by John Huff
When putting together talks about the Central Highlands and Arizona flora and fauna knowing who did the Genus and Species classification is always a curiosity and can be important in knowing how that etymology happened. Finding that information many times is like the excitement when you find something different when out in nature. Here is something to share in the quest to find out more about Phrynosoma hernandesi, the Greater short-horned lizard, incorrectly known as the ‘horned toad.’
Charles Frederoc Girard a French biologist specializing in ichthyology and herpetology did the classification on the short-horned lizard. Girard became a naturalized U.S. citizen and later returned to his native France after serving during the U. S. Civil War as a agent procuring surgical supplies for the Confederacy. The species naming by Girard quest got even more interesting.
Girard named this lizard species after and in a tribute to Francisco Hernandez de Toledo. Hernandez (1515-1587) was a naturalist and after a study of medicine and as a physician at a number of different hospitals in Spain he became the court physician to King Phillip II of Spain in 1567. He would become known as one of the first of Spanish Renaissance physicians.
King Phillip II wanted to know more about what Spain ‘had’ in the New World so in 1570 Hernandez, appointed Archiater (chief physician) for the New World, was ordered to embark on the first scientific mission in the New World. Hernandez and his son Juan Francisco toured Mexico and Central America with a geographer, painters, botanists and native doctors classifying botanical specimens. Hernandez collected an estimated 3,000 species.
During this time he also studied the culture and medicinal practices of the native Nahua peoples. He would spend 3 years in Mexico doing test with the plants they gathered, put together a botanical collection, and studied local medicinal practices. This effort would lead to 24 books on plants, one about the fauna, one on minerals and 10 volumes of paintings and drawings that were brought back to Spain.
A lot of what Francisco Hernandez found with the native use of plants in medicinal ways were foreign to what was practiced in Europe at the time. The first text of Hernández’s work, Index, medicamentorum was published in Mexico City. It is an index that lists Mexican plants according to therapeutic use and their traditional uses; the index was arranged according to body part, and it was ordered from head to toe Because he died before the complete works were published that effort would pass between a number of owners and ultimately encouraged King Charles III of Spain to send a major botanical expedition to New Spain 1787-1803.
So being curious in research went from a French naturalist to what was the first European comprehensive study of flora and fauna in the Mexico and Central America. More information? Start with Wikipedia which has links and references to Girard and Hernandez.