Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants

THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE OF LEONHART FUCHS

...makes a white variety of these. A single picture even represents Orache original: "Atriplicem" and Mercury original: "Mercurialem" together. Under the name of "Gladiolus," The "Sword Lily" or Iris family. he describes three plants that differ from one another. I omit many other things which anyone, provided they have even the slightest knowledge of herbs, will detect at the very first glance. Regarding his pictures, let it suffice to have said this: I wonder greatly why he did not also paint pharmacists sitting by their jars, or their assistants girt with leather, since he took care to include flies flying to honey, and ships on the water, and sailors sitting at their oars within them. Fuchs is mocking the busy, decorative, but scientifically useless details in the woodcuts of rival publishers like Egenolph. But since he does not place much value on the benefit of students and is more intent on increasing his wealth, it is no wonder that such books come out of his workshop. Furthermore, to finally reach the point toward which my mind was tending,

He explains the reasoning for his plan in composing these commentaries on the history of plants.

I, indeed, having imitated the zeal of those most learned men mentioned a little earlier, have composed these commentaries on the history of plants with the greatest sleeplessness and expense. In these, at the start, I have encompassed whatever pertains to the entire history of each plant—having cut away all superfluities—briefly and, as we trust, in the best and consistent order. Next, to the history of each plant, I have added lifelike images, expressed more skillfully than by anyone else (if I may say so without offense to others), in an imitation of nature. I did this for no other reason than so that the illustration might more surely express what the text explains in bare words, and thus fix it more deeply in the mind. And truly, I have not only provided pictures of foreign plants—those not even growing naturally in our Germany, of which students will find more than a hundred in these commentaries—but also of common ones, and those that grow everywhere near hedges and thickets. We were moved to do this for two reasons in particular.

The pictures of even the most common herbs are not to be despised.

First, so that students of herbal medicine might have a complete and orderly history of these same plants, which for the most part was not handed down by the ancients, and among more recent authors is only found maimed and confused. Second, so that it does not happen to our descendants as has happened to us (as is clear to everyone): namely, that the plants which are best known today become entirely unknown to them. For who does not know that in the age of Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 AD), the primary authority on medical botany in the Renaissance., most herbs were so well known that he felt it a burden to hand down the identifying marks by which they might be recognized by his successors? But if today you were to ask even those most skilled in the matter of herbs, there will be no one who recognizes them. Therefore, lest by our negligence or the injury of time it should happen that plants now common and known to the common people fall out of human knowledge, we thought that their histories and images should also be included in these commentaries of ours. And why should we despise well-known and very common plants, when there is often greater power in them than in those which are sought after and imported from the most remote and farthest parts of the world at great expense? For what is more common than Knotgrass original: "Polygono," referring to Polygonum aviculare.? What is more despised? Indeed, it is trampled under everyone’s feet. Yet if you wish to experience the power it possesses in stopping blood, you will say nothing is more excellent than it. I could mention many things similar to this, but there is no reason to pour out words recklessly on a well-known matter. In short: so that we might draw up a battle line against the various assaults of diseases, as if with joined forces, I chose to place before the eyes of students both the histories and the images of our native plants as well as foreign ones. However, in acquiring foreign roots and seeds, which once committed to the earth fortunately grew for us, Hieronymus Schaller helped us greatly,

Hieronymus Schaller.

a physician of Nuremberg original: "medicus Noricus", a man most skilled in herbs and many other things. I wanted to mention this in this place so that some testimony of our friendship and affection might remain for posterity, and so that students might clearly understand how much they owe to this good and learned man, who never failed us with his work. Furthermore, since we have inserted into this work the histories of many plants which neither Dioscorides nor other ancients knew—for since they are largely wound-herbs, and thus in the daily use of many, especially surgeons, we thought they should by no means be omitted—we certainly had to use the common and even barbarous In this context, "barbarous" refers to non-Classical Latin or vernacular names used in the Middle Ages. names for them, since we lacked Latin ones.

Why he has sometimes used common and barbarous names.

For we preferred to use inept and less Latin names, than...