Collected Illustrations of the Three Realms: Plants

Only partial translations or excerpts exist. This is the first complete English translation.

The 'Sancai Tuhui' is a massive Ming Dynasty encyclopedia (106 chapters). While its botanical illustrations and specific entries are frequently cited and partially translated in scholarly works—most notably in Joseph Needham's 'Science and Civilisation in China' series—no complete English translation of the 'Plants' (Caomu) section or the encyclopedia as a whole was found in any catalog. This work would constitute the first complete English translation of the botanical portion of the encyclopedia.

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