The Vulture’s Flight: Pehr Loefling’s Bold Botanical Voyage From Linnaeus’ Shadow to the Amazon’s Edge

February 22, 1756

Dearest reader,

On this day, a young soul, ablaze with botanical fervor, breathed his last beneath the boughs of an orange tree on the banks of the Caroní River.

Pehr Loefling—tall, handsome, and only twenty-seven—was laid to rest in the humid embrace of Venezuela, far from the cool halls of Uppsala where his journey began.

Can you imagine the quiet tragedy of such a loss?

A life so promising, extinguished like a candle in a storm. Yet, in his brief years, he became one of Carl Linnaeus’s most cherished disciples—dubbed by the great master himself as “the Vulture.”

Not for any grim omen, mind you, but for his “intuitive way of finding plants” and his sharp eye for the tiniest, most telling details of a specimen. Was it not the highest compliment a botanist could receive?

Linnaeus, ever the mentor, had sent his “most beloved pupil” to Spain in 1751, where Pehr—now Pedro to his Spanish friends—immersed himself in language and flora alike. He studied the wilds around Madrid with such brilliance that he was named professor of botany by 1753.

But his true calling lay beyond the Iberian Peninsula. In 1754, he joined the Spanish Royal Expedition to South America, tasked with demarcating borders and exploring the region’s natural wealth. He was placed in charge of the entire natural history department—an immense honor for one so young.

For nearly two years, he wandered the Orinoco basin, collecting, cataloging, and marveling at a world of green unlike any he had known. He introduced the first microscope to Venezuela, a tiny lens that opened vast new worlds. But the tropics, for all their beauty, are unforgiving. Malaria—perhaps compounded by yellow fever—claimed him in February 1756. By year’s end, half the expedition would follow him into the earth.

When Linnaeus received the news, he wrote,

“The great Vulture is dead.”

Three words, heavy as a tombstone.

Yet, is a life measured only in years?

Consider this: Linnaeus honored Pehr by naming a genus Loeflingia—a delicate herb found in Spain and the Americas. Another, Pehria, would follow in 1923. In Venezuela, a park, a school, and a memorial stone in Caracas keep his name alive. His manuscripts, preserved by loyal assistants, were published posthumously as Iter Hispanicum.

So I ask you, dear gardener: What legacy will you leave in the soil of time?

Is it not enough to be remembered by a single flower, a single name whispered in the wind?

Pehr Loefling’s story is not one of endings, but of seeds—scattered, unseen, waiting for the right season to bloom.