Background
Ranzan Ono was born in 1729 in Kyoto.
小野 蘭山
Ranzan Ono was born in 1729 in Kyoto.
He began at the age of twelve to study under Matsuoka Joan an expert in botany. After the death of his teacher six years later, he continued his studies on his own and at the age of twenty-four opened a school on Maruta-machi in Kyoto.
His lectures were collected and put into order by his grandson and one of his students named Okamura Shun’eki and were published in fourty-eight chapters during the years 1803-05 under the title Honzo komoku keimo, constituting the largest work on the subject of Japanese botany produced in the premodem period. When he was seventy he was invited by the shogunate to come to Edo and talk on botany at the Saijukan, and from this time until his death he lectured at the shogunal medical school.
During the years from 1800 to 1806, when he was already over seventy, he made walking trips through many of the provinces for the purpose of collecting botanical specimens.