Jacob Bobart the Elder (c.1599-1680)

Jacob Bobart the Elder (c.1599-1680), the ‘Germane Prince of Plants’, was born in Brunswick and became a soldier before he settled in Oxford. In 1642, Bobart was made the first superintendent of the Physic Garden. Little is known about him other than he was a tall, strong, literate, eccentric publican of integrity with a penchant for topiary. On high days and holy days, Bobart tagged his beard with silver, apparently kept a goat as a pet, whilst the yews he clipped in the form of giants, inside the Physic Garden’s Danby Gate, inspired ballads in the 1660s.
 
Contemporary portraits show a long-bearded, rather severe-looking man who might ‘hold his own among the dons of the University’, but who was the butt of town-and-gown wits. The portrait shown, which is assumed to be of Bobart the Elder, shows a well-dressed man with a rather benign countenance.
 
Bobart married twice, had at least ten children, of which his eldest son became his successor at the Garden (Bobart, 1884). When he died, Bobart was a rich man, having leases for the profitable ‘Greyhound Inn and meadow’ and houses at Smythgate (north Catte Street). Moreover, he owned a house on George Lane (George Street) and bequeathed more than £115 to his daughters.
 
Bobart is credited with authorship of the Catologus plantarum horti medici Oxoniensis (1648), the first catalogue of plants in the Physic Garden. He was as well-known auricula breeder (Rea, 1665), one of the fashionable groups of plants of the day. As a skilled grafter of trees and vines, Bobart is credited with developing a grafting method, which he used to make the popular 'White Frontiniac' grape fruit early by grafting it onto the stem of the 'Parsly' grape (Sharrock, 1672: 116; Plot,1677: 260). Grafting is an ancient horticultural technique where tissues of different plants are fused together. It is a method that means plants with valuable characteristics can be propagated indefinitely, or their flowering and fruiting patterns can be altered. Apple trees are multiplied by grafting; the ‘coeur de boeuf’ apple of thirteenth-century France is genetically identical to the apple known by the same name today.
 
In the early 1660s, Reverend John Ward (1629-1681) records how he learnt about the plants growing in the Garden, the locations of unusual plants growing about Oxford and perhaps even the art of pressing plants and making a ‘Botanologicall Book’ from Bobart the Elder (Power, 1919: 117).
 
The Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus commemorated Bobart, together with his son Jacob, in the generic name Bobartia, a group of South African plants in the iris family.
 

References

Bobart HT 1884. A biographical sketch of Jacob Bobart, of Oxford, together with an account of his two sons, Jacob and Tilleman. Leicester, printed for private circulation only.

Plot R 1677. The natural history of Oxford-shire, being an essay toward the natural history of England. Oxford, printed at the Theater.

Rea J 1665. Flora: seu, de florum cultura, or, a complete florilege: furnished with all the requisites belonging to a florists. In III books. London, printed by J.G. for Thomas Clarke.

Sharrock R 1672. The history of the propagation & improvement of vegetables by the concurrence of art and nature. Oxford, printed by W. Hall, for Ric. Davis.