The Biology of Aquatic Plants
translated from Heinrich Schenck’s German Biologie der Wassergewaechse, 1886,
by Donald H. Les, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of
Connecticut
- Agnes Arber (1920) on Schenck's Die Biologie der Wassergewaechse
The German scientific literature of the 19th century comprises an extensive collection of original, meticulous, and accurate botanical information. As an American graduate student in the 1980's, I was warned lightheartedly, "Never get too excited about your findings because a German botanist had probably made the same discovery a hundred years ago." Several semesters of graduate school German gave me access to this literature and revealed the impressive amount of botanical data that remained virtually inaccessible to most English speaking scientists. Unfortunately, this problem is exacerbated by the preeminence of the English language in the contemporary scientific literature, which in English speaking countries has perhaps reduced the need for fluency in the classical languages.
Die Biologie der Wassergewaechse is an essential reference for students in the field of aquatic plant biology because it presents an insightful review of major research conducted during the 19th century, a period of intensive botanical investigation. Today, with a shift in emphasis to molecular and other laboratory based scientific research, basic studies of aquatic plant natural history have waned and this area is still best represented in the older literature. Die Biologie der Wassergewaechse contains invaluable knowledge on this topic.
Unfortunately, Schenck's work has become increasingly forsaken in subsequent English language books written on aquatic plants. In Water plants [1] (1920), the first comprehensive monograph of aquatic plants to be published in English, Die Biologie der Wassergewaechse is cited more than 25 times. However, in The Biology of Aquatic Vascular Plants [2] (1967), the work is cited only nine times and in Limnological Botany [3] (1975), it is not even mentioned.
The reduced citations are not simply due to obsolescence of subject matter, because much of the content remains accurate to this day. Moreover, Schenck's book provides an important historical perspective on the state of knowledge that existed in this branch of science during the 19th century. This book appeared in the aftermath of Darwin's Origin of Species and presents some of the first characterizations of aquatic plant adaptations with evolutionary overtones.
[1] Arber, A. 1920. Water plants: a study of aquatic angiosperms.
Cambridge: University Press.
[2] Sculthorpe, C. D. 1967. The biology of aquatic vascular plants. London:
Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.
[3] Hutchinson, G. E. 1975. A treatise on limnology. Volume 3: Limnological botany.
New York: John Wiley & Sons.
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