Encyclopædia metropolitana (London, 1845)

This plate shows a variety of lichens. Despite the numbering of each, no further information as to their names is provided. Nonetheless, the variety that is presented is exquisite. The arrangement of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana is divided into classes: pure sciences, mixed and applied sciences, biographical and historical information, miscellaneous and lexicographical information. It is based on conceptions of ‘method’ developed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose introduction quotes Francis Bacon: “non simpliciter nil sciri posse; sed nil nisi certo ordine certâ viâ sciri posse” [not that absolutely nothing can be known, but that nothing can be known except in a definite order and by a definite method]. It contains articles by Sir John Herschel and Augustus de Morgan amongst others. Its non-alphabetical ordering (it is organised systematically and topically) can make it difficult to use for those who are used to the standard encyclopaedic form.

A plate from the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana depicting lichens ©

William Watson, An historical memoir concerning a genus of plants called lichen (London, 1757)

This 1757 article appeared in Philosophical Transactions, the flagship publication of the Royal Society (founded 1660) and the world’s first and longest-running scientific journal. This passage offers insight into an earlier era of the scientific method where ancient quackery was being reevaluated in favour of more recognisably modern intellectual rigour. The article adopts the traditional view that nature’s ultimate purpose is to service the needs of humankind. It idealistically invokes knowledge for its own sake (even “the most abject and insignificant things”) and presages future discoveries of use to humanity. Nowadays, lichens are subject to research concerning pharmaceuticals, air-quality monitoring, agriculture, and even space biology.

An historical memoir concerning a genus of plants called lichen (London, 1757)

Lichens

Lichens grow incredibly slowly and can be centuries old. They can live in exceptionally inhospitable environments - some lichens in the Arctic might be the oldest continuously living organisms on Earth.

Here at Middle Temple, we have found lichens growing at various locations in the gardens and courts around the Inn, including the courtyards around Temple Church.

According to the British Lichen Society, lichens can “colonize places where there are extremes of humidity, temperature and light, and they often occur in places where few other macroscopic living things can survive. Lichens absorb water from the atmosphere, but unlike plants they have no means of keeping water within the lichen during dry spells.

Lichens produce secondary substances known as lichen compounds. Many are waste products, but some also have other benefits to the lichen, including a bitter taste which may make the lichen unpalatable to grazing slugs and snails; protection against ultraviolet radiation; antibiotic properties.”

A portrait of Martin Frobisher (approximately 1535-1594) ©

Pump Court Cotoneaster Trees

The two elegant cotoneaster trees in Pump Court were planted in approximately 1951-1952. The buildings to the North were constructed after the fire of 1679; buildings to the south are post-war, part of the rebuilding that following extensive war time bombing. The hand pump near to the trees is now purely decorative. The original artisan well, from which Pump Court takes its name, still exists and lies beneath a paving slab marked with an arrow. Lichens are present on the trees in Pump Court.

Dionyse Settle, De Martini Forbisseri Angli navigatione in regiones occidentis et septentrionis narratio historica (Nuremberg, 1580)

Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-1594) was admitted to the Inn on 2 February 1592/3, most likely as an honorary member, which was very common during the early modern period. Little is known about Dionyse Settle, apart from the fact that he published the first account of Frobisher’s second voyage to the Arctic, which was first published in 1577 in English.

A French version, translated by N. Pithou, was published not long after, and this edition was published in Latin from that French translation. Lichens can grow as far north as the Arctic, but Frobisher’s account does not make any mention of them. The original version of Settle’s account has been described as “the first report printed in England of an English voyage of discovery”.

Digital copy of De Martini Forbisseri Angli navigatione in regiones occidentis et septentrionis narratio historica, digitised copy from John Carter Brown Library, Providence Rhode Island

Antoine du Pinet, Historia plantarum: Earum imagines, nomenclatura, qualitates, & natale solum. Accessere simpliciu[m] medicamentorum facultates, secundum locos, & genera ex Dioscoride (Lyon, 1567)

Antoine du Pinet (approximately 1510-1584) was a compiler and translator of botanical works. As shown here, this book brings together plant illustrations, names, characteristics and medicinal properties. The references in the margin indicate the ancient Greek physicians Dioscorides and Galen as source materials.

Drawing together classical resources in this manner was very common during the Renaissance. Without modern understandings of taxonomy, people from ancient to early modern times grouped together various mosses and liverworts as well as true lichens (i.e. crusty or leafy growths on trees and rocks) under the moniker “lichen”. This was because the ancient Greek “λειχήν” meant “a thing that clings” and could refer to anything that looks spreading and crusty (including skin diseases, for example). This picture seems like an amalgam combining star-topped stalks like a common (or “umbrella”) liverwort but the leafy, crinkled lobes of a foliose lichen.

This might demonstrate reliance on textual sources rather than personal observation. For instance, common liverwort grows in soil, not rocky surfaces as du Pinet (drawing on Dioscorides) here attests. Indeed, Dioscorides’ descriptions are sometimes obscure and difficult to identify, causing much confusion over the centuries.

Historia plantarum, digitised copy from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich

Amanda Cobbett

Amanda Cobbett is an award-winning textile artist whose works champion the small and often overlooked treasures of the natural world, highlighting their place within our delicate ecosystem.

Inspired by the forest paths of the Surrey Hills, Amanda creates detailed sculptures of fungi, mosses, lichens and other natural forms using machine embroidery, wire and papier-mâché. Her painstaking “slow textile” process transforms fleeting encounters with nature into beautifully manufactured objects.

In this exhibition, Amanda’s embroidered lichens sit alongside books and archival material from the Inn’s collections. Together they invite us to look more closely at organisms that are easily overlooked, while considering the different ways humans have observed, classified and valued the natural world.

To learn more about Amanda and see her work, please visit www.amandacobbett.com

Amanda Cobbett - Embroidered Nature

This film shows Amanda Cobbett embroidering hyper-realistic lichen.

“I like to think that my pieces could trick the eye into thinking that what you are seeing might be real. I am also passionate about highlighting and preserving specimens from the forest that could, without care, become red-listed. If we are not aware that they exist, how will we know when they have disappeared? By creating an embroidered sculpture of a natural object and displaying it in a case in a gallery, it brings our natural world into another dimension – we then might look for that specimen in nature, and care about its existence." - Amanda Cobbett (source)”

Humanity and the Natural World

For millennia, using description and classification, people have sought to understand the natural world with its countless flora and fauna.

Naturalists have always relied in large part on the inherited knowledge of their forebears. This was often an amalgam of observations and accounts, some of which endured as authorities for hundreds if not thousands of years. Of course, mixed in with the accumulated facts was a mass of spurious hearsay – a habit that continued well beyond the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a result, many of the descriptions and images handed down could create confusion rather than diminish it.

As the eighteenth-century Enlightenment proceeded, apocryphal information was increasingly held to account under the glare of modern techniques of systematic scientific enquiry. Nevertheless, the era was fundamentally indebted to ancient approaches to organising knowledge of the natural world, and this remains true to this day.

Focusing on the unique and intriguing case of lichens, the books and images displayed in this exhibition reveal changing ideas about what it means to study nature and how people across the ages have perceived our relationship with it. They encourage us, like all true naturalists, to pay deeper consideration to and appreciation for all life forms, not least those that can hide away unnoticed.

Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: or a naturall historie (London, 1627)

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a member of Gray’s Inn. In addition to being an accomplished statesman, Bacon was a naturalist, but his Sylva sylvarum was published posthumously. It is a wide-ranging collection of extracts on natural history from books and manuscripts from other authors, as well as Bacon’s own scientific experiments and observations.

Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: or a naturall historie (London, 1627) ©

Memoriæ honoratissimi domini Francisci, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani sacrum (London, 1626)

This is a memorial volume that was published after Bacon’s death in 1625. It is open at the poem written by Robert Ashley (1565-1641), the founder of Middle Temple Library. Each poem celebrates different aspects of Bacon’s life, including his interest in natural history. In this poem, Ashley has made an oblique reference to the rivalry between Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) and Bacon.

Portrait of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Ralph Austen, Observations upon some part of Sr Francis Bacon's naturall history as it concernes, fruit-trees, fruits, and flowers (Oxford, 1658)

The Dictionary of National Biography describes Ralph Austen (circa 1612-1676) as a “horticulturist and religious radical” from Staffordshire who lived in Oxford from 1646 until his death in 1676. He was a self-taught horticulturist who in this work challenged Francis Bacon’s theories on the cultivation of trees, fruits and flowers. Austen was of one of Samuel Hartlib’s (circa 1600-1662) circle. Trees are of course important hosts for lichens, with different types of trees being favoured by different lichens.

Observations upon some part of Sr Francis Bacon's naturall history as it concernes, fruit-trees, fruits, and flowers, digitised version from Internet Archive

Lichens for Health

The Greek physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides (approximately 40AD – 90AD) described how lichen cultivated from rocks can be used to stem bleeding, reduce inflammation and heal impetigo. He stated that they could be mixed with honey to treat jaundice and used to treat mouth and tongue rheumatism.

Pliny the Elder (23 AD – 79 AD) also described how to use lichen to heal ailments, in particular to cure skin fissures and scabs. This may be linked to ancient beliefs that elements from nature could be used to cure ailments that shared certain appearances and properties: lichen on the surface of rocks and trees, for example, resembles fissures or scabs on the skin’s surface.

Early Western physiological theory focused on the four ‘humours’ (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile), with four corresponding temperaments (phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholy). Those corresponded with the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, the four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), and the four ages of life (childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age). All these elements corresponded to the four categories of hold, cold, moist and dry. The diagram above illustrates the concept.

The variant mixtures affected one’s physical and mental state. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “The ideal person had the ideally proportioned mixture of the four; a predominance of one produced a person who was sanguine (Latin sanguis, “blood”), phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic.” The ‘humoral’ theory lasted for centuries in Western medical practice.

André du Laurens, De morbis melancholicis, & eorum cura tractatus (London, 1599)

André du Laurens (1558-1609) was French physician to Henri IV. This work is divided into four discourses: vision, melancholy, catarrhs, and gerontology, and as such is an early work on the science of old age. It is also notable for its discussion of mental illness. In the humoural system, ‘Melancholy’ was believed to be caused by an excess of black bile.

Although du Laurens does not discuss lichens in this book, it is nonetheless an example of the application of the humoural theory so prevalent at the time: “quatuor sunt humores in corporibus” [there are four humours in bodies].

De morbis melancholicis, & eorum cura tractatus, digitised version from Marsh’s Library, Dublin

Jean Vigier, Tractatus absolutissimus et accuratissimus de catarrho, rheumatismo, vitiis dentium, linguae, vocis, de immodica et indecora salivatione, et aliis a cerebro destillationibus, de variis authoribus compilatus (Geneva, 1620)

Jean Vigier (dates unknown) was a French physician who published a few medical tomes during his lifetime. In this work he discusses the use of various natural remedies for catarrh, including the use of agaricus, a type of fungus.

Although agaricus is not a lichen, the two have a symbiotic relationship: “lichen is a stable symbiotic association between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria”, and many “unrelated and very different fungi form lichens, including mushroom-forming fungi, and especially cup-fungi.”

Tractatus absolutissimus et accuratissimus de catarrho, digitised version from Wellcome Library, London

Wilhelm Adolf Scribonius (translated by Daniel Widdowes), Naturall philosophy: or A description of the world, and of the severall creatures therein contained (London, 1631)

Wilhelm Adolf Scribonius (1550-1600) was a philosopher, physician and teacher. This is the first English translation of his 1585 textbook entitled Rerum naturalium doctrina methodica. The book concerns the development of the natural sciences and contemplates the state of knowledge of the time.

Scribonius adhered to the approach of the French humanist Peter Ramus (1515-1572). Scribonius wrote several works applying “Ramist” logic (rather than the traditional “scholastic” logic Ramus was reacting against) to natural science. This section concerns the properties and medicinal qualities of plants, including ‘Fungus Agaricus’ which grows on larch trees and was used in early modern medicine to ‘purge phlegm’, i.e. to expel an excess of the phlegmatic humour which was believed to cause respiratory and other ailments.

This fungus has been revered as a medicine since ancient times, including by the ancient physician Dioscorides whose pharmacopoeias and medical texts greatly informed the medieval medical tradition. Even to this day it is subject to scientific and clinical research.

Naturall philosophy, digitised copy from Wellcome Library, London

Dioscorides Pedanius of Anazarbos (translated by Jean Antoine Sarrasin), Opera quæ extant omnia (Frankfurt, 1598)

Dioscorides (approximately 40-90 AD) was a Greek pharmacologist whose Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς (“On Medicinal Materials”) was the go-to pharmacology handbook in Europe and the Middle East for over 1500 years. It is the predecessor of all modern pharmacopoeias and was still referred to well into the eighteenth century.

The translation of Sarrasin (1547-1598) was widely reprinted during the seventeenth century. Some of the suggested remedies are genuinely effective, others not so much. Some are actively dangerous. For example, in this passage on burn treatments, lead compounds are proposed. A suggested treatment for wounds is to use “lichen growing upon stones, crushed and applied”. Modern chemistry has in fact discovered that many lichens produce compounds such as usnic acid, atranorin and other phenolics which have genuine antimicrobial qualities.

Nevertheless, cuts would be better served by modern antiseptics than sprinkled rock lichen.

Portrait of Dioscorides Pedanius of Anazarbos ©

Pliny the Elder, Historia mundi naturalis C. Plinii Secundi hoc est: amplissimum, lucidissimum, perspicacissimumque, nec non plane mirandum totius vniversi, rerumque naturalium speculum (Frankfurt, 1582)

Pliny wrote the only encyclopaedia to survive from ancient Rome. It was written approximately 77-79 CE. He was a naval and army commander who avidly pursued naturalist and scientific interests during his spare time. Historia Mundi Naturalis, as the title suggests, covers a huge array of subjects and uses hundreds of ancient authors for its source materials.

It was a principal scientific reference work well into early modernity and is an ancestor of editorial models still with us today. These pages are an example of Pliny’s approach, combining firsthand observations with second or third hand accounts and even out-and-out myths. Unsurprisingly, many of the cures are spurious. Here, among a list of other medicines, rock lichens as well as “the herb called lichen... [which] grows on rocky ground” (possibly liverwort) are prescribed for a skin disease, itself called “lichen”.

This malady was probably an amalgam of modern skin conditions like impetigo, ringworm and eczema. According to ancient understanding, likeness in appearance could indicate the treatment’s efficacy; hence this dubious remedy. Pliny famously died whilst trying to observe the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Bartolomeo Paschetti, De destillatione catharro vulgò dicta. Libri tres. In quibus copiosissimè, & exactissimè de destillatione, fluxione, & catharro disputatur sequenti ordine (Venice, 1615)

Bartolomeo Paschetti (active 1578-1616) was a physician from Verona. He studied a the famous school of medicine in Padua and worked in Genoa. In this work he discusses ‘catarrh’, which caused discharge from the nose and eyes. Although during the early modern period, the word ‘catarrh’ had a broader meaning, and could include the common cold, rhinitis and sinusitis.

As evidenced here, Paschetti relied heavily on other authorities for his text, including Luis Mercado (1520-1606) and Joannes Baptista Montanus (1498-1551). His book discusses their remedies, which included the use of agaricus in a herbal mixture that contained chamomile, and lye.

De destillatione catharro vulgò dicta, digitised version from Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Assessments of trees, Middle Temple estate: Letter from Dr. P. G. Biddle concerning the mulberry trees in Fountain Court and plan to accompany report from Southern Tree Surgeons, 1998 - Middle Temple Archive, MT/6/BPC/8

As shown in the books on display, some types of tree fungus have long been prized as medicines. Certain fungi can damage their host, requiring stringent human intervention. Sometimes it is both: the Ganoderma fungus referred to by Dr P.G. Biddle’s report as threatening a laburnum in Fountain Court has also been used as a traditional medicine across Asia for centuries. Nowadays a great deal of human effort is put into preserving, shaping, and protecting trees (as well as their mass felling of course). Opinions over time have diverged sharply as to what this means in practice. In 1998, Dr. Biddle was commissioned to review a query from the Inn about whether the mulberry trees in Fountain Court were a nuisance to be removed. This was sharply debated in the late 1990s ahead of the Inn’s Millenium Project. During this project, Fountain Court was resurfaced and other changes were made to the area. Some felt the mulberry trees were an “oppressive” and ungainly obstruction, while others (who won out in the end) fondly appreciated their crooked charms.