Bartram went into the wild, collecting plants for his English patron and himself. Word of Bartram's collecting quickly spread in Europe , and soon Collinson was acting as Bartram's agent for a variety of other important patrons. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish taxonomist responsible for developing the basis of scientific classification used today and himself a recipient of many Bartram specimens, called John "the greatest natural botanist in the world." This lilac is among the specimen plants in Bartram's Garden.