JAN COMMELIN

TO THE READER

DEVOTED TO THE

STUDY OF BOTANY

Ornamental woodcut drop cap 'Q' featuring intricate foliate scrollwork within a square border.Since this fifth volume of the Garden of Malabar original: "Horti Malabarici", most kind Reader, contains many plants hitherto unknown or unnoticed by anyone—all of which, with few exceptions, are berry-bearing bacciferas: plants that produce berries, whether they be shrubs or trees—we have not been able to follow a strict botanical order. Indeed, the very obscure knowledge of many of these, and the extreme diversity of their characteristic marks, prevented us from comparing them with all those already described or common, and thus from dividing them into a standard classification, as the following pages will most clearly demonstrate. However, so that error might be avoided here, new identifying marks would have to be investigated and a new order established; for that reason, I wished to advise you, Studious Reader original: "P. L." for "Pie Lector" or "Philomuse Lector", so that you might forgive any errors committed with a benevolent spirit. These are, moreover, entirely new and unknown plants, which the Noble Author referring to Hendrik van Rheede collected and shared solely with the intention of serving his fellow countrymen, and which I have not been able to illustrate with complete commentaries,