Philip Miller
FRS (1691 – 18 December 1771) was an English
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
and gardener of Scottish descent. Miller was chief gardener at the
Chelsea Physic Garden for nearly 50 years from 1722, and wrote the highly popular ''
The Gardeners Dictionary
''The Gardeners Dictionary'' was a widely cited reference series, written by Philip Miller (1691–1771), which tended to focus on plants cultivated in England. Eight editions of the series were published in his lifetime. After his death, it was ...
''.
Life
Born in
Deptford or Greenwich, Miller was chief gardener at the
Chelsea Physic Garden from 1722 until he was pressured to retire shortly before his death. According to the botanist
Peter Collinson, who visited the
physic garden
A physic garden is a type of herb garden with medicinal plants. Botanical gardens developed from them.
History
Modern botanical gardens were preceded by medieval physic gardens, often monastic gardens, that existed by 800 at least. Gardens o ...
in July 1764 and recorded his observation in his
commonplace book
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are simi ...
s, Miller "has raised the reputation of the Chelsea Garden so much that it excels all the gardens of Europe for its amazing variety of plants of all orders and classes and from all climates..."
He wrote ''The Gardener's and Florists Dictionary or a Complete System of Horticulture'' (1724) and
''The Gardener's Dictionary containing the Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen Fruit and Flower Garden'', which first appeared in 1731 in an impressive
folio
The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...
and passed through eight expanding editions in his lifetime and was translated into Dutch by
Job Baster.
Botanical work
Miller corresponded with other botanists, and obtained plants from all over the world, many of which he cultivated for the first time in England and is credited as their introducer. His knowledge of living plants, for which he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...
, was unsurpassed in breadth in his lifetime. He trained
William Aiton
William Aiton (17312 February 1793) was a Scottish botanist.
Aiton was born near Hamilton. Having been regularly trained to the profession of a gardener, he travelled to London in 1754, and became assistant to Philip Miller, then superinten ...
, who later became head gardener at
Kew, and
William Forsyth, after whom ''
Forsythia
''Forsythia'' , is a genus of flowering plants in the olive family Oleaceae. There are about 11 species, mostly native to eastern Asia, but one native to southeastern Europe. ''Forsythia'' – also one of the plant's common names – is ...
'' was named. The
Duke of Bedford contracted him to supervise the pruning of fruit trees at
Woburn Abbey and the care of his prized collection of American trees, especially evergreens, which were grown from seeds that, on Miller's suggestion, had been sent in barrels from
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, where they had been collected by
John Bartram
John Bartram (March 23, 1699 – September 22, 1777) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for most of his career. Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus said he was the "greatest na ...
. Through a consortium of sixty subscribers, 1733–66, the contents of Bartram's boxes introduced such American trees as ''
Abies balsamea
''Abies balsamea'' or balsam fir is a North American fir, native to most of eastern and central Canada (Newfoundland west to central Alberta) and the northeastern United States (Minnesota east to Maine, and south in the Appalachian Mountains to W ...
'' and ''
Pinus rigida'' into English gardens.
Miller was reluctant to use the new
binomial nomenclature
In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name compos ...
of
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...
, preferring the classifications of
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and
John Ray
John Ray FRS (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after ...
at first. Linnaeus, nevertheless, applauded Miller's ''Gardeners Dictionary'',
[''Non erit Lexicon Hortulanorum, sed etiam Botanicorum'', that the book will be, not just a lexicon of gardeners, but of botanists."; noted in Paterson 1986:40–41.] The conservative Scot actually retained a number of pre-Linnaean binomial signifiers discarded by Linnaeus but which have been retained by modern botanists. He only fully changed to the Linnaean system in the edition of ''
The Gardeners Dictionary
''The Gardeners Dictionary'' was a widely cited reference series, written by Philip Miller (1691–1771), which tended to focus on plants cultivated in England. Eight editions of the series were published in his lifetime. After his death, it was ...
'' of 1768, though he had already described some genera, such as ''
Larix
Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains fu ...
'' and ''
Vanilla
Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus '' Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla ('' V. planifolia'').
Pollination is required to make the plants produce the fruit from whic ...
'', validly under the Linnaean system earlier, in the fourth edition (1754).
Miller sent the first long-strand cotton seeds, which he had developed, to the new British American
colony of Georgia in 1733. They were first planted on
Sea Island, off the coast of Georgia, and hence derived the name of the finest cotton,
Sea Island Cotton
''Gossypium barbadense'' (''gos-SIP-pee-um bar-ba-DEN-see'') is one of several species of cotton. It is in the mallow family. It has been cultivated since antiquity, but has been especially prized since a form with particularly long fibers was ...
.
The presumed portrait, engraved by C.J. Maillet and affixed to the posthumous French edition of Miller's ''Gardeners Dictionary'', 1787, shows the wrong Miller,
John Frederick Miller, son of the London-based
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
artist
Johann Sebastian Müller. No authentic portrait is known.
Miller's two sons worked under him; one, Charles, became the first head of the
Cambridge Botanic Garden
The Cambridge University Botanic Garden is a botanical garden located in Cambridge, England, associated with the university Department of Plant Sciences (formerly Botany School). It lies between Trumpington Road to the west, Bateman Street to ...
.
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Notes
References
Bibliography
Philip Miller and the Gardeners Dictionary. University of Toronto
External links
* Miller, Philip (1760
''The Gardeners Kalendar''– digital facsimile from
Linda Hall Library
* Miller, Philip (1760
''Figures of the most beautiful, useful, and uncommon plants, 2 vols.''– digital facsimile from
Linda Hall Library
*Elliott, Brent (2011) Philip Miller as a natural philosopher, i
Eighteenth-century Science in the Garden- Occasional Papers from RHS Lindley Library, volume 5 March 2011.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Philip
Scottish botanists
English horticulturists
Botanists with author abbreviations
1691 births
1771 deaths
Fellows of the Royal Society
English people of Scottish descent
Place of birth missing
18th-century British botanists
English garden writers