Camerarius was born at
Tübingen, and became
professor of
medicine and director of the
botanical gardens at Tübingen in 1687. He is chiefly known for his investigations on the
reproductive organs of plants (
De sexu plantarum epistola (1694)). While other botanists, such as
John Ray and
Nehemiah Grew, had observed that plants seemed to have
sex in some form, and guessed that
pollen was the male fertilizing agent, it was Camerarius who did experimental work. In studying the
mulberry, he determined that female plants not near to male (staminate) plants produced
fruit but with no
seeds.
Mercurialis and
spinach plants fared likewise. With the
castor oil plant (
Ricinus) and with
maize he cut off the staminate flowers (the "tassels" of maize), and likewise observed that no seeds formed. His results were reported in the form of a letter (the
epistola), and attracted immediate attention, subsequent workers extending his results from the
monoecious plants he had studied to
dioecious ones as well. == Works ==