The “estancias” as spaces for amateur botany

GARCÍA, SUSANA VALERIA

Le Mans

Congreso; Amateurs in Science: A History From Below. Final colloquium of the ANR-funded project ?AmateurS?; 2022

Universidad de Le Mans

This presentation deals with the “estancias” of the Río de la Plata as spaces for the practice of amateur botany. In the latter part of the 19th century, several landowners showed interest in botanical matters and in collection and identification of the vegetation on their land. In particular, this presentation focuses on the correspondence, publications and exchanges of the Uruguayan landowner Mariano Berro (1838-1919), a cattle rancher in the department of Soriano, Uruguay, and the Swiss Teodoro Stuckert (1852-1932), a pharmacist and owner of a ranch in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. For twenty years they maintained a postal exchange about their botanical interests. Both began to form collections in the 1890s and to publish works on grasses, especially pasture (forage plants). Their botanical observations included popular knowledge about medicinal properties and their usefulness for livestock. These cases illustrate the continuity between the practices of observation and recording in rural activities and the study of botany, as well as the interest of the landowners in identifying the vegetation on their estancias, especially useful or harmful plants for cattle breeding and other species that indicated the quality of the soil. Their plant collections began on their estancias and later incorporated plants from neighbouring regions and other parts of the country. Through letters and shared interests, these two men built up a wide network of contacts ranging from important botanists, institutions and grass specialists in Europe and South America, to amateurs and collaborators in neighbouring provinces. Stuckert organised an important private herbarium which was available for consultation by other naturalists, and regularly sent specimens to specialists and institutions in Europe and to some institutions in the United States, constituting a reference point for the collection of Argentine plants. Similarly, Berro sent collections through the networks opened by Stuckert and became a source of information on the plants of the region of his estate. The collecting practices and botanical interests of estancieros show the crossover between various disciplines (history, pharmacy, agriculture, stockbreeding, botany) and between economic and intellectual activities. This example also illustrates the role of epistolary sociability in the interweaving of the territories of amateur science.