Orchids as epistemological tools: species recognition in the botany of Carolus Clusius

Abstract Early modern botanical works represent an elementary yet challenging chapter in the history of biological classification. This study re-assesses the orchid species descriptions of Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), focusing on his Rariorum aliquot stirpium (1583) and Rariorum plantarum historia (1601). Combining philological analysis with modern taxonomy, it examines how Clusius documented Central European Orchidaceae through empirical observation. Rather than treating retrospective identification as a teleological exercise, the study employs modern taxonomy as a diagnostic baseline to evaluate the epistemic status of Clusius’s observational categories and to determine whether they correspond to stable biological entities. Close analysis of his Latin diagnostic texts and woodcut illustrations reveals a high degree of correspondence between many pre-Linnaean categories and modern species concepts. Cases of seeming taxonomic ambiguity often reflect Clusius’s accurate representation of phenotypic plasticity and natural hybridization as distinct from classificatory confusion. The results of this research indicate that the empirical traditions of sixteenth-century botany were already predisposed to the recognition of morphologically stable natural entity independent of formal taxonomic classification. By situating Clusius’s orchid corpus within broader debates on species ontology and empirical individuation, this study contributes to ongoing discussions about the historical basis of biological classification.