clusius

Updated: June 3, 2025

We see by the works of Clusius, that at the beginning of the Conquista, Europe obtained this salutary medicament from the Mexican coast of Honduras and the port of Guayaquil. The trade in zarza is now more active in those ports which have interior communications with the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon.

Alexander von Humboldt - Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2

Clusius, otherwise L'Ecluse, the great botanist, when residing in Vienna, in 1598, received the potato from the Governor of Mons, in Hainault, who had obtained it the year before from one of the attendants of the Pope's Legate under the name of Taratouflè, and learned from him that in Italy, where it was then in use, no person knew whether it came from Spain or America.

John O'Rourke - The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) : With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines

Clusius and Bontius give good descriptions and there is a well-known picture of one in the British Museum. It is a massive, clumsy bird, ungraceful in its form with heavy movements, wings too short for flight, little or no tail, and down rather than feathers. The body, according to Bontius, is as big as that of the African ostrich, but the legs are very short.

James De Mille - A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

And on this occasion I shall add an Observation, which though it does not strictly belong to this place, may well enough be mention'd here, namely, that I find by an account given us by the Learned Clusius, of Alaternus, that ev'n the Grosser Parts of the same Plant, are some of them one Colour, and some another; For speaking of that Plant, he tells us, that the Portugalls use the Bark to Dye their Nets into a Red Colour, and with the Chips of the Wood, which are Whitish, they Dye a Blackish Blew.

Robert Boyle - Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)

The Magnolia commemorates the Magnols; the Sarracenia, Sarrasin of Lyons; the Bauhinia, Jean Bauhin; the Fuchsia, Bauhin's earlier German master, Leonard Fuchs; and the Clusia the received name of that terrible "Matapalo" or "Scotch attorney," of the West Indies, which kills the hugest tree, to become as huge a tree itself immortalises the great Clusius, Charles de l'Escluse, citizen of Arras, who, after studying civil law at Louvain, philosophy at Marburg, and theology at Wittemberg under Melancthon, came to Montpellier in 1551, to live in Rondelet's own house, and become the greatest botanist of his age.

Charles Kingsley - Historical Lectures and Essays