Career
lieutenant provided unacknowledged material for John Gerard"s better-known Herball (London, 1597) and was reprinted in Germany throughout the 17th century. His Latinized name represented a translation of his native town, Bergzabern (literally ‘mountain taverne’) in the Palatinate. Tabernaemontanus began as a student of the pioneer of Renaissance botany, Hieronymus Bock.
The career of Tabernaemontanus was supported in the usual manner of his time: by a series of places as court physician to German nobles.
In 1549 he was the private doctor to Philip III, Count of Nassau-Weilburg and later to Marquard von Hattstein, bishop of Speyer. Later he served as town physician to the free imperial city of Worms, Germany.
He is commemorated in the pan-tropical genus of flowering shrubs and small trees Tabernaemontana. The French botanist Charles Plumier erected the genus, as a compliment to Tabernaemontanus, and it was adopted by Linnaeus.
