Travels of European botanists of the 16th-18th centuries in search of Mediterranean plants described by Dioscorides and Theophrastus

Abstract

To Renaissance botanists, the correct identification of plants described by Dioscorides and Theophrastus was often problematic: descriptions are often insufficient to ensure correct identification and nomenclature is often inconsistent. Even more serious, the ancient authors described plants of the Eastern Mediterranean flora, which is different from the flora of the countries that hosted the Renaissance revival of botany. Modern botanists needed to see those plants in their native places and habitats. The first botanical expeditions to the Levant are from the first half of the sixteenth century. Best documented is Leonhard Rauwolf’s journey, whose herbarium is preserved to this date. Fragmentary and often indirect is instead the evidence about botanizing in Eastern Mediterranean countries by Anguillara and Guilandinus, the first two prefects of the Padua botanical garden. Botanical research trips to the Eastern Mediterranean gradually gave many of the plants described by ancient authors a precise identity, an effort eventually culminating with Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca.