Organisation(s)
LINN (main), OXF (main), BEDPL (currently LINN), BM-SL
Associate(s)
Bobart, Jacob (1599-1680) (father)
Petiver, James (1658-1718) (correspondent)
Sherard, William (1659-1728) (specimens from)
Plukenet, Leonard (1642-1706) (correspondent)
Biography
English botanist (of German descent), superintendent at the Oxford Botanic Garden. Jacob Bobart the Younger succeeded his father, Bobart the Elder, in this position, when the latter died in 1680. By exchanging seed and collaborating with the pre-eminent botanists of his day, Bobart managed to develop the Oxford garden into a thriving site. In addition he gained fame for creating a marvellous Hortus Siccus of some 2,000 specimens. Though undated and without localities given, it is supposed the collections it contained were made from about 1661-1666 and come mostly from the Oxford Botanic Garden and Oxfordshire, and were made by Bobart himself. He also collected plants in the Netherlands, Flanders and the Jura before marrying his wife, Anna, in 1673.
On the death of botany professor Robert Morison (1620-1683), Bobart became Horti Prefaectus and took over lecturing duties at the university (he was, however, precluded from becoming professor by never having been a member of the university). He later completed (aided by William Sherard) the third part of Morison's Plantarum Historiae Universalis Oxoniensis in 1699, as a folio of 657 pages with 168 plates. This effort took him 13 years, during which time his gardening work was necessarily somewhat neglected. He went on to lose his position in 1717 after illness led him to entrust its upkeep to his brother, who greatly exceeded the garden's budget, to the fury of the university authorities. Bobart died at the end of 1719.
Bobart apparently had a good sense of humour, for he was the perpetrator of a hoax in which he moulded a dead rat into the form of a dragon, which discovery was publicised. Bobart eventually confessed it was in fact a rat, and the modified rodent corpse was deposited in the museum of Oxford's school of anatomy as a piece of art. His botanical collections (library, papers and herbaria) were left to the university and his Historia naturalis sciographia was published, anonymously, in 1720. The genus Bobartia L. was named in honour of Bobart and his father.
Sources:
J. Britten and J. E. Dandy (eds), 1958, The Sloane Herbarium: 91-92
G.C. Druce, 1927, The Flora of Oxfordshire,2nd edn(2): lxxx-lxxxii
Bobart's Hortus Siccus:
http://dps.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/bobart, accessed 20 December 2011.
References
Dandy, J.E., Sloane Herb. (1958): 91; Kent, D.H. & Allen, D.E., Brit. Irish Herb. (1984): 97; Lanjouw, J. & Stafleu, F.A., Index Herb. Coll. A-D (1954): 80;
