all its seeds should be burned annually. However, it is said that the slaves who worked in the garden would get up during the night and, climbing the tree, collect the seeds and sell them. Hence the immense diffusion of this species throughout Brazil, becoming a status symbol. Several fazendas boasted avenues with imperial palms.
Agricultural chemistry and soil studies
At the international scientific level, discoveries in the field of agronomy were flourishing in Europe, with emphasis on agricultural chemistry, plant physiology, and knowledge of soil components. Among the inventions that certainly provoked a "revolution" in European and American agriculture, Justus Liebig's (1803-1873) were the most noteworthy. One of the most relevant was the identification of the function of mineral elements in soil composition and plant nutrition. The German chemist demonstrated that, in addition to the organic elements found in manure, dry leaves and food leftovers, among other sources, plants also need inorganic elements. His studies, published in the 1840s, had a great impact on agriculture, as they resulted in unlimited powers for the knowledge of soil composition and, consequently, the possible replacement of nutrients through fertilizers.
A large media campaign then unleashed an exaggerated optimism by advocating that, with the soil composition identified in chemistry laboratories, and once the absence of certain nutrients was ascertained, these could be returned to nature. It was believed that this would allow new crops to be planted and the soil to be used permanently, without the need for rest or rotation of crops. Fertilizers also claimed that they could combat so-called agricultural pests, because by analyzing the soil and adding the missing nutrients to the crops, the plant would supposedly gain strength to fight the 'invaders'.
Other research at the same time also collaborated to improve agricultural production, such as the use of leguminous plants to fix nitrogen in the soil, the use of lime to correct soil acidity, and physiological research on disease agents and how to fight them. With all this knowledge, greater productivity and quality of the products extracted from nature were announced. Farmers from many parts of the world sought information on the subject, obtained mainly in magazines and periodicals aimed at the general public.
The debate and the changes in agricultural procedures resulted in the valorization of knowledge that sought to obtain scientific status, such as agronomy, agricultural chemistry, pedology, agricultural meteorology, and forestry. During this movement, other branches of knowledge related to rural activities, such as veterinary science and zootechnics, had the opportunity to establish themselves as useful knowledge that required research and, therefore, recognition and support from the State and society.
In Brazil, the new proposals on the increase and improvement of agricultural and livestock production had repercussions. The producers and the emerging scientific community sought to be in tune with the advances produced in Europe and the USA. The Brazilian economy was based, above all, on export agriculture and suffered great competition, in price and quality, with products from other countries. The international market was compelling producers to increase agriculture, especially sugar plantations. The imperial government, in turn, sought to improve its relations with landowners, the basis of its political and economic support, by presenting solutions to the situation. The Instituto Imperial Fluminense de Agricultura (IIFA) became, then, a space where rural producers, government, and men of science were dedicated to implement "modernizing" projects for agriculture, but without major reforms in the agro-exporting model that the country maintained.
The Botanical Garden under the administration of the Fluminense Imperial Institute of Agriculture
The contract for the cession of the Botanical Garden to the Imperial Fluminense Institute of Agriculture (IIFA), a private institution, also agreed on the cession of improvements and adjacent lands. The State would collaborate with an annual subsidy, as aid for the maintenance of the public property. In return, the IIFA was to found a rural establishment and create a practical school of agriculture, in addition to conserving and improving the garden's improvements and trees, and allowing public visitation on Sundays and holidays.
The cession of the institution to the Fluminense Imperial Institute of Agriculture seems to have been the solution found by the government to overcome the difficulties of the Botanical Garden. The Normal Farm was then created in the vicinity of the arboretum, whose objectives were to develop experimental agronomic research and to install the Agricultural Asylum for primary instruction and teaching of field work to orphans of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia.
The main objectives guiding the structuring of the IIFA were pedagogical and technoscientific. Regarding the former, the aim was to combine theoretical teaching with field practice, so that farmers would abandon "rudimentary" techniques and adhere to "modern" ones. The techno-scientific objectives were based on the study of plant life processes - germination, growth, and reproduction - and on scientific experimentation, which dealt with the interaction of the soil/plant/climate complex. The purposes were to maximize crop production, improve product quality, and develop new crops of plant species with potential economic return. In addition, the use of agricultural machinery and instruments was encouraged, to increase productivity and serve as an alternative to the substitution of slave labor.
The IIFA served as a space for scientifically-based knowledge linked to rural production, such as agronomy, forestry, pedology, phytopathology, agricultural meteorology, and others, to gain legitimacy in the society and to show their importance in the improvement and increase of production in the field. In this process, specific research centers were created, such as the Campinas Agronomic Station.
Brazil Republic - JBRJ under the direction of João Barbosa Rodrigues
In March 1890, the federal government detached the Botanical Garden from the Imperial Instituto Fluminense de Agricultura and subordinated it to the Ministry of Agriculture. Under the direction of botanist João Barbosa Rodrigues (1842-1909), scientific research gained momentum in the institution. The herbarium and the library were created and the greenhouses and nurseries were reorganized, in addition to the Botanical Museum, which seems to reveal a certain primacy of the scientific field of botany in the institution. By this time, the agricultural sciences were establishing themselves as autonomous sciences, and institutions exclusively dedicated to them were conceived.
João Barbosa Rodrigues remained in charge of the institution for almost 20 years. In order to increase the collections, he also created the position of traveling naturalist and increased the exchange with other scientific institutions.
Alongside the botanical studies that were being carried out both in Brazil and abroad, the Botanical Garden's research encouraged the investigation of flora in its natural habitat. Thus, with the broadening of the scope of botanical research from ex-situ to in-situ environments, that is, from cultivated plants to those investigated in their natural habitat, in the beginning of the 20th century, the Botanical Garden took the first steps in its trajectory as an institution committed to advancing knowledge of Brazilian vegetation.
The arboretum area continued to be beautified. The works of art were placed in such a way as to awaken sensitivity, further enhancing the value of nature and human construction. Sculptures, bridges, pergolas, fountains, ponds, and other elements, together with the alleys and flowerbeds, became part of the Botanical Garden's landscape and of the visitors' affective memory for a long time.
Itatiaia Biological Station: a unit of the Botanical Garden
The hiring of traveling naturalists allowed the intensification of studies in the mountainous regions of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Some scientists from the institution concentrated their field research in the region of Itatiaia (RJ), whose exuberant biodiversity had unique characteristics. In the 1910s, scientists from the institution found that the environmental devastation in the region, the result of human intervention to create pastures and agricultural land use, was causing the loss of references for monitoring local species. If a conservationist action were not implemented, many species in the region would become extinct.
A movement for the preservation of the area began, which resulted in the creation of the Itatiaia Biological Station (also called Itatiaia Forest Reserve), a unit within the organizational structure of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.
From then on, the researchers would try to sensitize the authorities to the creation of a National Park, similar to those that existed in other countries. Only in 1937 was the Itatiaia National Park created under the jurisdiction of the newly created Forest Service. However the local flora continued to be inventoried. An expressive collection, in the herbarium of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, comes from numerous works on the subject and from collections made in the area.
New lines of research expand the scientific scope of the institution
In 1915, the physician and scientist Antônio Pacheco Leão took over as director of the Botanical Garden. His extensive professional trajectory includes management positions in governmental establishments, such as the Serviço de Profilaxia da Febre Amarela and the Escola de Medicina, where he was a professor. Pacheco Leão also participated in the historic Scientific Commission of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute to the Amazon, headed by Carlos Chagas.
Therefore, with the experience acquired in the previous years, Pacheco Leão had the competence to insert even more the Botanical Garden's research in the vanguard of the sciences of the time. To this end, the admission of renowned botanists such as Alberto C. Löfgren, Adolpho Ducke, João Geraldo Kuhlmann Alexandre K. Brade, among others. The admission of these scientists to the institution significantly boosted research in plant taxonomy and, thus, the Botanical Garden remained the national leader in studies on the Brazilian flora. Several actions were resumed, among them the participation of the institution in large expeditions, the expansion of the herbarium and arboretum, and the training of new botanists.
In addition to the strengthening of research in taxonomy, it was also during the administration of Antônio Pacheco Leão (1915-1931) that, at the end of the 1920s, a department was established to study plant anatomy. Under the command of Fernando R. Milanez and Arthur Miranda Bastos, several investigations were carried out, especially on the structure of the wood of wood species. In 1936, with this line of research already consolidated, the Botanical Garden organized the First International Meeting of Wood Anatomists. Two years later, the First South American Botanical Meeting was promoted, with the significant adhesion of 40 national and foreign institutions and the participation of 213 scientists.
A new initiative to divulge the research carried out at the institution also dates from this period. In 1915, the Botanical Garden created the Archivos do Jardim Botânico, the country's first scientific journal exclusively focused on botany. The communication of Archivos do Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro was clearly directed to a very specific public of botanists and exchange with the most important research centers in Europe and USA.
Scientific production within the reach of laymen
New winds in Brazilian politics had repercussions in the institutions from 1930 on. Thus, the Botanical Garden underwent administrative changes in the Ministry of Agriculture until the creation of the Forest Service. This new agency integrated the botany sections of the former Institute of Plant Biology - for which the Botanical Garden was responsible -, as well as the areas of forestry, technology of forest products and national parks. The major change in direction was noticeable when greater emphasis was placed on plant anatomy, forestry and dendrology, as well as on the orientation of agricultural production.
In the 1930s, another scientific journal, Rodriguésia, was created with the objective of popularizing and disseminating the science produced in the institution. Rodriguésia had a broader scope than the Archivos do Jardim Botânico and published articles in areas such as botany, dendrology, agriculture, entomology, genetics, phytogeography and ecology. Initially, it sought to reach the general public through a more accessible language. However, in a few years Rodriguésia would follow the path of most scientific journals and would dedicate itself to communication among peers, as it continues, with regularity, to the present day.
The director of the Institute of Plant Biology and editor-in-chief of Rodriguésia, Paulo Campos Porto, played an important role in the changes that took place in the Botanical Garden at that time. Nominated naturalist of the Botanical Garden in 1914, he was superintendent of the Biological Station of Itatiaia from 1929 to 1933 and director of the Institute of Plant Biology from 1934 to 1938. He had a decisive role in the elaboration of the project for the creation of the Itatiaia National Park and, later, was responsible for the creation of the Monte Pascoal National Park in Bahia.
In his professional trajectory, Campos Porto demonstrated a special interest in nature conservation. He also had an expressive production of scientific articles and, above all, a special ability and competence when holding political-administrative positions, which gave him authority and leadership among the professionals in the area. He established a close relationship with Getúlio Vargas, then President of the Republic, demonstrated by Getúlio's several visits to the institution and by the support he received for the creation of the Itatiaia National Park. Moreover, he circulated with great acceptance among the social elite, raising sponsors for the Botanical Garden. Confirming his confidence in Campos Porto, Vargas nominated him again when he became President of the Republic in 1950.
In the early 1940s, the Botanical Garden was given new openings for civil servants. This made it possible to train new scientists, an undertaking that would bear good fruit for the consolidation of botany in Brazil. Not only the institutional framework benefited, but several universities and governmental sectors started to have, in their staff, human resources trained by Kulhmann, Liberato Barroso and Brade.
Stimulated by the large scientific production of their masters and by the expressive plant collection coming from the expeditions to the most diverse corners of the Brazilian territory, a new and dedicated generation of scientists started their activities. While Graziela Maciel Barroso, Edmundo Pereira and Ida de Vattimo brought relevant contributions to the taxonomy of native plants, Carlos T. Rizzini was spreading new floristic knowledge and presenting innovative proposals for the classification of Brazilian vegetation. Armando de Mattos Filho and Paulo A. M. Araújo continued their studies on the anatomy of Brazilian woods. Research at the Botanical Garden continued under the leadership of these botanists until the last decades of the 20th century, when projects of national and international scope were carried out and an expressive scientific production was released. But certainly the most important legacy of this generation are the works Tratado de Fitogeografia do Brasil and Sistemática de Angiospermas do Brasil, by Carlos T. Rizzini and Graziela Maciel Barroso and collaborators, respectively.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, other researchers were incorporated into the Botanical Garden team. Most of them continued the ongoing lines of research, but the creation of the Electronic Microscopy Laboratory, planned and implemented by Raul D. Machado, encompassed new fields of investigation.
In the same period, Graziela Maciel Barroso (1912-2003) was very important in the continuation of taxonomic research, especially in the orientation and training of generations of botanists from several institutions in Brazil. Graziela dedicated most of her professional life to the Botanical Garden, having marked a great part of the generation of scientists that are now active in the institution.
The teaching at the Botanical Garden has been linked to the history of the institution, sometimes informally, sometimes formally, as for example the Agricultural Asylum that functioned for 20 years, between 1869 and 1889. In 1989, the Socio-Environmental Responsibility Center was created, which trains young people aged 16 to 18 from needy communities in the region for the job market. In 2001, with the creation of the National School of Tropical Botany, the Botanical Garden started offering extension and post-graduate courses.
The multiple activities of the institution
The multifaceted reality of the BJRJ creates conditions for projects in many areas: pedagogical, museographic, landscape, technical-scientific, historical, and teaching. These and so many other areas, apparently divergent at first, potentialize and diversify the activities and propitiate the exercise of interdisciplinarity.
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro enjoys a unique position in the history of Brazil, for being the oldest in operation and the only one under federal government administration since its creation. Its trajectory, still with many questions to be unraveled, helps us to understand, also, the insertion of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro in the social history, particularly of Rio de Janeiro.
However, it is not easy to realize that behind that arrangement of plants there was and there is a scientific research. The scientific name on each identification plate in the arboretum is the key to access the knowledge produced, especially by the academic community, about species of the plant kingdom. The public, by having contact with the scientific name of a plant, becomes the holder of a tool of great potential to acquire precise information about its utility, ecology, geographical distribution, and other data that may have been produced about the plant. Although not always perceived by the visitor, in the trajectory of the institution there have been constant efforts, through this tool, to reveal to the public knowledge about the Brazilian flora.
It is not possible to affirm that the whole extension of the arboretum was formed only as a result of scientific researches developed in the institution, because the space has a trajectory of multiple objectives and uses.
The history of the institution is represented in many collections organized by former scientists, who introduced collected species, mainly from excursions around the country. These collections, or even solitary individuals of some species, often represent research projects that resulted in important collaborations for science.
Research and public visitation have coexisted throughout the institutional trajectory, and the arboretum represents the overlapping of several histories and interventions in the area, which resulted in the landscape we see today. Similarly, in the herbarium of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, dried plants, wood fragments, fruits, ethnobotanical artifacts, slides with anatomical and pollen sections, and DNA samples form a collection that translates, in great part, the institutional history.
The trajectory of an institution must be observed through joint work. Parallel and support activities are performed by people with important roles in the process of executing a research line or program: the gardeners, with their empirical knowledge, who take care of species, sometimes of inestimable value for a scientific experiment, and also embellish daily the path of those who seek the Botanical Garden for contemplation or leisure; the botanical illustrators who, with the accuracy of their strokes, enrich scientific publications; the herborologists, who, in their task of making and organizing the exsiccata (dried plant samples) preserve the collected collection; the librarians, who subsidize the research with precious information; the administrators and managers, who make the infrastructure feasible so that the institution can fulfill its mission.
The Botanical Garden from the 1980s on
In the recent history of the Botanical Garden, more precisely from the mid-1980s, when environmental issues began to take shape in the world scenario, floristic studies gained momentum. In accordance with the institution's strategic planning guidelines, the research projects were oriented to support conservation actions, especially to fill gaps in the knowledge of the flora of protected areas. The efforts were directed to the elaboration of inventories of federal conservation units, especially national parks and biological reserves (FIGURE 12) and work in line with the guidelines established in the National Environmental Policy, a governmental mechanism formulated in 1989 to guide the actions for preservation, improvement, and recovery of environmental quality.
In 2001, the National School of Tropical Botany (ENBT) was created. With it, the course charted by former masters in the quest to ally scientific research to the transmission of knowledge was solidified. The School's mission is translated and materialized in the extension courses and the Postgraduate Program in Botany.
The Botanical Garden's recent projects and achievements maintain a close institutional alignment with conservation actions, particularly the commitments assumed by Brazil in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB). We highlight the creation, in 2008, of the National Center for the Conservation of Flora (CNCFlora), a national reference on biodiversity and conservation of endangered Brazilian flora, with financial resources donated by the Global Environment Facility.
On the cultural level, the creation of the Environment Museum and the Espaço Tom Jobim are part of the Botanical Garden's strategy to integrate culture, environment and scientific knowledge.
Bibliography
The Botanical Gardens of Rio de Janeiro, in celebration of its 200th anniversary, produced the book "Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro: 1808-2008", with different perspectives and many images.
About the Empress' Mansion House (Solar da Imperatriz), now the National School of Tropical Botany, and its history, the book "Solar da Imperatriz", published in 2011, is recommended.
The publication "Cronologia. Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro" gathers the most relevant facts of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro in 200 years.
A special issue of the Revista da Sociedade Brasileira da História da Ciência was dedicated to João Barbosa Rodrigues, an important botanist and director of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro.
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