ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Too Corny? How Ridicule, Redemption, and Reorientation Stemmed from the Exhibition of Experimental Maize and Other Useful Crops at the Botanical Gardens/Museum of Christiania, Norway in the Nineteenth Century

• In Event: Experimentation and Discovery

English Abstract

In the 1850's, the discipline of botany in Christiania (today's Oslo) witnessed a shift in the perceived roles of its university-bound institutions. Frederick Christian Schübeler, the conservator of the botanical museum and director of the economic section of the botanical gardens, focused on developing the horticultural science behind cultivating crops in Norway—with maize as the posterchild—in attempts to either acclimatize strains or produce variations that were well suited to the climate. Yet, tests did not remain rooted in the botanical gardens but were actively spread out to other curious laypeople across the city, region, and eventually country. The following annual exhibitions created to showcase results and correlated objects of these experiments were initially ridiculed in the press and by botanical scholars in the academic college. However, the successful growth of many of the trials reflected the sprawling enthusiasm that emerged from each subsequent exhibition. What had been considered "modern nonsense" and a waste of a botanist's time took on value that touched people and soils in various corners of the nation and added to the perceived opportunities that the application of the science could provide. Ultimately, more disappointing results developed out of further long-term experimentation, which affirmed some fallibility of Schübeler's Lamarckism-based theories. Nevertheless, the world that this participatory science opened directly fostered the growth of the field of horticulture in Norway, suggesting that the creation and spread of scientific knowledge out of botanical museological institutions could have significant impacts on culture when coupled with close material-based exchange.

Author

• Solveig Marie Siem, University of Oslo