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 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF
PLANTS
VOLUME 3

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 A Cultural History of Plants
General Editors: Annette Giesecke and David J. Mabberley

Volume 1
A Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity
Edited by Annette Giesecke

Volume 2
A Cultural History of Plants in the Post-Classical Era
Edited by Alain Touwaide

Volume 3
A Cultural History of Plants in the Early Modern Era
Edited by Andrew Dalby and Annette Giesecke

Volume 4
A Cultural History of Plants in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Edited by Jennifer Milam

Volume 5
A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth Century
Edited by David J. Mabberley

Volume 6
A Cultural History of Plants in the Modern Era
Edited by Stephen Forbes

9781474273435_txt_rev.indd 2 02-09-2021 19:27:13

 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF
PLANTS

IN THE EARLY
MODERN ERA
VOLUME 3

Edited by Andrew Dalby and Annette Giesecke

9781474273435_txt_rev.indd 3 02-09-2021 19:27:13

 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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 CONTENTS

L ist of I llustrations  vi
S eries P reface  xii
E ditors ’ N ote  xiii

Introduction: “I am sorry to say that I do not recognise them”

Andrew Dalby with Annette Giesecke 1

1 Plants as Staple Foods: Europe in the Post-Classical Era

Malcolm Thick 29

2 Plants as Luxury Foods: “And they germinated very well”

Andrew Dalby 55

3 Trade and Exploration: Plant Hunting 1450–1650

David Marsh 77

4 Plant Technology and Science: Frondi tenere e belle

Ingrid D. Rowland 97

5 Plants and Medicine

Florike Egmond 117

6 Plants in Culture
Luke Morgan and Elizabeth Hyde 137

7 Plants as Natural Ornaments

Jill Francis 157

8 The Representation of Plants: More than Just a Pretty Face?

Gillian Riley 177

N otes  197
B ibliography  207
N otes on C ontributors  232
I ndex  234

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 ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1 “View of St Helena.” Mid-coast, an orchard flourishes around the little

Portuguese church. Hand-colored engraving, copy c. 1596 (by Baptista Van
Doetichum) from voyages of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611),
Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Photo from HuskyBot/Wikimedia Commons 2
0.2 Garden scene and scrolling vegetal ornament, decorative ceramic tile,
reputedly from a palace along the Chahar Bagh Avenue, Isfahan, Iran. First
quarter of the seventeenth century, Isfahan. Rogers Fund, 1903,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image courtesy of
The Metropolitan Museum 6

0.3 “Garden Flowers.” A series of sixteen realistic paintings of spring flowers,

serving as botanical specimens as well as reminders of the brevity of life,
beauty, and material existence. Chinese, c. 1540, after Chen Chun
(1483–1544). Gift of Douglas Dillon, 1986, The Metropolitan Museum,
New York. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum 8

0.4 Frontispiece, Carolus Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem: quibus animalium,

plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinorum fructuum historiae
describuntur (Ten Books of Exotica: The History and Uses of Animals, Plants,
Aromatics and Other Natural Products from Distant Lands, Leiden: Raphelengius,
1605). Tentoonstelling Clusius Universiteitsbibliotheek, Leiden. Photo by
Shyamal/Wikimedia Commons 17

0.5 The sunflower depicted among superficially similar flowers on a page of

John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris (Park-in-Sun’s Terrestrial
Paradise, 1629: 297). Hand-colored copy. Photo courtesy of Getty Research
Institute 23

0.6 Paradise murals of the Augustinian monastery of Malinalco, Mexico.

Sixteenth century. Image from Album/Alamy Stock Photo 27

1.1 Wheat: a major staple in Europe. Commonly eaten in towns and cities,
it was preferred above other grains because bread made from wheat flour
was white and tasty. From John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image courtesy
of Fisher Library, University of Toronto 34

1.2 Rye: a hardy grain crop much eaten in eastern Europe and in other parts
of the Continent often mixed with other grains to make “maslin” bread.
From John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image courtesy of Fisher Library,
University of Toronto 37

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 ILLUSTRATIONS vii

1.3 Barley: a grain widely used by poorer people to make bread (often mixed
with other grains) and also, as malt, a major constituent of ale and beer.
From John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image courtesy of Fisher Library,
University of Toronto 38

1.4 Oats: a grain widely grown in cooler and wetter parts of Europe, it
was important both as a human staple and as animal fodder. From
John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image courtesy of Fisher Library, University
of Toronto 40

1.5 “Turkey corne” or maize: the only plant introduced from America that
became a staple in parts of Europe before 1650. From John Gerard’s
Herball (1597). Image courtesy of Fisher Library, University of Toronto 41

1.6 Spelt: a grain commonly grown in parts of medieval Germany, it was

hardier than many grains and therefore a safer crop to grow. From
John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image courtesy of Fisher Library,
University of Toronto 43

1.7 Buckwheat: a staple in parts of eastern Europe and was also fed to animals.
It will grow on very poor soil. From John Gerard’s Herball (1597). Image
courtesy of Fisher Library, University of Toronto 44

1.8 The Great Turf, 1603. Most pasture throughout the Early Modern period
was not sown with the seeds of specific fodder plants, and this picture
by Albrecht Dürer emphasizes the mixture of wild grasses and other plants
on which animals grazed. From the Albertina Museum, Vienna. Photo by
GraphicaArtis/Getty Images 51

2.1 Fagara Avicennae (Sichuan pepper): perhaps the earliest illustration

(Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem, 1605: 185). The surrounding text consists
of Clusius’ comments, beginning with a quotation from Avicenna. Image
courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 56

2.2 “The pepper berry, drawn from a real specimen” for Clusius in his translation
of Garcia de Orta, Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud
Indos nascentium historia (A History of Several Aromatics, Simples, and
Materia Medica Growing in the Indies, 1567: 107). Image courtesy of
Missouri Botanical Garden 59

2.3 Cloves. [Left] icon spuria, the false image of a clove tree that Clusius had
used in the first edition of his translation from Acosta (1582: 32), reprinted
as an admission of error; [right] icon legitima, the true image, drawn from
the clove branch brought to him in 1600 (Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem,
1605: 267). Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 63

2.4 “Malus Arantia, The Orenge tree,” seen at the top left on a page otherwise
devoted to apples. John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris (1629:
585). Hand-colored copy. Image courtesy of Getty Research Institute 68

2.5a and b Anacardium officinarum and Caious, the closely related Old
World marking nut and New World cashew, as shown on facing pages by

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 viii ILLUSTRATIONS

Clusius in his translation of Garcia de Orta (Aromatum et simplicium aliquot

medicamentorum apud Indos nascentium historia, 1567: 140–1). Image
courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 70–1

2.6 The tomato [center], with its relative the mandrake [top right], amidst other
decorative plants on a page of John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus
terrestris (1629: 381). Hand-colored copy. Image courtesy of Getty Research
Institute 74

3.1a, b, and c Double-page spreads from the ideal plant book that Doctor
Faustus demanded. Leonhart Fuchs, Plantarum effigies (Images of Plants,
1549: 35–6): a) restharrow (Ononis spinosa), and b) anise (Pimpinella anisum),
labeled in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German. c) Fabio Colonna of the
Accademia dei Lincei, Minus cognitarum rariorumque nostro coelo orientium
stirpium ekphrasis (Description of Plants Less Known and Rarer Than Those
Growing Beneath Our Skies, 1616: 326–7): two uncommon wild flowers,
dwarf garlic (Allium chamaemoly), and a false crocus, Romulea bulbocodium.
Images courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 79

3.2 Four of the seven pumpkin or squash varieties illustrated in John Gerard’s
Herball (1597: 774). Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 84

3.3 A pineapple, illustration from De la natural hystoria de las Indias (Natural

History of the Indies) by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557), 1526
(woodcut), earliest representation of this fruit. Image courtesy of Bridgeman
Images 87

3.4 Yucca. From John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris (1629: 435).
Hand-colored copy. Image courtesy of Getty Research Institute 94

4.1 Cypress tree and a Persian soldier, Eastern Staircase, Apadana Palace,
Persepolis, Iran, late sixth–early fifth century bce. Photo by Stefano Politi
Markovina/Alamy Stock Photo 99

4.2 Sweet violets, miniature from the Tractatus de Herbis, attributed to

Dioscorides Pedanius (c. 40–c. 90), Latin manuscript, f. 138r, 1458. Fifteenth
century. Modena, Biblioteca Estense. Photo by DEA/DeAgostini/
Getty Images 101

4.3 The Grim Reaper with the latest in agricultural tools, from Buonamico
Buffalmacco, Triumph of Death, Pisa, Campo Santo, 1336–41, restored
fresco. Image by SaskiaS/Alamy Stock Photo 106

4.4 Villa d’Este, Tivoli, Italy, engraving from Palazzi di Roma de piu celebri
architetti (Palaces in Rome by the Most Famous Architects), by Pietro
Ferrerio, 1655. Photo by Icas94/De Agostini/Getty Images 112

4.5 Exotic fruits and vegetables, Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, Villa Farnesina
(formerly Chigi), Rome, 1518. Fresco by Raphael and his workshop. Photo
by David Silverman/Getty Images 115

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 ILLUSTRATIONS ix

5.1 Star anise (named anisus Philippinarum insularum), woodcut illustration

based on Garet’s information in Carolus Clusius, Rariorum plantarum historia
(History of Rare Plants, Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus, 1601: ccii). Image
courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 118

5.2 Mid-sixteenth-century colored drawing of “daphnoide” by Gherardo Cibo.

Image courtesy of Alamy 123

5.3 The saffron crocus in leaf and in flower. From Matthias de Lobel, Icones
stirpium (Images of Plants, 1591: 137). Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical
Garden 126

5.4 Exotic medicinal plant substances depicted in the mid-sixteenth-century

Flemish Libri Picturati. Detail. Libri Picturati A19, f. 25. Image courtesy of
Jagiellon Library, Krakow 131

5.5 Title page of the posthumous edition of Rembert Dodoens’ herbal by

Balthasar II Moretus (1644). Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden 135

6.1 Piero del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne (1470s). Photo courtesy of National
Gallery, London 138

6.2 Laurel: emblem 211 from Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber as published
by Joannes Thuilius (1621). Image courtesy of The National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC 141

6.3 Flores oculares, to be used, in accordance with the doctrine of signatures, to

cure eye diseases (Porta 1588: 135). Image courtesy of Williams Special
Collections, Monash University, Australia 142

6.4 The Scythian lamb or borometz, from Claude Duret’s Histoire admirable
des plantes (Marvelous History of Plants, 1605: 330). Image courtesy of
Wellcome Collection, London 143

6.5 Clytie Transformed into a Sunflower, c. 1688, Charles De La Fosse

(1636–1716). Commissioned by Louis XIV of France for cabinet du
couchant du grand Trianon, Versailles. Image by Trancrede, courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons 148

6.6 Flora’s Mallewagen (Flora’s Wagon of Fools), 1637. Attributed to Crispijn

van de Passe II, 1637, northern Netherlands. Image courtesy of
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 153

6.7 “Mandragora mas. Mandragore. Atropia Mandragora,” Abraham Bosse

(1602–76). Illustration of a Mandrake root depicting a humanoid root. From
Estampes pour servir à l’histoire des plantes (Reflections Serving as a History
of Plants), vol. 2. Plates by N. Robert, A. Bosse, and L. de Chastillon. Image
courtesy of Wellcome Collection, London 155

7.1 Rowland Lockey, after Holbein, Thomas More and Family, 1594 (detail)
showing the layout of the garden in the background. Victoria and Albert
Museum, London. Photo from V&A Images/Alamy Stock Photo 159

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 x ILLUSTRATIONS

7.2 Woodcut illustration from a contemporary garden manual of gardeners

training vines over an arbor “in arch manner.” From The Gardener’s
Labyrinth by Thomas Hyll, using the pseudonym Didymus Mountain, with
Henry Dethick and published in 1577. Photo from Universal History Archive/
Universal Images Group/Getty Images 160

7.3 Woodcut illustration from a contemporary garden manual of vines trained

into “a square forme” (Hyll 1577). Photo from Universal History Archive/
Universal Images Group/Getty Images 161

7.4 Auriculas from John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris,

1629. Image courtesy of Research Library, The Getty Research
Institute/archive.org. 169

7.5 Plan of the Reverend Stonehouse’s garden at Darfield in Yorkshire, 1640.

Magdalen College Library, MS No. 239, f. 40. By kind permission of the
President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford 171

7.6 Woodcut illustration of gardener planting flowers singly in beds (Hyll 1577).
Photo from Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty
Images 172

7.7 Cornelius Johnson, Arthur, Ist Baron Capel and his family, c. 1641, detail.
National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images 172

8.1 Botanical painting of Galanthus (snowdrop) on the right and a blue-flowering

bulb, probably Ipheion, on the left, with a botanist and a young man gathering
plants on a mountain top. Colored drawings of plants, copied from nature
in the Roman States, by Gherardo Cibo, c. 1564–84. Image from
Album/British Library/Alamy Stock Photo 179

8.2 Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Notable

Comments on the History of Plants, 1542). His three craftsmen—Albrecht
Meyer, Heinrich Füllmaurer, Rudolph Speckle—who between them painted
the subject from life, drew it in black ink on a wooden block, and carved
this as a woodblock for relief printing. Image courtesy of Wellcome
Collection, London 181

8.3 Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), Italian botanist, naturalist and physician,

late sixteenth century. Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty
Images 182

8.4 The Four Elements: Earth, Joachim Beuckelaer (1533–74), Flemish. Photo
by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images 186

8.5 Market Scene, 1569, Pieter Aertsen (1508–75). Photo by Fine Art
Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images 187

8.6 Vertumnus—Rudolf II, c. 1590, Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Rudolph II

(1552–1612), Holy Roman Emperor from 1576, as Vertumnus, ancient
Roman god of seasons who presided over gardens and orchards. From the
Stoklosters Slutt, Balsta, Sweden. Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty
Images 189

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 ILLUSTRATIONS xi

8.7 Allegory of Summer, 1593, Georg Flegel (1566–1638). Photo by Fine

Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images 191

8.8 Cherries and carnations, Giovanna Garzoni (1600–70), watercolor on

parchment. Galleria Palatina & Appartamenti Reali di Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
Photo © Raffaello Bencini/Bridgeman Images 193

8.9 The Pumpkin, Bartolomeo Bimbi, second half of the seventeenth century.
Image from The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo 194

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 SERIES PREFACE

The connectedness of humans to plants is the most fundamental of human relationships.

Plants are, and historically have been, sources of food, shelter, bedding, tools, medicine,
and, most importantly, the very air we breathe. Plants have inspired awe, a sense of well-
being, religious fervor, and acquisitiveness alike. They have been collected, propagated,
and mutated, as well as endangered or driven into extinction by human impacts such as
global warming, deforestation, fire suppression, and over-grazing. A Cultural History of
Plants traces the global dependence of human life and civilization on plants from antiquity
to the twenty-first century and comprises contributions by experts and scholars in a wide
range of fields, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, botany, classics, garden
history, history, literature, and environmental studies more broadly. The series consists
of six illustrated volumes, each devoted to an examination of plants as grounded in, and
shaping, the cultural experiences of a particular historical period. Each of the six volumes,
in turn, is structured in the same way, beginning with an introductory chapter that offers
a sweeping view of the cultural history of plants in the period in question, followed by
chapters on plants as staple foods, plants as luxury foods, trade and exploration, plant
technology and science, plants and medicine, plants in (popular) culture, plants as natural
ornaments, and the representation of plants. This cohesive structure offers readers the
opportunity both to explore a meaningful cross-section of humans’ uses of plants in a given
period and to trace a particular use—as in medicine, for example—through time from
volume to volume. The six volumes comprising A Cultural History of Plants are as follows:

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity (c. 10,000 bce–500 ce)

Volume 2: A Cultural History of Plants in the Post-Classical Era (500–1400)
Volume 3: A Cultural History of Plants in the Early Modern Era (1400–1650)
Volume 4: A Cultural History of Plants in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1650–
1800)
Volume 5: A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth Century (1800–1920)
Volume 6: A Cultural History of Plants in the Modern Era (1920–present).

By way of guidance to our readers, it should be noted that the plant names used in these
volumes accord with those in the fourth edition of Mabberley’s Plant-book (Cambridge
University Press, 2017). When they are discussed, individual plants are identified using
their common names and, at their first mention in each chapter, with their scientific
names: e.g. bay laurel (Laurus nobilis). As is recommended for general works such as this,
the authorities to whom the scientific names are attributed (e.g. Laurus nobilis L., where
L. identifies Linnaeus as the identifying authority) have been omitted.
Annette Giesecke and David J. Mabberley,
General Editors

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 EDITORS’ NOTE

For works originating in the Early Modern Period we have aimed, in compiling the
Bibliography, to cite original texts as well as translations. Several chapter authors had
already chosen to do the same.
Almost every printed book cited here that is no longer in copyright can be found
online, often in more than one copy. These digital copies are multiplying as we write, and
are increasingly easy to find. Hence the Bibliography and Notes do not ordinarily cite
online copies of printed texts, but only those few that are uniquely useful or unusually
hard to trace. Manuscripts (unless available in printed facsimile) are not included in the
Bibliography: instead, details are given in the text or, where necessary, in the Notes, and
references to online digital copies are added when possible. Readers looking for further
guidance to online copies of printed books and manuscripts could do worse than to
look up authors or titles on the Latin Vicipaedia (la.wikipedia.org), on which we have
systematically inserted links to online copies known to us of Early Modern texts cited in
this volume.
In quotations we have usually retained original spellings but we have often modernized
punctuation and capitalization. We have regularized through the volume the names of
Early Modern authors that are seen in several forms, choosing (for example) Matthias de
Lobel, Garcia de Orta, Carolus Clusius. We want to thank the chapter authors for their
complaisance in allowing us this editorial prerogative—and, much more important, for
the contribution that each of them has made to a wide-ranging survey in Early Modern
cultural history.
Andrew Dalby and Annette Giesecke

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9781474273435_txt_rev.indd 14 02-09-2021 19:27:14
 Introduction
“I am sorry to say that I do not recognise them”

ANDREW DALBY WITH ANNETTE GIESECKE

The Atlantic islands mark a frontier that scarcely a single living plant species had crossed
before the Early Modern Era, the age of the Columbian Exchange. Saint Helena, far
out in the south Atlantic, was isolated from east and west until its discovery by João da
Nova (1460–1509) in May 1502. Its first permanent inhabitant, Fernão Lopes, horribly
mutilated in punishment for having opposed the Portuguese reconquest of Goa in India,
withdrew to live alone on Saint Helena from 1515 until his death thirty years later. He
was a legend among the mariners who regularly called there to take on water, meat, and,
increasingly, fruit.
It was not consciously known that fresh plant foods were essential in a sailor’s diet, and
yet, wherever in this age of discovery ships first landed and seemed likely to continue to
land, written reports assiduously cataloged vegetables and fruit. Wherever the supply was
susceptible of improvement, it will, sure enough, become clear from either contemporary
reports or later evidence that new plants were introduced. In the case of Saint Helena
such reports are numerous. Fernão Lopes, though he was very rarely seen, benefited from
many discreet gifts of seeds and rooted plants.
A century later, in Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, Thomas
Herbert (1606–82) listed the well-chosen greens that could be harvested on Saint Helena
by “a willing hand, directed by an ingenious eye: … wood-sorrell, three-leav’d-grasse,
basil, parsly, mints, spinage, fennel, annys, radish, mustard-seed, tobacco.” These and
others, once introduced, had survived in the wild. Sadly, Herbert continued, it was not
so with orchard fruits. The small Portuguese settlement of the late sixteenth century, in
whose orchard the trees planted in the time of Fernão Lopes had continued to thrive, had
since been “delapidated” by the “churlish” English and Dutch. The “lemmons, orenges,
pomgranads, pomcitrons, figgs, dates, etc.” were scarcely more than a memory. A single
lemon tree remained at the head of what was still known (and is still known today) as
Lemon Valley (Herbert 1638: 354).
Herbert, an ingenious eyewitness, coolly lifted his lists of the herbs and lost fruits of
Saint Helena from the report of Thomas Cavendish’s circumnavigation, though making
no mention of the “pompions and melons,” nor indeed of the “turkies,” that Cavendish

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 2 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

FIGURE 0.1 “View of St Helena.” Mid-coast, an orchard flourishes around the little
Portuguese church. Hand-colored engraving, copy c. 1596 (by Baptista Van Doetichum) from
voyages of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611), Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Photo from
HuskyBot/Wikimedia Commons.

found in 1588 (Hakluyt 1598–1600: 3:824). Those pumpkins and turkeys had been
introduced, we should notice, from the New World.
Instead of the Cavendish narrative Herbert might have plagiarized the report of Duarte
Lopez’s mission to the kingdom of the Congo. On his way to that African realm Lopez
visited Saint Helena in 1578, tasting “fagiuoli” (most likely New World haricot beans,
Phaseolus vulgaris) and admiring the native ebony trees (Trochetiopsis spp., now almost
extinct), which were used for necessary repairs to visiting vessels (Pigafetta 1591: 3).
Again, Herbert might have chosen as his source the narrative of John Lancaster’s piratical
voyage. Lancaster’s crew had rested on Saint Helena for nineteen days in March 1593,
making judicious use of the “very holesome and excellent good greene figs, orenges, and
lemons very faire” (Hakluyt 1598–1600: 2:108).
Seven months later, marooned for twenty-nine days on Mona, a small and almost
deserted island between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, where there were not enough
pumpkins and not much else at all in the garden of the sole indigenous inhabitant,
Lancaster’s surviving companions could find no better refreshment than “the stalkes
of purselaine boyled in water.” This reliable and health-giving species, often uprooted
as a weed, is one of the very few useful plants that was found in both the Old and
New Worlds. Columbus himself had noticed “verdolagas muchas,” a lot of purslane
(Portulaca oleracea), on first reaching the coast of Cuba on October 28, 1492

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 INTRODUCTION 3

(Navarrete 1858: 192–3); in 1606 Samuel Champlain would find it good to eat en
salade during a French exploration of the Massachusetts coast (1613: 77). By what
agency purslane had been introduced to the North American continent is unknown
(Byrne and McAndrews 1985).

THEMES
This is the era in which, for the first time, all other continental cultural zones were in
contact with Europe. If Australia was largely an exception, it still finds its place in the
index to this volume. The focus, however, in every chapter, is on Europe and to a greater
or lesser extent on the contacts of Europeans with other continents and other cultures.
The general editors of this cultural history surely foresaw that a first chapter on
staple foods would, by its nature, introduce general issues of climate and population,
farming and marketing, food and famine. Without such a foundation cultural history
would not, after all, exist.1 Malcolm Thick’s Chapter 1 has a certain statistical emphasis,
from which it stands out—the fact might otherwise be overlooked—that too little is
known about what plants, and how many of them, people grew in their gardens for their
own use and for local exchange. At my nearest weekly market, in the depths of a highly
bureaucratic country that forms part of a tightly regulated pluri-national economy, there
is a hall where people sell their own produce to their neighbors freely, with no record
and no statistics. The importance of food production in town and country gardens
in sixteenth-century Europe, likewise largely unrecorded, is rightly emphasized in this
chapter. So is the growth of market gardens within easy reach of expanding cities and
their busy markets. The first Europeans who observed the markets of Tenochtitlán,
though impressed by their size, took their existence as perfectly natural.
Human interaction with plants is a story of cultural continuity mixed with
inventiveness and innovation. These, certainly, are the running themes of Chapter 1. It
is, after all, not so very safe for a community to abandon a traditional staple foodstuff in
favor of one that is locally untried. In what terrain will it flourish? What methods, what
timetable of propagation, tending. and harvesting will yield reliable production? Will it
continue to thrive every year? Will it fill its intended nutritional place in the long term?
These are hard questions.
Continuity would be the theme, it might be thought, in Jill Francis’ Chapter 7 on plants
as natural ornament. Yet there was change. John Gerard (c. 1545–1612), the Elizabethan
author of The Herball, observed of plants for the garden, “the delight is great, but the
use greater, and joined often with necessitie” (1597: Epistle Dedicatorie). “Delight”—
the use of plants as ornament—increased in importance in this period. John Parkinson,
thirty years after Gerard, was perhaps affirming for the first time that “beautifull flower
plants” might be included in the garden, to “set forth a Garden of all the chiefest for
choyce, and the fairest for shew” (1629: Epistle). In this context edible fruits were an
element of continuity. They were by definition useful and were agreed on all sides to
be decorative. In the orchard “profit and pleasure meet and imbrace each other,” wrote
Ralph Austen (1653: 35–6). John Oglander, cited in Chapter 7, found this double benefit
in growing raspberries: they, too, make a pleasant show. It was potentially the same with
new, exotic fruits, and this was why Costanzo Felici (1525–85) grew tomatoes (Solanum
lycopersicum), which were not enthusiastically eaten in sixteenth-century Europe, but
were eye-catching. John Parkinson (1567–1650) appreciated them for the same reason:
“Although the beautie of this plant consisteth not in the flower, but fruit, yet give me

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 4 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

leave to insert it” among garden flowers, he begged the reader, “lest otherwise it have no
place” (1629: 379; further quoted in Chapter 2).
Having listed landscape features, structures, and statuary as three potential decorative
elements in gardens, Francis notes a paradox. Of all of them it is the plants that are the
most changeable and for the historian, therefore, the most elusive. Francis finds sources,
nonetheless, little known or unknown until now, in the form of plant lists and layout
plans by enthusiastic English gardeners. Rapid change as implied in Sir Robert Sidney’s
letter to his estate manager at Penshurst (“The little garden … may goe for this year: if I
do not like it, I can alter it the next,” more fully quoted in Chapter 7) was all the more
necessary with the introduction of new exotics. Gardeners did not know how to deal with
them, unless, following the example of Parkinson and others, with each new plant they
were prepared to experiment, observe, and record.
Continuities, again, are identified and discussed by Florike Egmond in Chapter 5, on
plants and medicine. In the Early Modern period, as in ancient and medieval times, no
real boundary was recognized between food and medicine. Plants, more or less edible,
were still the chief ingredients of medicinal preparations. Graeco-Roman humoral theory,
which positioned every plant on scales of hot/cold and dry/wet, was unquestioned. Newly
discovered plants were naturally evaluated on these scales: chillies, for example, were
“hot and dry almost to the fourth degree” (Monardes 1574: f. 25r).
These continuities serve as reminders not to accept as universal the themes of
rediscovery and new discovery that variously emerge in Chapter 5 and throughout the
volume. But it is true that the European Renaissance, a revolution inspired by a fresh
reading of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, brought wholesale renewal in many
fields, and not least in medicinal botany. Major classical sources, in this as in other
scientific subjects, had remained prominent in medieval scholarship, supplemented as
they were by Arabic writings, the product of an earlier renaissance. Greek and Arabic had
been translated into Latin, the universal language of academic study in medieval Europe.
These materials, Pliny’s Latin Natural History, the Greek Materia medica of Dioscorides,
and the prolific writings of Galen, the Arabic Canon or medical encyclopedia of Avicenna,
and others, were available in printed Latin editions by the early sixteenth century. They
remained standard textbooks, and were now cheap enough for students and other
enquirers to acquire copies for themselves. It became possible as never before to compare
and question. The rediscovery of forgotten authors such as Theophrastos on botany and
Columella on farming, the publishing of the original Greek texts of Dioscorides and
Galen (which had often been traduced in medieval Latin), alongside rapidly multiplying
reports of wholly new material from exploration, encouraged the process of confronting
old certainties and finding new systems.
Chapter 5 notes a vast increase in the number of documented plants, requiring and
encouraging the gradual establishment of patterns in their description, depiction, naming,
and classification. As is evident from Andrew Dalby’s Chapter 2 and David Marsh’s
Chapter 3, classical geography, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly interpreted,
encouraged the great explorations, which were eventually to demonstrate how narrowly
limited was the geographical region that the Greeks and Romans could really claim to
know.
Classical perspectives are central to the developments in art and culture discussed by
Ingrid D. Rowland in Chapter 4, Luke Morgan and Elizabeth Hyde in Chapter 6, Gillian
Riley in Chapter 8, as seen not least in the villa architecture set out by Vitruvius, the
associated well-planned horticulture and agriculture admired by Pliny the Younger and

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 INTRODUCTION 5

many another Roman author, and the respectful and imaginative Renaissance recreations
of such settings designed by Palladio and his contemporaries.
In these chapters, in the diversions of what may be called natural philosophy, we are
taken some way beyond any scientific or technical discipline recognized today. Xerxes,
with whom Chapter 4 opens, makes an apposite prelude: the Persian emperor, forever
famed for his failure to conquer Greece, was, like the Indian monarch Aśoka and others
both ancient and Early Modern, a lover of plane trees. Protagonist of Aeschylus’ Persians
(first performed 472 bce, the only classical tragedy not taken from Greek mythology,
inspiration for the whole sub-genre of neoclassical plays and operas that drew on Oriental
themes) Xerxes was also the eponymous hero of the opera Xersé, whose libretto, featuring
his song to the plane tree “Ombra mai fu”, is best known in Händel’s later reworking.
Early Modern approaches to the meaning of plants were multiple. Symbolism inspired
the typically Renaissance genre of emblem books, by Andreas Alciatus (1531), Joachim
Camerarius (1590), and others. Resemblances were basic to the theory of signatures,
employed by Paracelsus and Giambattista della Porta, whose Phytognomonica (Porta
1588) explained how the appearance of plants signified their utility; and Foucault in
Les Mots et les choses (1966; translated 1970) showed that ramifications of the doctrine
of signatures, far from constituting a minor diversion, pervaded Renaissance thought.
Theories of sympathy and antipathy, deriving from classical philosophy, had influenced
medieval farming and remained current in the sixteenth century, as in Gerolamo
Cardano’s De Subtilitate (1550): “Plants have hatreds between themselves … the olive
and vine hate the cabbage.” Renewed attention was given to the myths of metamorphosis
exemplified in favorite classical literature. A new stage of metamorphosis may be found in
the artificial plants imagined in Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499;
Godwin 1999) and in the fictional pantagruelion of Rabelais. These examples from
Chapter 6 are capped in the last section of Chapter 4, where boundaries are crossed again
in the fictional science of Athanasius Kircher (1602–80): his botanical alchemy allowed
him to regenerate a plant from its own ashes. Others who tried the experiment somehow
failed to reproduce the result.
It must be emphasized that while the chapters of this volume focus on medicinal,
nutritional, symbolic, ritual, spiritual, and ornamental uses of plants by the cultures of
Europe, it is the case that plants played a critically important role both within cultural
groups with which Europeans established contact in the Early Modern period and those
with which they did not. For example, the cultural centrality of plants was manifest in the
Silk Road kingdoms of Safavid Persia (modern Iran) and Ming China, which experienced
an extraordinary flowering of the arts and sciences in this period and which had
significant contact with each other. While flowers and plant imagery abounded in Persian
literature and the visual arts, the signature plant of Persia was, and still is, the rose, its
primacy reflected in the fact that the Persian word for “rose” (gul) is also the generic word
for “flower.” Persian agricultural and horticultural manuals attest to the cultivation of
numerous rose varieties. The 1515/16 Irshād al zirā ‘a (Guidance on Agriculture) of Qāsem
Abūnaṣrī Heravī deals with seventy-nine plant species, among them cereals, vegetables,
fruit trees, ornamental trees, flowers, and medicinal plants, as well as the cultivars of these
species known to the author. He recorded “over 100 varieties of grapes, approximately
58 varieties of ḵarboza (a kind of melon), some 33 varieties of apricot, 19 varieties of
wheat and apple, 14 varieties of kadū (pumpkin, squash) and barley, 11 varieties of millet,
and 6 varieties of watermelon” (Aʿlam 1989); the rose cultivars known to him included
many red varieties as well as “musk,” “dappled,” “five-petaled,” and “Baghdad” roses

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 6 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

(Subtelny 2007). The fragrant, pink Damask or “Persian” rose (Rosa x damascena)—
having sprung, according to legend, from the sweat of the prophet Muhammad’s brow as
he made his ascent to God’s throne—was, and still is, used to make Persia’s famed rose
water and rose oil, which was exported not only to Europe but also to China, India, and
Egypt. A symbol of purity and beauty, the rose, together with its extracts, found myriad
medicinal applications and, of course, it was extensively cultivated for “commercial” use
and as a feature of private gardens.
Among the many varieties of rose cultivated in Persia, it was the fragrant “hundred-
petalled” rose (Rosa x centifolia), which held pride of place both economically and
culturally (Subtelny 2007). It is no coincidence that this valuable rose appears to have
been introduced into Europe via Holland by Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), the most
powerful king of Persia’s resplendent Safavid Dynasty (Mabberley 2017). In an effort to
elevate Persia to its former glory and to stimulate its economy, Shah ‘Abbas aggressively
courted foreign traders, actively sought commercial ties with European nations, India,
and other Silk Road kingdoms, and he made Isfahan his seat of government, transforming
it into a cosmopolitan garden city at the heart of which lies the Naqsh-e Jahan Maidan
(Image of the World Square), itself surrounded by mosques, markets, palaces, a variety of

FIGURE 0.2 Garden scene and scrolling vegetal ornament, decorative ceramic tile, reputedly
from a palace along the Chahar Bagh Avenue, Isfahan, Iran. First quarter of the seventeenth
century, Isfahan. Rogers Fund, 1903, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image
courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum.

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 INTRODUCTION 7

public buildings, and a profusion of gardens that, as terrestrial paradises, at once reflected
the gardens of the Quranic afterlife and the Shah’s position of power in the region
(Gharipour 2013; Hobhouse 2004; Kuykendall 2019; Ruggles 2008; Walcher 1997).
Buildings that Shah ‘Abbas constructed were adorned with foliate and floral decoration
in tile and painting, including the lotus and split-palmette arabesque, patterns of great
antiquity in Iran but transformed and reinvigorated at the hands of contemporary artisans
(Canby 2009; see also Chapter 7 of Volume 2 in this series). These patterns, together with
increasingly realistic depictions of flowers and other plants, can be found also on carpets,
brocades, and other textiles as well as on tiles and in painted “miniatures” produced in
Isfahan’s workshops. Trade with Europe, India, and China ensured that Persian arts and
artifacts were inevitably subject to diverse outside influences—and a taste for these—
continuing a trend already centuries old; thus it came to pass that the Shah brought three
hundred Chinese potters, together with their families, settling them near Isfahan so as to
capitalize on and satisfy the desire for Chinese ceramics, which played a key role in the
transmission and assimilation of floral motifs along the Silk Roads and beyond (Finlay
2010: 6, 245).
If the rose held pride of place in Persia, it was the peony that was queen among
flowers in China both in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and earlier (Goody 1993:
356–7; Rawson 1984). Indeed, the prose master Ouang Xiu (1007–72) reported in his
Luoyang mudan ji (An Account of the Tree Peonies of Luoyang) being told of some
ninety cultivars and proceeded to list, rank, and describe (in terms of origin, color, and
distinguishing characteristics) some thirty varieties that he considered most famous: Yao
Yellows, Wei Flowers, Houan Fine Petals, Waistband Reds, Niu-Family Yellows, Wading
Creek Deep Reds, and so forth (Hargett 2020: 136–8). In Ming Dynasty China, there
were, of course, still more. Other flowers that garnered especial praise in the literature
of the period were numerous and included the apricot, crabapple, pomegranate, plum,
chrysanthemum, lotus, cassia, orchid, gardenia, magnolia, and rose. What flowers and
plants were planted in Ming gardens, and to what effect, must be gleaned from texts
like poems, descriptions of specific gardens and their notable features, and agronomic
works, as well as from images, such as woodblock prints and paintings, since no Ming
garden survives in its original state, all of them having been reconstructed (Hardie 2004).
Agronomic literature, incidentally, flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
with some texts offering practical information specifically for the small landowner and
other works aimed at the elite (Clunas 1996: 78). Texts and images also shed light on the
appreciation of plants in contexts apart from that of the garden (Hardie and Campbell
2020: 93–177). In the symbolic realm, for example, bamboo suggested integrity, the
peony wealth, the orchid modesty (or its opposite), and the pine constancy. Individual
plants might be displayed in pots either outside or indoors; indeed, the sixteenth century
witnessed a growing fashion for potted plants and for dwarfing trees to create portable,
miniaturized pan zai (bonsai) landscapes (Clunas 1996: 100). Cut flowers, artfully
displayed, constituted a particularly important aspect of the ornamental use of plants.
In his Pinghua pu (A Treatise of Vase Flowers), Zhang Qiande (1577–1643) asserted
that “among the things of refined living, flower arrangement is the most difficult” and
proceeded to offer detailed instruction on the selection of the most apposite specimens,
the best type of vase, and the most suitable water:
In picking flowers, it is necessary to select first the stem. The stem may be luxuriant
above and slender below. It may be taller on the left and shorter on the right, or vice

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 8 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

FIGURE 0.3 “Garden Flowers.” A series of sixteen realistic paintings of spring flowers,
serving as botanical specimens as well as reminders of the brevity of life, beauty, and material
existence. Chinese, c. 1540, after Chen Chun (1483–1544). Gift of Douglas Dillon, 1986,
The Metropolitan Museum, New York. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum.

versa. It may have two branches cross-crossing each other, gnarled and crooked in
shape. It may have a stout vigorous stalk in the center, sparse atop and fence-like
below, covering the mouth of the vase. Whether ascending or hanging, tall or low,
sparse or dense, and oblique or upright, the branches that have a natural beauty must
show the appealing features of cut flowers as depicted by the painter. Straight branches
and windblown flowers are not suitable for refined arrangement ….
(Li 2020: 154–5)
As in Safavid Persia, plants were greatly appreciated for their synaesthetic appeal:
their visual beauty; their heady, evocative scents—wintersweet (Chimonanthus
praecox) and apricot (Prunus mume) of late winter and early spring, lotus of summer,
and osmanthus of fall; their taste, if edible; and their “sounds,” such as the rustle of
windblown bamboo and the patter of raindrops on the banana’s broad leaves (Hardie
and Campbell 2020: 95). In the case of the gardens of the aristocracy, the productive
capacity of plants therein was also of significance, as productive gardens were a
means of self-representation, bearing proof of the owners’ morality and humble self-
sufficiency, though as in Renaissance Italy, orchard fruit (which included mulberries
for silk production) and an emphasis on gardens’ economic yield or value became less
prominent over time, giving way to rare and exotic imported specimens that activated
the gardens’ potential as arenas of social competition in the realms of wealth, display,
and taste. Such elite gardens became destinations both for local visitors and, like the
gardens of Isfahan, of European travelers who remarked upon their splendor: upon
his visit, in the year 1598, to the Duke of Weiguo’s garden in the city of Nanjing, the

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 INTRODUCTION 9

Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, who steeped himself in Chinese culture, declared it
to be “il più bello de questa città” (the most beautiful in the city) (Clunas 1996: 95 and
49ff. passim).

THE SPIRIT OF ENQUIRY AND ITS TEXTUAL

REPRESENTATION
Returning now to a more detailed discussion of this volume’s themes, if the intellectual
effect of the European Renaissance can be summed up briefly, the summary will highlight
the asking of new questions and the finding of new answers on any and all subjects.
There is no reason for surprise that Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), secretary to six
fifteenth-century popes, appears in this volume for two entirely different activities: in
Chapter 4 for his rediscovery in 1517 of the long-lost classical Latin agricultural writers,
the Scriptores de re rustica, in a manuscript at St. Gall, one of several critically important
finds made during his frequent absences from the papal court, and in Chapter 2 for his
narrative of the adventurous Asian travels of Nicolò de’ Conti (c. 1395–1469) as they
were reported to pope Eugenius IV. Long after the death of all three, this narrative was
published under the title India recognita, “India explored afresh,” on February 15, 1492,
early in the same year in which Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus set out in their
quests for an ocean route to India.
There is no reason to be surprised that it was the playwright Christopher Marlowe,
Master of Arts, in his Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus (1604: see
Chapter 3) who, in or about 1592, expressed the obsession of the great botanical scientists
of the sixteenth century as simply and cogently as they had ever expressed it themselves.
Doctor Faustus made the apparently reasonable demand for a book “wherein I might
see all plants, herbs, and trees, that grow upon the earth.” All he required, it would
seem, was the never-quite-published omnibus: Dodoens’ herbal, Mattioli’s Dioscorides,
Clusius’ Exoticorum libri decem, and the Mexican plants of Hernández together with
illustrations from Cassiano dal Pozzo’s paper museum and the synonyms of Bauhin’s
Phytopinax. In the very next year Walter Raleigh (1552/4–1618), exploring the delta of
the Orinoco in his search for the gold of Guiana, showed that it would never be quite so
easy: “On the banks of these rivers were divers sorts of fruits good to eat, flowers and
trees of such variety, as were sufficient to make tenne volumes of herbals” (in Hakluyt
1598–1600: 3:645).
It is unremarkable that François Rabelais, with his Montpellier medical training and
unbounded imagination, should place alongside his fantastic invented herb pantagruelion
a survey of plant nomenclature that is, in sixteenth-century terms, both serious and up-
to-date (see Chapter 6). We should find it natural, too, that parallel descriptions of the
wonderfully inventive gardens at the Villa Medicea di Castello are owed to four extremely
different authors: Giorgio Vasari, practicing architect and biographer of artists and
architects; Michel de Montaigne, moral philosopher in his own uncompromising style;
Pierre Belon, gardener, apothecary, and rediscoverer of the ancient pharmacopoeia; and
Carolus Clusius, translator of Belon and many others, gatekeeper of sixteenth-century
botanical science.2 Vasari and Montaigne are both quoted in Chapter 6 on the remarkable
holm oak (Quercus ilex) in these gardens; Vasari and Belon will be quoted later in this
introduction on its citrus groves.
“Changes in the media,” as Florike Egmond rightly calls them (Chapter 5), had a vast
effect on the distribution of knowledge. General literature forms part of this information

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 10 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

revolution of the late fifteenth and sixteenth century, but a more striking result of the
proliferation of published texts was the emergence of new genres.

EXPLORATION
The Early Modern book-trade found an eager market for reports of exploration, difficult
though it often is to fit them into the straitjackets of literary genre and bibliographical
description. Their protagonists were sailors or traders, not authors. Informally written
in various languages, rapidly translated into several others, destined to be studied by
future travelers and their patrons, these reports emphasize topics critical to that audience:
geography, including practical details of land and sea travel; natural products, animal,
mineral, and vegetable. Plants and their habitat are prominent under both rubrics.
The demand for narratives of exploration, and the supply of them, were nourished
by rivalry among Spanish and Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English (not to mention
Italians and Catalans, Basques and Bretons, Chinese and Arabs). It was the competition
among the first five that directly or indirectly brought new information into the public
domain. An anonymous participant in the warlike English expedition to the Azores in
1592, led by Walter Raleigh and others, says this plainly in his report. The English capture
of the great ship Madre de Dios and its rich cargo, thanks to “Gods great favor towards
our nation,” had “discovered those secret trades and Indian riches, which hitherto lay
strangely hidden and cunningly concealed from us,” and these riches are listed at length:
“… The spices were pepper, cloves, maces, nutmegs, cinamom, greene ginger: the drugs
were benjamim [benzoin], frankincense, galingale, mirabolans, aloes zocotrina, camphire
[camphor]” and miscellaneous wares included “… coco-nuts, hides, eben-wood [ebony]
as blacke as jet, bedsteds of the same, cloth of the rindes of trees very strange for the
matter and artificiall in workemanship.” This report was published, a few years after
the event, in the expanded edition of Richard Hakluyt’s great collection The Principal
Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by sea or
over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the
compasse of these 1600 yeres (1598–1600: 2:ii:198).
Hakluyt (1553–1616), a Londoner with roots in Herefordshire, spent much of his life
finding, translating, and editing writings on exploration. He frequently lectured on the
opportunities they offered, though he himself scarcely traveled further than Paris. In this,
as in some other biographical details, he closely resembled the Venetian Giovanni Battista
Ramusio (1485–1557), editor of the much-reprinted Navigationi et viaggi (1550–9),
which, like Hakluyt’s work, drew on previously unpublished narratives as well as earlier
publications.
Among preceding and less ambitious collections there is the little book on recent
discoveries compiled by Fracanzano Montalboddo in 1507, Paesi novamente retrovati
et novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino (Newly Discovered Lands and the New
World of Amerigo Vespucci of Florence). Early separately published narratives, alongside
Poggio Bracciolini’s India recognita mentioned above, include Ludovico di Varthema’s
Itinerario (1510) and Maximilianus Transylvanus’ De Moluccis insulis (On the Molucca
Islands, 1523), the latter being a partial report of the Magellan circumnavigation. Antonio
Pigafetta’s fuller report of the same voyage circulated in manuscript (see Robertson 1906)
until a version of it appeared in Ramusio’s collection. These three sources are all quoted
in Chapter 2 for their new information about the Oriental spices that Europeans had been
so anxious to find.

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 INTRODUCTION 11

The sources for the explorations of Christopher Columbus are much more complex
than those for Magellan. The printed report by Columbus to the Catholic monarchs was
a brief summary, but contemporary readers had only this, along with a few chapters of
Montalboddo’s Paesi novamente retrovati, and, most important, the opening section of
Peter Martyr ab Angleria’s De orbe novo decades (Histories of the New World), written in
Spain and based on first-hand accounts, including those of “that great discoverer of vast
regions, Christopher Columbus” (MacNutt 1912: 1:207).3
The manuscript logbook of the explorer’s first voyage, now lost, was available to
Fernando Colón (Ferdinando Colombo), who drew on it for his biography of his father,
published only in Italian translation and not until after Fernando’s death (Ulloa 1571).
The logbook was also available to Bartolomé de Las Casas, but his extensive transcription
of it was not published until the nineteenth century (Navarrete 1858). Even when read
through these intermediaries the logbook fully demonstrates how closely Columbus
attended to plants, their discovery, identification, cultivation, and transplanting. It shows
how complex was the relation between his aims, observations, private records, and public
reports. It reveals his four imperatives: spice plants, gold, land for colonization, and—
selected from any or all of these three—something profitable to report to the Catholic
monarchs.
His visit to Chios (Ulloa 1571: f. 9), source of the mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) from
which his native Genoa drew a steady profit, had supplied him with a fine example of how
the sources of exotic plant products were guarded and insights as to how the monopolies
might be broken. Hence, in his published report to his patrons after the first Atlantic
voyage, he promised
spices and cotton at once, as much as their Highnesses will order to be shipped, and as
much as they will order to be shipped of mastic, which till now has never been found
except in Greece, in the island of Chios, and the Seignory [of Genoa] sells it for what it
likes; and aloeswood [Aquilaria malaccensis] as much as they will order to be shipped.
(Navarrete 1858: 320)
The promises were made with fingers crossed, because although Columbus thought he
had recognized the aromas of aloeswood and mastic in the West Indies, no one had tried
to extract these spices from the allegedly aromatic trees. No one had even made a serious
identification. Using a logbook entry of late October 1492 Fernando Colón tells the story
of the felling of firewood which was “found to be of the mastic tree, which abounds
throughout that country. The leaves and fruit of this tree resemble those of the lentiscus,
but it is a much bigger tree” (Ulloa 1571: f. 58). The Chios mastic tree, Pistacia lentiscus
“Chia,” is indeed bigger than the lentisk—but no more is ever heard of mastic trees in the
New World. Columbus was equally keen to find cinnamon, one of the most expensive
spices in medieval Europe, originating as it did in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. In this
case the tree that he thought to be cinnamon, Canella winterana (canella bark), was
convincing enough to be taken into cultivation.4
Merchants and explorers of this period had in fact a simple method for identifying
potential sources of the aromatics that interested them so much. The method had
already been used in a different context forty years earlier, in 1454, when the Venetian
adventurer Alvise Cadamosto (1432–88) visited Prince Henry the Navigator: “They came
to our galleys, by order of the Prince, with some samples of sugar of the Isle of Madeira,
and dragon’s blood [resin of Dracaena draco], and other products of the new islands.”
Cadamosto, thus encouraged by the Prince to make the voyage to Madeira, had continued

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 12 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

from there to explore the West African coast (Montalboddo 1507: sig. a iii). Columbus
himself knew the method perfectly well. According to his logbook for November 2,
1492 the party that he sent out to explore the interior of Cuba was given muestras de
especería (samples of spices) to show to the inhabitants. The latter were understood to
have confirmed that these spices were to be found in Cuba (Navarrete 1858: 198; see
Chapter 5). In such exchanges, misinterpretations were natural.
Columbus did better when not led astray by the sample method or by his own wish
for a positive answer. His identifications could be accurate. At Bariay Bay in Cuba on
October 28 he correctly recognized in the same glance verdolagas, purslane, one of the
rare truly cosmopolitan species, and bledos (Navarrete 1858: 192–3): the latter was
not precisely the blite (Blitum bonus-henricus) that was familiar to him as a European
potherb but one of its relatives that were found in Cuba, perhaps Amaranthus crassipes,
or A. minimus (known only from there). Boldly he chose the term panizo (millet) for the
maize that differed so strongly from any cereal he had ever seen: a justifiable and natural
comparison, for millet as a cereal grain, a “disappearing staple” in western Europe by
the sixteenth century, was still locally familiar in Columbus’ native Italy (see Chapter
1). He immediately saw the resemblance between the Vigna beans of the Old World and
the Phaseolus of the New, which were to be enthusiastically described for good reason
by a series of sixteenth-century authors and were eventually to drive their rivals out of
cultivation in most of Europe (Clusius 1605: 335–7; Piergiovanni and Lioi 2010).
Beyond such useful approximations Columbus was able to admit ignorance and knew
what to do next: “I am sorry to say that I do not recognise them,” he wrote on October
19, 1492 of the plants he saw at Crooked Island, and “I am bringing back specimens”
of fruit trees and herbs (Navarrete 1858: 186, 188; fuller quotations in Chapter 3). His
frequent mistake, which any reader conscious of his overall achievement and aware
of his fourth and most pressing imperative can easily forgive, was to overestimate the
value of nearly everything he saw. Each successive island was “very fertile,” every kind
of fruit was “certainly precious.” Not quite convinced, by contrast, of the value of the
tobacco (Nicotiana rustica, not N. tabacum) that he saw in use on October 15, 1492, on
this subject he contented himself with neutral observation: “He was carrying … dried
leaves which they must appreciate highly since they have already given me some as a
present” (Navarrete 1858: 180). His son, Fernando Colón (1488–1539), alluding to the
same incident and reading the same logbook, describes “dried leaves which they value
highly as being aromatic and healthy” (Ulloa 1571: f. 54v). During the sixteenth century
these puzzling leaves, naturalized in many parts of Europe, found a significant place
in Old World culture, for better or worse. “Indian Henbane, or Tabacco,” according
to Parkinson, was “an excellent helpe and remedy for divers diseases, if it were rightly
ordered and applied, but the continuall abuse thereof in so many, doth almost abolish all
good use in any” (1629: 363–4).
Since Columbus was looking for spices above all, he was immediately interested by the
chilli, a West Indian condiment quite different from any previously known in Europe. In
Hispaniola, he noted on January 15, 1493, there was plenty of “aji, which is their pepper
and worth more to them than pepper. They never eat without it, and they find it very
healthy. Fifty caravels could be loaded with it every year in this island of Hispaniola”
(Navarrete 1858: 286). Chillies were no doubt the very “spices” that he promised to
the Catholic monarchs to ship home in quantity (above). There is no evidence that he
eventually did this, but he certainly took some chillies home with him. In a report of 1494,
he mentions “axí, which we call pepper, of which I brought some to your Highnesses

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 INTRODUCTION 13

from my previous voyage. There is as much of it here as your Highnesses will require:
they sow it and grow it in gardens” (Rumeu de Armas 1989: no. 2).

DISCOVERY AND REDISCOVERY

Thomas Cavendish’s circumnavigation of 1586–8 has already been mentioned. Cavendish
himself appears again at the beginning of Chapter 5, for he was present at the meeting in
London on July 28, 1589 at which star anise (Illicium verum) made its first appearance in
Europe. He was still only twenty-eight years old, and died at thirty-one in the course of a
second attempted circumnavigation.
The star anise first seen in London in 1589, soon thereafter brought to the attention
of European scholars in general, was nothing new in its native region. A medieval
medicinal and culinary spice of southernmost China and the northern edge of Vietnam,
it is probably native to the province of Guangxi, though whether a wild population exists
there or anywhere is uncertain. It had been known to the Chinese who made the long
journey to the southern provinces as early as the twelfth century (Hargett 2010: 108),
but only in the late sixteenth century did it become known generally: it was listed in 1596
in the standard (northern) Chinese pharmacopoeia, Li Shizhen’s Bencao gangmu, five
years before its description and illustration by Carolus Clusius in his Rariorum plantarum
historia of 1601 (Chapter 5).
It can be compared with the plants first reported to Europe by Columbus and those
who came after him. The five cultivated Capsicum species (chillies) of the West Indies,
Mexico, and northern and central South America had all been locally grown and prized.
Some hybrids had already developed (this is evident from the first printed illustrations),
a clear sign of more-than-local horticulture. Tomatoes had been transmitted from Peru
to Mexico, where cultivars were beginning to be selected. Fruit of the central American
stands of Theobroma cacao, the precious cacao beans, had already for centuries been
traded northwards to Mexico (where Europeans first saw them) and as far as Utah. But
it was after 1492, and largely in the course of the sixteenth century, that these and many
other valuable plants of the New World made their way to Africa, Europe, southern Asia,
and the East Indies. During the same period a great number of Old World plants made
their way westwards, a major constituent of the Columbian Exchange (Crosby 1972).
Whether they are to be counted as discoveries or rediscoveries, plants that became
newly known to Europeans in the Early Modern period jostled for inclusion among
collections of images and descriptions. They wait to be noticed, rare intruders among the
crowd of habitués, if manuscripts and paintings embellished with botanical miniatures as
a form of the late medieval grotesque are studied: not yet in the Hours of Katherina van
Kleef, in the 1440s (Chapter 8), but definitely in the Grandes heures d’Anne de Bretagne
painted by Jean Bourdichon in 1508 in which a bitter orange, at that date rare in northern
Europe, finds a place alongside what are surely haricot beans newly transplanted from
the New World (ff. 168r, 194r; Bilimoff 2015: 148–53). A decade later three pods
of haricot beans and three unmistakable cobs of maize (Zea mays) are joined by three
different kinds of New World pumpkins (Cucurbita spp.) and no fewer than four sorts
of citrus among the swathes of more familiar plants in the frescoes of Agostino Chigi’s
villa, painted by Giovanni da Udine in 1518 (nos 69, 75–8, 92–5, 160 in the list at
hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/udine/). A tomato almost bursting with juice reclines among
the caterpillars in the Mira calligraphiae monumenta embellished around 1590 by Joris
Hoefnagel (f. 42; Hendrix and Vignau-Wilberg 1992: 134).

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 14 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

A study of manuscript herbals of the sixteenth century shows that artists were beginning
to reject schematic and stylized representation and moving toward direct observation of
plants and thus toward a new naturalism of which the Libri picturati (Chapter 5) are a
striking example. It was hard for printed images to reach the level of accuracy achieved
by skilled botanical painters, but the scale of improvement, even in printed work, is
seen when herbal incunabula, such as the Herbarium Apulei Platonici of about 1481, are
compared with Giovanni Battista Ferrari’s lavish Hesperides, devoted entirely to citrus
fruits (1646), or with the princely Hortus Eystettensis, the work of Basilius Besler financed
by his patron Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen of Eichstätt (1613; Chapter
8). A true landmark, less than halfway through this long period, is the work of Leonhart
Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (1542): a landmark not only for its
images (cleanly drawn and fastidiously presented, without fuss or frame, as if, for the first
time, the only imperative is visual accuracy) but also for the generous acknowledgment,
in the form of fine portraits on the last page, of the three men who made the images,
Heinrich Füllmaurer (1497–c. 1547), Albrecht Meyer, and (the engraver) Veit Rudolf
Speckle (d. 1550).
The range of printed books about plants, developing out of the herbals and manuals
of medical botany of the Middle Ages, grew extensively in the mid- and late sixteenth
century (Chapter 5; Arber 1986). Competing for an apparently inexhaustible market,
there were general herbals in Latin and various European vernaculars, increasingly well
illustrated, appearing in ever longer editions; among the many who fought over this field
were Hieronymus Bock, Leonhart Fuchs, William Turner, Matthias de Lobel, and John
Gerard, and these names will recur in several chapters of this volume. Quoting in Chapter
3 Faustus’ demand for the ultimate plant book, David Marsh reasonably asks, “What was
it about plants that commanded a desire for complete knowledge of every single one in
the world?” For it is true that in the real milieu of sixteenth-century publishing authors
were continually adding to their herbals information on new discoveries, ambitious for
completeness and unaware of the unattainability of this aim. Among the most successful
of these general works, two big books, similar in their inspiration, may be selected for
mention here.
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–77), a practicing physician trained in medical botany
at Padua, set out to translate into his native Italian, with commentary, under the title Di
Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo libri cinque della historia & materia medicinale, tradotti in
lingua volgare italiana (1544), the materia medica of the ancient Greek pharmacologist
Dioscorides, which after fifteen centuries still served as a standard handbook. New
editions were wanted every few years, evidence of heavy demand. In each successive
edition the commentary was expanded and more woodcuts were added. Mattioli’s
original commentary meanwhile demanded to be translated into Latin, the language of
science. He responded under a Latin title that highlighted his original commentary and
illustrations, Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Materia Medica
adjectis quam plurimis plantarum et animalium imaginibus (1554). Many of Mattioli’s
annotations took the form of full descriptions of useful plants unknown to Dioscorides,
such as the extra Solanaceae—aubergine (Solanum melongena), tomato, and chilli—
inserted immediately after Dioscorides’ mandrake (Mandragora officinarum).
Dioscorides had arranged his materia medica according to medicinal effects. Rembert
Dodoens, a physician who had studied at Leiden, chose in his Cruydeboeck, literally
“herb book,” (1554) to arrange by plant habit, making the work more approachable to
horticulturalists, though an emphasis on medical uses remained. The Dutch (Flemish)

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 INTRODUCTION 15

original was translated three years later into French and thirty years later into Latin,
introducing it to a wide new readership. For both of these translations Dodoens’ friend
Carolus Clusius was responsible (Clusius 1557, 1583b). There were eventually two English
versions, by Henry Lyte in 1578 (A Niewe Herball) and by John Gerard in 1597 (Gerard’s
Herball). Clusius and Gerard both made extensive additions to Dodoens’ original, and
some of these improvements fed back into later Dutch editions.
Descriptions of plants previously unknown to Europeans are found not only in Early
Modern herbals such as these but also, in a completely different context, in histories and
geographical surveys of newly explored regions. Among numerous works in a popular
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century genre, the Commentarios reales de los Yncas are
notable as the work of an author of Inca and Spanish parentage, educated in both cultures,
who had long lived in Spain. He was describing Peruvian plants and their uses from
nostalgic childhood memory (Garcilaso de la Vega 1609; Chapter 2). Several authors on
the New World gave extensive information on Mexican and Caribbean plants, not only
Petrus Martyr de Angleria but also Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo in his Historia general y
natural de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Océano (General and Natural History of
the Indies, Islands and Continent of the Ocean Sea), incompletely published in the 1550s
(Amador de los Rios 1851–5; Chapter 3) and José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral
de las Indias (1590).
There are fascinating reports of exploratory botanizing by those who traveled
specifically to rediscover ancient knowledge. The obvious example here is Les observations
de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Égypte,
Arabie et autres pays estranges, published in 1553 by Pierre Belon (1517–64), scientific
attaché, so to speak, in a French embassy to the Ottoman Empire in 1548. In 1589
Clusius issued a Latin translation of Belon’s rich narrative, whose focus is the rediscovery
of ancient medical botany. Belon was followed by Leonhart Rauwolf (1535–96), whose
lengthy report of Middle Eastern travels, rarely read (and deserving better) was entitled
Aigentliche Beschreibung der Raiß, so er vor diser Zeit gegen Auffgang inn die Morgenländer
… selbs volbracht (1582–3).5
Such works have an advantage that they share with general narratives by the more
plant-aware of travelers (beginning with Columbus, above): there is room in them for
observations of local traditional knowledge of plants, their medical uses, and their cultural
significance. Here begins the study of ethnobotany or the “knowledge of herbs and plants
… practiced by wild and barbaric people” as it was defined by Balthasar II Moretus, editor
and publisher in 1644 of the last edition of Dodoens’ herbal, supplemented with many of
Clusius’ descriptions of non-European plants (fuller quotation in Chapter 5).
Books of botanical exploration led in turn to another new genre, that of enumerations
and catalogs of useful plants with distant origins. One of the greatest such works, bearing
the imprint Goa, April 10, 1563, is the Portuguese dialogue by García de Orta (c. 1501–
86) on the spices and drugs of Asia, Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinaes
da India (quoted several times in Chapter 2). Within two years Nicolás Monardes (1493–
1588) of Seville had begun his series of works on medicinal plants and drugs of America.
The title may be given as Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias
Occidentales: the three-part complete edition appeared in 1574. Orta and Monardes
served as principal sources for two contemporary authors who also added material of
their own: Juan Fragoso of Madrid in Discursos de las cosas aromáticas, árboles y frutales,
y de otras muchas medicinas simples que se traen de la India Oriental (1572) and Cristóbal
Acosta in Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales (1578).

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 16 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

Just as Monardes’ work reached completion, Francisco Hernández (1514–87) of

Toledo made his visit to Mexico, financed by the Spanish royal court, to find and describe
medicinal plants. Somewhat ahead of his time, he systematically described all the useful
plants he could, whether or not they might become available in Europe, and named them
in Nahuatl. The resulting compilation may well have been thought unpublishable, or the
royal court’s enthusiasm for new medicinal plants may have waned during his absence.
At any rate his work was not published and his original manuscript was lost, though
a transcript was rescued and prepared for publication by Federico Cesi’s Accademia
dei Lincei (Hernández et al. 1651; see Chapters 3 and 5). The recording of Nahuatl
names—a prefiguration of modern ethnobotany—was not unique to Hernández. Many of
the names and traditional uses are also given in the illustrated manuscript herbal known
as Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum herbis, prepared c. 1552 (Chapter 5), and in the
encyclopedic manuscript on Aztec culture by Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de
las cosas de Nueva España, known as the Florentine Codex, compiled during the same
period. These works, too, remained unpublished for many years.6
The books by Orta, Monardes, Fragoso, and Cristóbal Acosta listed above have
several common features: written in the vernacular by practicing physicians, discursive
and easy to read, cheaply printed and produced, widely translated, … and they all
caught Clusius’ eye. He bought his copy of the Colóquios on December 28, 1564 during
a stay in Lisbon (Boxer 1963: pl. 2).7 Clusius has been mentioned often above, and
crops up in several chapters below (see also Egmond et al. 2007), all for good reason.
If a single scientist may be said to embody the Early Modern botanical revolution it is
Clusius (1526–1609), the greatest of the sixteenth-century natural scientists. Trained
at Montpellier, for twenty years he directed the imperial botanical garden at Vienna
before moving to Leiden in 1593 to create a university botanical garden there. He is
notable not only for his own careful and innovative studies of plants and their human
uses, but also for the work by others that he never tired of translating and publishing.
His Rariorum plantarum historia of 1601 was expanded with notes, monographs, and
illustrations entrusted to him by botanists and horticulturalists, and there is much more
in the notes published after his death, Curae posteriores, not least the Capuchin herbalist
Gregorio da Reggio’s little work on chillies (Clusius 1611: 95–108). Clusius’ second
great compilation, Exoticorum libri decem (1605), consists partly of his own work
but embodies revised, well-illustrated Latin editions of Orta, Monardes, and Cristóbal
Acosta with expanded commentaries, which include select quotations of the few original
passages in Fragoso’s book.
Clusius’ pivotal role is asserted in the 1587 version of William Harrison’s “Description
of England,” perhaps surprisingly considering the insular focus of this text, which,
it should be emphasized, appears not in a botanical or horticultural publication but
as general introduction to a work of wider interest, Raphael Holinshed’s famous
Chronicles.
The chiefe workeman, or as I maie call him the founder of this devise, is Carolus
Clusius, the noble herbarist … For albeit that Matthiolus, Rembert, Lobell, and other
have travelled verie farre in this behalfe, yet none hath come neere to Clusius, much
lesse gone further in the finding and true descriptions of such herbes as of late are
brought to light.
(Edelen 1994; Harrison 1587: 210)

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 INTRODUCTION 17

FIGURE 0.4 Frontispiece, Carolus Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem: quibus animalium,
plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinorum fructuum historiae describuntur (Ten Books of
Exotica: The History and Uses of Animals, Plants, Aromatics and Other Natural Products from
Distant Lands, Leiden: Raphelengius, 1605). Tentoonstelling Clusius Universiteitsbibliotheek,
Leiden. Photo by Shyamal/Wikimedia Commons.

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 18 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

FARMS AND GARDENS

As this quotation shows, farmers and gardeners appreciated the work of medical botanists,
but the sixteenth century also saw the development of a genre of farming and gardening
books. It was not wholly new. In fact, it included printed texts of the greatest such works
of earlier times, the Greek Geoponica, the Latin rei rusticae scriptores largely rediscovered
by Poggio Bracciolini, and the fourteenth-century Liber commodorum ruralium of Petrus
de Crescentiis. These editions and translations apparently sold well but were fated to be
superseded by up-to-date works in several languages of Europe, as discussed in various
chapters below: in Latin by Charles Estienne (Stephanus 1554), then more extensively in
French by Estienne (1564) and expanded after Estienne’s death by Jean Liebault (1570),
translated into English by Richard Surflet (1600) and expanded by Gervase Markham (1616);
in French also by Olivier de Serres (1600); in Latin by Conrad Heresbach (Heresbachius
1570), translated and enlarged in English by Barnaby Googe (1577); in English by Thomas
Tusser in doggerel verse (1557, 1573) and Gervase Markham in prose (1613), along
with books specifically on gardens, more modestly by Thomas Hyll (1563, 1577), more
expansively John Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris (1629). The title means
“Park-in-Sun’s earthly paradise,” playing both on the author’s surname and the undertones
of the biblical and classical word paradise: a paradise is, in simpler words, a park or garden.

LINES OF TRANSMISSION
The sixteenth-century ferment of discovery and innovation in the world of plants is visible
on paper—in the texts and illustrations of printed books, in paintings and drawings, in
dried plant collections—but not only on paper. The world of real plants around us today
looks very different as a result of the Columbian exchange and other plant introductions.
Few people who worked with plants were writers, and not all of them were readers. Let
us list those involved in plant medicine—herb women, midwives, folk healers, alchemists,
apothecaries, aristocratic ladies, members of religious communities (Chapter 5)—and
let us add to the list peasants and farmers and landowners, gardeners and those who
employed gardeners and designed gardens, those who carried and sold plants and plant
foods, those who traded spices, medicines, and plant products over long distances and
those who sailed the wooden ships in which they traveled. Given that any of these people
might happen to be involved in the first transmission of any plant from one habitat to
another, and that the incident would only become memorable if and when the plant
succeeded in its new habitat, the creation of a written record of the incident was rather
unlikely. Thus, in the great majority of cases neither the people involved, nor the crucial
date at which plants or seeds first traveled, can now be stated with full confidence. Yet
some such transfers are indeed recorded in Early Modern manuscripts or printed books,
and in a few cases the writers themselves claim responsibility.
To take England as an example, sixteenth-century developments in agriculture and
horticulture were far from being the responsibility of any small group of scientists or
innovators. The fact is emphasized in Harrison’s “Description of England” already quoted
above. Harrison outlines recent improvements in English herb gardens and fruit orchards
and attributes them to individual gardeners and fruit-growers of all social classes:
Like thankes be given unto our nobilitie, gentlemen, and others, for their continuall
nutriture and cherishing of such homeborne and forren simples in their gardens, for

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 INTRODUCTION 19

hereby they shall not onlie be had at hand and preserved, but also their formes made
more familiar to be discerned, and their forces better knowne than hitherto they have
béene. And even as it fareth with our gardens, so dooth it with our orchards, which
were never furnished with so good fruit, nor with such varietie as at this present.
For beside that we have most delicate apples, plummes, peares, walnuts, filberds
[Corylus spp.], &c., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie yeeres passed,
in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing woorth: so have we no
lesse store of strange fruit, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, cornetrees [cornel,
Cornus mas] in noble mens orchards. I have seene capers, orenges, and lemmons,
and heard of wild olives growing here, beside other strange trees, brought from far,
whose names I know not. So that England for these commodities was never better
furnished.
(Harrison 1587: 210; fuller quotations and commentary in Chapter 3)
In perfect accord with the generous tone of Harrison’s survey, Marsh, Egmond, and
Francis in this volume show how botanical, medicinal, and horticultural advances in this
period depended not on any individual but on networks. There was an ever-growing
community of enthusiasts of remarkably varied backgrounds and interests, a few of them
individually celebrated, the majority scarcely known beyond their own chain of contacts.
Among those involved in trade the work of James and Pieter Garet is highlighted in
Chapter 5. Dutch in origin, they were based in London, a center of intellectual exchange.
Evidence on the networks of London plantsmen and gardeners is teased out by David
Marsh in Chapter 3. Among the enthusiastic proprietors of English gardens beyond
London Chapter 7 draws on manuscript lists and plans of Revd Walter Stonehouse, Sir
John Reresby, Sir Thomas Temple, Sir John Oglander, and Sir Thomas Hanmer. The
most famous of their immediate successors were the garden designers John Tradescant
the Elder and the Younger.
Of some innovators in this field no record survives. Of the history of some plant species
that crossed the world during the Early Modern period, transferred from country to
country and from continent to continent, prominent in humanity’s later history, essential
in some cases to the health of millions in recent and modern times, the facts are recorded
by the merest chance. In the case of coca, Erythroxylon coca, two syllables that are now
on so many lips in the name of a fizzy drink and an addictive drug, we seem to grasp the
exact moment at which knowledge of the plant’s stimulant use was transmitted from the
peoples of the Andes to the world at large:
Rodrigo Pantoja, travelling from Cuzco to Rímac, met a poor old soldier with his two-
year-old daughter on his back. “I cannot pay an Indian to carry her,” he explained,
“so I have to do it myself.” “But why are you chewing coca as the Indians do,” Pantoja
demanded, “when Spaniards detest the stuff?” “Necessity has forced me to imitate
them. It is because of coca that I feel strong enough to carry my burden.”
Yet we cannot, after all, date the moment or name the poor Spanish soldier; Garcilaso
de la Vega “el Inca,” who said that he was told the story by Pantoja, gave no further help
(Garcilaso 1609: f. 212v; Livermore 1966: 1:511, abridged).
For chilli (above) and maize, the first two American plant species that are known to
have crossed the Atlantic eastwards, our information is relatively good. As we have seen,
Columbus called maize “millet” at first. In what was to become the first book of De orbe
novo decades, drawing directly on Columbus’ reports, dated November 5, 1493, and

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 20 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

addressed to cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Italy, Peter Martyr ab Angleria described this
newly observed staple as
a kind of millet, similar to that which exists plenteously amongst the Milanese and
Andalusians. This millet is a little more than a palm in length, ending in a point, and
is about the thickness of the upper part of a man’s arm. The grains are about the form
and size of peas. While they are growing, they are white, but become black when ripe.
When ground they are whiter than snow. This kind of grain is called maiz.
(1530: f. 4r; Galinat 1992; MacNutt 1912: 1:64)
On April 29, 1494, dispatching his next report to cardinal Sforza, Peter Martyr hinted
at how many botanical specimens Columbus had already distributed to contacts at the
Spanish court:
That you may inform your apothecaries, druggists, and perfumers concerning the
products of this country and its high temperature, I send you some seeds of all kinds,
as well as the bark and the pith of those trees which are believed to be cinnamon trees.
If you wish to taste either the seeds or the pith or the bark, be careful, most illustrious
Prince, only to do so with caution; not that they are harmful, but they are very peppery,
and if you leave them a long time in your mouth, they will sting the tongue. In case
you should burn your tongue a little in tasting them, take some water, and the burning
sensation will be allayed. My messenger will also deliver to Your Eminence some of
those black and white seeds out of which they make bread. If you cut bits of the wood
called aloes, which he brings, you will scent the delicate perfumes it exhales.
(Peter Martyr 1530: f. 7r; MacNutt 1912: 1:84)
The “black and white seeds” are maize: see Chapter 3 on this first transfer and on later
confusion over the origin of maize. Cassava (Manihot esculenta), which is iucca in Peter
Martyr’s Latin, and sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), which he called ages, were perhaps
not in these first voyages brought home to Spain. They were nonetheless described
confidently as “roots destined to become the food of Christians and take the place of
wheat bread, radishes, and our other vegetables” (Petrus Martyr 1530: f. 45v; MacNutt
1912: 1:342). Several chapters of this volume offer examples of the long-distance spread
of plant species in this Early Modern period: cassava, Chapter 3; the Levant(ine) rose
(Rosa phoenicia), Chapter 3; bananas (Musa spp., Chapter 2, which according to Oviedo
leapt from Alexandria in Egypt to Seville, from there to the Canaries, and then in 1516
crossed the Atlantic from Gran Canaría to Santo Domingo (Amador de los Rios 1851:
1:293). The tulip, mentioned in Chapters 4, 6, and 7, is well known as a sixteenth-century
introduction from the Ottoman Empire to Europe, though the details of its transmission
have been far from clear (Goldgar 2007). The first man in Europe to taste a pineapple
(Ananas comosus) (see also Chapters 2 and 3 of this volume) may perhaps have been king
Ferdinand II of Aragon, as he himself boasted to Peter Martyr:
It is like a pine-cone in form and colour, covered with scales, and firmer than a melon.
Its flavour excels all other garden fruits, for it does not grow on a tree but on a plant
similar to an artichoke or an acanthus. The King places it above all others. I myself have
not tasted it, for it was the only one which had arrived unspoiled … Spaniards who
have eaten them fresh plucked where they grow, speak with the highest appreciation
of their delicate flavour.
(1530: f. 33v; MacNutt 1912: 1:262–3)

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 INTRODUCTION 21

In the same paragraph Peter Martyr made the first written mention of potatoes (Solanum
tuberosum), but said nothing of their arrival in Europe. They spread there slowly from
south to north, reaching James Garet’s garden in London in 1588–9 (Chapter 5; Egmond
2010: 202–3).
Citrus fruits are among the most important of the fruits that crossed from the Old to the
New World in the Columbian exchange. The major cultivated species, native to southern
and eastern Asia, were at this date still somewhat exotic in Europe. The enthusiasm they
aroused is exemplified as fully in Giovanni Battista Ferrari’s lavish picture book (Ferrarius
1633) as in the lovingly detailed descriptions of the Villa Medicea di Castello. Vasari in
1568 noticed the orange trees in the labyrinth garden, and had heard of another projected
garden that “was to be filled with orange-trees (Citrus × aurantium) since it is protected
by the walls and the mountain from the north and other contrary winds” (Hinds 1927:
3:171–2; Vasari 1568: pt 3, 2:404–5). It was of the labyrinth garden that Belon had written
a few years earlier: “All its walls are embroidered with laurel trees interwoven. The citron
and lemon trees and the ponciers are woven together in the same way” (1558: f. 79v).
The category “citrus fruits” was not what it is now. Tangerines (Citrus reticulata) had
not yet reached Europe. Grapefruits are the most notable among several now-familiar
hybrids that did not yet exist. On the other hand, one fruit now forgotten by nearly
everyone was a distinct kind or species in sixteenth-century opinion. This is the poncier
(so Belon names the tree, as quoted above) that bears poncires (so Rabelais names the
fruit, as quoted in the epigraph to Chapter 6). It has not been easy to identify: Clusius
translated Belon’s ponciers into Latin as Adami mali (1589: 86), mistakenly if by this
he meant “bitter orange trees,” for they actually correspond to the group of varieties
named limon ponzinus by Ferrari (Ferrarius 1646: 289–97), lemons (Citrus × limon)
with thick pith, the pulp eaten fresh with sugar, of which several kinds were grown on the
west coast of Italy. At least one cultivar remains modestly popular today, named limone
ponzino amalfitano by nurserymen, quite different from its close neighbor the limone
Costa d’Amalfi which has the specious dignity of a protected geographical designation.8
Citrus fruits are now major crops in the southern United States and in several Latin
American countries. Californian and Floridian research stations are at the forefront
in the development of citrus cultivars, including hybrids. How and when did oranges
(some of the leaders in this migration) first cross the Atlantic and first reach the American
continent? Those answers happen to be known. For the first stage the adaptable genius
of Christopher Columbus was responsible. Perhaps he took no seeds westwards on his
first journey: why would he? He expected to find Oriental civilizations thriving and all
useful exotica already growing in the lands he was about to explore. But it was not so.
Adapting to circumstances, on his second journey he took a selection of seeds with a view
to establishing a colony on Hispaniola. The colonists were wiped out, but not before
planting crops including bitter oranges, which were soon to spread to other Caribbean
islands.
As for the transfer of oranges to the American mainland, that event is separately
recorded. The known name in the chain is that of Bernal Díaz (1492–1584), by no means
a hero but a minor conquistador whose real ambition was to establish an estate for himself
in what is now Guatemala. There he died, not before writing an eyewitness history of the
Spanish conquest, in the first draft of which he inserted a personal anecdote:
I sowed the seeds of some oranges near to another idol house … seeds which I had
brought from Cuba, for there was a rumour that we were coming back to settle. They

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 22 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

germinated [nacieron] very well, for it seems that the priests, when they saw that these
plants were unlike any they knew, protected them, watered them and weeded them.
All the oranges in that province are the descendants of these plants, and I have called
this to mind because these were the first oranges planted in New Spain.
(Maudslay 1908: 1:62; Serés n.d.: 54)
The anecdote recurred with an apologetic note in a later draft, and was erased, having been
rejected as trivial, in the final manuscript. It is interesting not least for Díaz’s assumption,
surely correct, that the priests encouraged the unknown saplings to grow. Experimenting
with potentially useful plants has been a human activity since the Neolithic revolution
and even before.
Failures should not be overlooked. One of the most notable was the growing of
Oriental spices in Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century by Francisco de Mendoza y
Vargas (1496–1584; Chapter 2), who, with all the advantages of his position as son of
the first Spanish viceroy, and all the resources he was able to dedicate to his experimental
plantations, succeeded in establishing no new species except ginger. Against the failures
must be counted an astonishing range of successes, some of them undeservedly obscure
and unfairly forgotten, like the New World strawberries (Fragaria virginiana, F.
chiloensis, and especially their hybrid, F. ananassa) that would soon eclipse native Old
World strawberries (F. vesca). Parkinson discusses the Virginia kind, tantalizingly difficult
to grow and ripen, and then the “Bohemia strawberry” which “hath been with us but of
late dayes, but is the goodliest and greatest … for some of the berries have been measured
to be neere five inches about. Master Quester the Postmaster first brought them over
into our country, as I understand … Master Vincent Sion who dwelt on the Banck side,
neere the old Paris garden staires” was the best at growing them (Parkinson 1629: 528;
Wilhelm 1974: 266).

THE SUNFLOWER
Let the early history of the sunflower serve as a case study in the sixteenth-century
transmission of useful plants. Helianthus annuus in its wild form ranges from the southern
edge of Canada to northern Mesoamerica. The species is well known among pre-
Columbian archaeologists as one of the principal early domesticates of North America: it
was a member of the Eastern agricultural complex established by about 1800 bce in the
Mississippi valley (Heiser 1951; Smith et al. 2009). Although the sunflower grew wild
in Mexico, was used in Aztec religious ritual, and was illustrated in sixteenth-century
Mexican codices, there has been debate as to whether it was cultivated as far south as
Mexico at this period. Its limited familiarity there might help to explain why several early
European sources stated firmly that it came from Peru. Authors who had direct contact
with Peru did not share this misconception, for in fact the sunflower was not found in
South America at all.
The first-known European image of a sunflower appears in the epilogue to the herbalist
Rembert Dodoens’ monograph on flowers, published in Latin in 1568. The image speaks
for itself, fortunately, because there is no accompanying description. “As we were preparing
this edition,” Dodoens wrote, an image of the very rare chrysanthemum Perunianum
was forwarded to him by Christina Bertolf from her husband, royal counsellor Joachim
Hopper, who was in Spain (Dodoens 1568: 294–5; van Riemsdijk 2015). In a revised
edition published in the following year, the state of European sunflower cultivation is

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 INTRODUCTION 23

FIGURE 0.5 The sunflower depicted among superficially similar flowers on a page of John
Parkinson’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris (Park-in-Sun's Terrestrial Paradise, 1629: 297).
Hand-colored copy. Photo courtesy of Getty Research Institute.

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 24 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

fully described. Native to “Peru and some other American provinces,” this giant annual
had been grown in the royal garden in Madrid, where it reached about 7 m (24 ft)
in height. Dodoens himself had now seen the sunflower growing in Jean de Brancion’s
botanical garden at Mechelen (now Belgium), but there it only reached about 3 m (10
or 11 ft) and the flower had not fully opened at the approach of winter, so it could not
be grown on. In the greenhouse of Giacomo Antonio Cortuso at Padua, Italy, it had
grown even taller than in Madrid, and the flower had opened. The same informant had
found the young leaf-stems (petioles) and flower (inflorescence)-bases good to eat and
aphrodisiac (Dodoens 1569: 305–9; Wheelock 1999: 25).
The next oldest description is owed to the Madrid medical author Juan Fragoso, who
called the sunflower a “well known plant of Peru,” giving the names flor del sol and sol de
las Indias. Fragoso, like Cortuso, had eaten the flower-base “as one does an artichoke.”
He was the first to claim that the head of flowers turns to follow the sun “as if offering
worship to it” (1572: ff. 25r–26r).
Soon afterwards Francisco Hernández made his botanical journey to Mexico. His
work, not published until long after his death, is impressive (as already noted) for its
recording of local names and uses of plants: hence he was the first to note the usefulness
of sunflower “seeds” (technically, single-seeded dry fruits), “like melon seeds,” which
were, after all, the real reason for the plant’s domestication. “Eaten rather generously
they cause headache, soothe the chest, and cool the libido, and certain people grind them
and bake them into bread … It is cultivated by sowing in plateaus and lowlands in several
regions, flourishing better in the lowlands” (Hernández et al. 1651: 228).
While Hernández was at work in Mexico, Nicolás Monardes in Seville was meanwhile
enlarging his work on the medicinal plants of the New World. Monardes found room
for a short entry on the sunflower, of which “they are still sending me seeds, though
we have had it here for some years already.” It made a fine show in gardens, he added,
though it required support while growing to its full height (1574: f. 109v). Unlike
Fragoso, Monardes did not connect the sunflower with Peru, and one notes that he had
correspondents in Peru.
Carolus Clusius, who had read Fragoso and Monardes, inserted all that he thus far
knew of sunflowers in his expanded Latin version of Dodoens’ complete herbal in 1583.
Clusius noted two common names for the plant, sol Indianus, flos solis (the latter being
the exact Latin equivalent of “sunflower,” which eventually became the English name).
Clusius adjusted Dodoens’ Latin name to chrysanthemum Peruvianum (1583b: 263–4),
and this name gained popularity.
The story of the first English expedition to Virginia in 1585 was told in a narrative by
the participant Thomas Hariot (1560–1621). He made careful observations of indigenous
horticulture, describing a “great hearbe in forme of a Marigolde, about six foote in height;
the head with the floure is a spanne in breadth … of the seedes heereof they make both
a kinde of bread and broth.” As to its identification, “some take it to bee Planta Solis,”
evidently a reference to earlier reports of the sunflower (Hariot 1588: quaternion C2;
Hariot 1590: 14; Heiser 1951: 435).9 Cultivation was by now spreading in Europe: for
all that, the phrasing suggests that the colonists had heard of the sunflower but had not
previously seen one.
Nardo Antonio Recchi, custodian of Hernández’s researches in this period, made
additions of his own in copying the manuscript on which eventual printed editions would
be based. Hernández’s description of the sunflower is headed chimala[ca]tl Peruina, the
keyword (as usual in Hernández’s work) being a Nahuatl name for the plant, the whole

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 INTRODUCTION 25

phrase a Mexican equivalent of Dodoens’ chrysanthemum Perunianum. The description

contains a short passage, omitted in the quotation above, that is strongly reminiscent of
Dodoens and Clusius, “… although some would say that they are aphrodisiac. The plant
grows naturally in Peru and several other provinces of America” (Hernández et al. 1651:
228).10
Clusius eventually expanded his old translation of Monardes’ work to include the
1574 additions, issuing the result as part of that landmark in European knowledge of
exotic plants, Exoticorum libri decem (1605: 347–8). Realizing, perhaps, that the plant’s
Peruvian origin was not supported by his best sources, Monardes and Hariot, Clusius in
this definitive publication dropped his previous term chrysanthemum Peruvianum and
adopted herba solis, suggested by Monardes’ yerva del sol and Hariot’s planta solis. He
drily gave credit to the “rhapsodies” of Fragoso, whose wordy description had been the
second to appear in print.
In London John Gerard had meanwhile published his own English reworking of
Dodoens’ herbal. His name for the plant is “sunne flower … in Latine flos solis, taking
that name from those that have reported it to turne with the sunne, which I could never
observe.” He himself had grown the plant from seed: “in one sommer being sowen
of a seede in Aprill, it hath risen up to the height of fourteene foote in my garden,
where one flower was in waight three pounde and two ounces and … sixteene inches
broade.” He had tasted it, too. “We have founde by triall, that the buddes before they be
flowred, boiled and eaten with butter, vineger, and pepper, after the maner of artichoks,
are exceeding pleasant meate, surpassing the artichoke farre in procuring bodilie lust”
(1597: 612–14). “They are too strong for my taste,” John Parkinson retorted (1629:
296).
No printed source will tell us in whose hands, shortly before Dodoens’ illustration
of 1568, sunflower “seeds” had first crossed the Atlantic to Spain, but by the end of
the century the plant had been “commonly known in almost all of Europe for many
years” (Clusius 1605: 348). Its widespread fame explains its place in Joachim Camerarius’
illustrated book of plant symbols and emblems, in which, in close accord with the claim
made by Fragoso in 1572 and questioned by Gerard in 1597, an open sunflower is shown
straining toward the sun (Camerarius 1590: 59; see Chapter 6).11

THE COLUMBIAN FUSION

Given that the outstanding event in the cultural history of plants in this Early Modern
period was the Columbian exchange, the effects of this fusion, as we may call it, though
equally fundamental on both sides of the Atlantic, were most immediately noticeable in
the daily lives of those who traveled westwards, for they were the active participants.
They sought the plants of the New World, but they could not manage without the familiar
plants of the Old. On March 29, 1494, returning to his new foundation of Isabela (now
Dominican Republic) on Hispaniola after sharing cassava bread and yams in neighboring
villages, Columbus found that the Spanish gardeners’ melons, sown less than two months
earlier, were already good to eat, and that the cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) had come up
in three weeks:
Next day a planter harvested ears of wheat which had been sown at the end of January;
they also picked chickpeas larger than the ones they had planted. All the seeds they had
sown sprouted in three days and were ready to eat by the twenty-fifth day. Fruit stones

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 26 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA

… sprouted in seven days; vine shoots sent out leaves at the end of the same period,
and by the twenty-fifth day green grapes were being picked.12
(Ulloa 1571: f. 106)
A generation later, the Spanish plantations in the Caribbean, well established and
flourishing, were available as immediate source when the conquistadors of Mexico needed
to stock their new estates. Already in 1521, at a drunken and overcrowded banquet at
Coyoacán to celebrate the initial conquests and the capture of Cuauhtémoc, Cortés had
Spanish wine and Caribbean pork, “plenty of wine out of a ship from Castille that had
berthed at Villa Rica [de la Vera Cruz], also pigs that had been brought from Cuba”
(Bernal Díaz in Serés n.d.: 625–7; Sokolov 1991: 29). Soon afterwards, with farming in
view, Cortés was sending for cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, asses, and mares from Hispaniola
and Jamaica and Cuba, sugar cane, mulberries for silkworms, vines, olives, and wheat
from Spain (Thomas 1993: 578, 599). Experiments during that first decade of European
settlement in Mexico are reported by Peter Martyr ab Angleria:
In the country of Temistitana [Mexico], because it is cold owing to the distance from
the sea and the neighbourhood of high mountains (though indeed it lies in the torrid
zone at eighteen degrees), if our wheat is sown, it flourishes, with ears and grains of
larger size than in Europe. But since they have three kinds of maize, white, yellow and
red, their own various kinds of flour are better liked and healthier. Wild vines [Vitis
tiliifolia] grow spontaneously in the forests, producing large and tasty grapes, but wine
has not yet been made from them. It is said that Cortés has planted vineyards, with
what result time will tell.13
(Petrus Martyr 1530: f. 107v; MacNutt 1912: 2:357)
Vitis tiliifolia, though its fruits are indeed good to eat, was prized in Mexican medicine
for its leaves. The wild grapes of the New World were deservedly given much attention
by early travelers. Those of Florida (V. rotundifolia) are illustrated by Jacques Le Moyne
de Morgues in the second volume of Theodore de Bry’s America (Le Moyne de Morgues
1591: pl. 5, see the front cover of this volume). They were to give rise to the cultivars
known as Scuppernong and Catawba grapes. Those of Quebec (Vitis riparia) impressed
Jacques Cartier so highly in 1535 that he named “Ysle de Bacchus” what is now the Île
d’Orléans (Cartier 1545: ff. 14r–15r). Little did he know that V. riparia stocks would help
save the wine industry of Europe in the late nineteenth century.
The Columbian exchange is already seen in full vigor in the Paradise murals of the
Augustinian monastery of Malinalco southwest of Mexico City. Painted in the 1540s by
native artists in European style, they mingle the flora of Mexico and Europe, pomegranate
and rose beside sapote (Pouteria sapota), and heart flower (Magnolia mexicana) (Peterson
1993: 182–4), shown with generic vines that belong equally to both continents—and
this is natural enough, since all may be supposed to flourish in Paradise. Among the
rest, notable is a cacao tree, soon to be spread around the world, its fruit here attracting
the attention of a spider monkey (Peterson 1993: 86–9, fig. 34). Neither the plant nor
the animal was to be seen locally, but the pictorial juxtaposition is a commonplace of
Mesoamerican art, a reminder that the two species had moved across tropical America in
a kind of symbiosis, the monkeys eating the cacao fruits and excreting the seeds; the trees
thus spreading and providing new habitat (Dreiss and Greenhill 2008: 20).
The Columbian fusion is in evidence in another context in 1538 when the new peace
treaty between Spain and France was celebrated in banquets given by Cortés and by the

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 INTRODUCTION 27

FIGURE 0.6 Paradise murals of the Augustinian monastery of Malinalco, Mexico. Sixteenth
century. Image from Album/Alamy Stock Photo.

viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza (father of Francisco de Mendoza whose spice plantations

are mentioned above). A narrative by Bernal Díaz of the Mendoza banquet, attended by
“more than three hundred knights and more than two hundred ladies,” makes a fitting
climax to this introductory survey:
I was one of those who dined at those great celebrations. First, there were some
salads made in various ways, and afterwards, kids and hams roasted in the Genoese
style; after that quail and pigeon pies, and then wattled cocks and stuffed hens; then
blancmange; after that a stew [pepitoria]; then a royal cake [torta real]; then local fowl
and partridges and quail en escabeche, and then they replaced the tablecloths twice and
left clean ones with napkins; then they brought pasties [empanadas] filled with every
kind of bird and game; these they did not eat, nor many of the things served previously;
then came fish empanadas; neither did they eat any of them; then they brought in roast
mutton, and beef and pork, and turnips and cabbage and chickpeas, of which they also
ate nothing; and in the midst of these dishes they put down various fruits to be tasted
… Especially when the stewards brought drinks, they served to the ladies who were
dining there, many more than had attended Cortés’s dinner, many gold goblets, some
with aloja, others with wine, others with water, and others with chocolate and with
clarea … And I haven’t mentioned the service of olives and radishes and cheese and
cardoons and marzipans and almonds and comfits and lemon drops [diacitrón] and
other sugar confections and local fruit; but I can only say that the whole table was
covered with that service … And I still haven’t talked about the fountains of white
wine and red wine that flowed, both especially made …14
(Seres n.d.: 913–14; Sokolov 1991: 29–31)

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 NOTES

Introduction
1 This observation is adapted from Michel Baudier, Histoire générale du Serrail (1662).
Concluding his chapter on the kitchens of the Topkapi Palace he remarks: “Si le lecteur trouve
de l’ennui au récit de cette matière de cuisine, qu’il considère que, sans ce chapitre, les autres
qui composent l’Histoire ne seraient point” (The reader who finds this exposition of culinary
matters tiresome may reflect that, without this chapter, the rest of History would not exist).
2 Belon (1558: ff. 78v–80v), translated in Clusius (1589: 85–7); Vasari (1568: pt 3, 2:402–9),
translated in Hinds (1927: 3:168–75); Montaigne in Meusnier de Querlon (1774: 1:254–9).
See in general Bellorini (2016).
3 Other early sources include a long footnote to a printed Latin psalter of 1516, inserted there
for no good reason except that the editor, like Columbus himself, was Genoese. Attached to
the text “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world
[Psalms 19:4],” this not uninformative sketch begins: “In our times, owing to the marvellous
daring of the Genoese Christopher Columbus, a nearly new world has been found and joined
to the fellowship of Christians. Since Columbus himself often proclaimed that he had been
chosen by God to fulfil this prophecy, it is not irrelevant to recount his life here. It was,
then, Christopher surnamed Columbus, Genoese in origin, born of poor parents, who in our
age by his own effort explored within a few months more lands and open sea than nearly
all other mortals in all past centuries …” (Justiniani 1516). Peter Martyr ab Angleria’s title
De orbe novo decades has a classical ring. It alludes to the Decades (series of ten books) into
which Livy’s history of ancient Rome was divided.
4 Monardes (1574: f. 98r); compare Clusius (1605: 75, 323); Amador de los Rios (1851–5:
1:348) “corbana.” The Ecuador “cinnamon” that led Gonzalo Pizarro on his Amazonian
wild goose chase was another species again, see Chapter 2.
5 Rauwolf’s notes on plants, compiled to accompany his “herbarium vivum” or collection of
pressed specimens, were published in Latin almost two centuries later (Gronovius 1755).
6 Both are now easily accessible. The Libellus, the Codex Badiano-De La Cruz, has appeared in
several twentieth-century editions and translations (Libellus 1964 is the most recent). Sahagún’s
Historia general, the Florentine Codex, a vast work, can be read in English translation (Anderson
and Dibble 2002); better still, the original, carefully written and extensively illustrated
manuscript in Nahuatl and Spanish is available online. All twelve online volumes can be found
by following links from this page: www.wdl.org/en/item/10612/.
7 The copy, with Clusius’ ownership inscription and notes, is now at Cambridge University
Library, where, as an undergraduate, I (Andew Dalby) consulted it fifty years ago. The
inscription reads “1564 / Caroli Clusii A[trebatis] / Ulyssipone / vi. Calend. Januarius.” This
date, as written by Clusius in classical Latin style, equates to December 27, 1564, the sixth
day, counting backwards inclusively, from January 1. The date has been variously interpreted,
but C. R. Boxer (1963: 21, 25) shows that the book could not have reached Lisbon before
September 15, 1564, and observes that Clusius was in Lisbon between September 1564 and
January 1565.

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 198 NOTES

8 See for example Oscar Tintori’s catalog at www.oscartintori.it/prodotto/limone-ponzino-

amalfitano/ (accessed April 1, 2021).
9 Engravings accompany the 1590 edition, which was published as the second volume of
Theodore de Bry’s America. Sunflowers, growing in kitchen gardens, appear on two of
them (Hariot 1590: pls. 19–20). There are kitchen gardens but no sunflowers in the original
watercolors by John White, which survive in the British Museum (Hulton and Quinn 1964).
Given that Clusius had edited the illustrated sunflower description in Dodoens’ 1583
herbal, and that the sunflowers in the 1590 engravings resemble that 1583 illustration, their
insertion in these engravings may be his responsibility. The watercolors and engravings,
arranged side by side, are available online: virtualjamestown.org/images/white_debry_html/
jamestown.html (accessed April 1, 2021).
10 Here and above we have has translated from the manuscript copy by Nardo Antonio Recchi
(f. 133r: available online: archive.org/details/demateriamedican00hern [accessed April 1,
2021]). At this point it differs little from the 1651 edition by Federico Cesi and other
Lynceans, which, being easier to consult, is cited in the text.
11 Printed texts alone were searched for this case study, and others may well await finding.
12 Green grapes were picked for verjuice; full ripening for wine would take longer. Sugar
cane, though not listed in this passage, was already being planted. Thus the groundwork
was being laid for the West Indian monoculture of the sixteenth century and the consequent
economic collapse of the seventeenth.
13 Peter Martyr distinguishes between labruscae, wild vines of Mexico, and vineae, plantations
of the European cultivated species. He probably did not know that the “various kinds of
flour” preferred in Mexico included maize mixed with chia (Salvia hispanica) and alegria
(Amaranthus cruentus: cf. Berdan and Anawalt 1997: 33 and passim), the latter a close
relative of the “blite” that Columbus had identified in Cuba. Both mixtures were better
nutritionally than maize alone.
14 Andrew Dalby’s thanks to Ray Sokolov for allowing him to use his translation, to which he
has made a couple of minor changes. Aloja and clarea were both spiced wines, the former
probably white and including wormwood (as does modern vermouth), the latter probably
red and corresponding to sixteenth-century English clary. The banquet was more carnal
than appears here: two long lists of meat dishes have been omitted.

Chapter 1
1 The acorns are an afterthought, added in the second edition (Harrison 1587: 168). The
texts can be compared at english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/texts.php?text1=1577_0078&t
ext2=1587_0085#p991 (accessed April 3, 2021).
2 A corrody was a “pension” agreement made between an elderly person and a younger
relative or a monastery for food, fuel, and sometimes shelter in exchange for the surrender
of land.

Chapter 2
1 Belon is alluding to Plutarch, Life of Artoxerxes 3.2. It is stated by several Greek authors
(see Dalby 2003: xi) that terebinth fruits and cress were the staple diet of young noble
Persians, varied by whatever meat they could get by hunting.
2 Clusius’ discussion of Sichuan pepper is arranged as a footnote to his revised Latin version
of Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios, which forms a separate section of Exoticorum libri decem
(1605). Clusius cites Avicenna, Canon 2.2.266 “Fagara” (Alpagus 1527: f. 96v). The Latin
translation of Avicenna’s Canon had long been familiar as a medical textbook, book 2 of it

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 NOTES 199

in particular as a medicinal herbal. The Canon was republished several times between the
editio princeps (1473 or before) and the easily accessible edition by Andrea Alpago which I
cite.
3 Orta is cited by chapter numbers of the 1563 edition because its page numbering is awry.
These chapter numbers are equally valid for the translation by Markham (1913), but Orta
is translated afresh in my quotations because Markham’s translation often fails to get the
meaning across.
4 Earlier Chinese voyages had culminated in the impressive expeditions led by Zheng He
between 1405 and 1433, regularly visiting Java, Malacca, Ceylon, and Calicut, reaching
Ormuz and beyond in 1414. The Galle trilingual inscription commemorates the Chinese
landing in Ceylon in 1409 (Mills 1970; Pelliot 1933).
5 Mills’ translation of the Chinese text, which literally reproduces its staccato style and was
indispensable to me, has been rephrased slightly here to allow the underlying logic to shine
through.
6 The last sentence is decisive. Piper nigrum is in fact now grown in Sumatra, but the pepper
with slightly larger berries, usually hollow, is the native P. cubeba: “The stalked berries are
a little bit larger than pepper corns, having a furrowed surface. Most berries are hollow”
(gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Pipe_cub.html [accessed April 3, 2021]).
7 For the fruit of the water plant Euryale ferox, utterly obscure in the Early Modern period
but containing what is probably one of the most ancient luxury foods appreciated by genus
Homo, see Dalby in Volume 1. It and the durian are both characterized by a spiny exterior
enclosing several edible sections: that is the only resemblance between them.
8 The Brazilian species Schinus terebinthifolius, discovered later, has been naturalized
elsewhere in the tropics and is the source of “pink peppercorns.”
9 Acosta’s text is, I think, the earliest reference to chocolate as a female aphrodisiac. The
English translation misses this, but memorably contains the first appearance of the word
chocolate in English: “The Spaniards both men and women, that are accustomed to the
countrey, are very greedy of this chocholaté” (Grimeston 1604: 271).
10 Orta is possibly referring to Jacques de Vitry, not a Franciscan but bishop of Acre from
1216, author of Historia Orientalis et Occidentalis, in which he wrote that the banana was
called “tree of paradise” and its fruit “Adam’s apple” (Jacobus de Vitriaco 1597: 170).
11 See a fearsomely spiny orange branch in Grandes heures d’Anne de Bretagne f. 168, available
online: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52500984v/f344.image (accessed April 3, 2021) and
three juicy oranges in the Loggia of Psyche, species no. 78 in the list by Anna Whipkey and
Jules Janick at the illustrated online database hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/udine/ (accessed
April 3, 2021).
12 While aware of its New World origin, Clusius rightly observes that the cashew is related to
Semecarpus anacardium, the “marking nut” of India, on which he, like Orta before him,
cites Avicenna, Canon 2.2.41 (Alpagus 1527: f. 77r; Orta 1563: f. 16v; Markham 1913:
32). C. Acosta makes no connection between the two fruits: evidence, possibly, that he
knew only Orta’s Portuguese text, not Clusius’ 1574 translation.
13 Malmsey [malvoisie] in Léry’s time was the sweet wine of Crete and southern Greece.
14 The early history of tomatoes in Europe is discussed by Rudolf Grewe (1987) and David
Gentilcore (2010: 1–26). While noting the slightly earlier reference by Mattioli, Gentilcore
identifies and cites the first documentary record of ripe tomatoes in an Italian basket in the
household of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1548. Gentilcore argues that the golden fruit of some of
the earliest references is not tomato but tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica), and he interprets
this recipe by Hernández as a tomatillo and chilli sauce.

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15 Girolamo Cardano, against whom Scaliger was reacting, had described the chilli in 1550,
adding correctly that it reached Europe from Hispaniola (“an island of the other world”) in
1493, but had perhaps not tasted it. Scaliger certainly knew it in food.
16 It is not an easy task to assign the cultivated chillies seen by successive explorers and early
botanists to the several species of Capsicum. The relevant species are C. annuum, C.
baccatum, C. chinense, C. frutescens.
17 Gentilcore (2017: 192, 202) discusses the introduction of the tomato to Italy with special
attention to the category problem that it posed. And still poses. The ever-changing
introductory sentences of the Wikipedia article “Tomato,” which usually describe it as “the
fruit of the plant Solanum lycopersicum,” are now and then anonymously altered to read
“the vegetable of the plant Solanum lycopersicum.”

Chapter 3
1 Further discussion may be found in the following: Davies (1956: 26–9); Morison (1978:
73–4); Quinn (1974: 98–100); Skelton (1962). For the Cabot Project, see www.bristol.
ac.uk/history/research/cabot/publications/ (accessed April 3, 2021).
2 The letter (quoted in the Introduction of this volume) was the first of a series eventually
gathered under the title De orbe novo (Petrus Martyr 1530). See also Janick and Caneva
(2005).
3 All quotations from Oviedo are taken from the translations by Nina M. Scott (Myers 2007).
4 For more detailed discussion, see Cuttler (1989); Snyder (1976).
5 For more on maize, see Finan (1948).
6 For more on this see, Egmond (2010, especially chs. 11 and 12); Harkness (2007).

Chapter 4
1 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, letter to James Harris, May 4, 1738,
transcribed in Burrows and Dunhill (2002: 49).
2 Herodotus 7.31. The exact location of Kallatebos, the site of the plane tree, has not been
identified, but it was probably near present-day Uşak. It cannot have been as distant as Ine
Göl, as proposed by How and Wells (1912: 2:139).
3 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 16.238. George Seferis [Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades],
Μυθιστόρημα (1935), poem 15, in Keeley and Sherrard (1967: 36–7); Seferis (1950). See
Stubbings (1946).
4 Ambrosoli (1997: 7), referring to Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Lat. 337. On
Mattioli’s editions of Dioscorides, see Michael North, “Research Reborn: Dioscorides
and Mattioli.” Available online: circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2016/01/06/research-reborn-
dioscorides-and-mattioli/ (accessed April 3, 2021).
5 About 3 acres (Ash 1941: 13). “Quintius Cincinnatus obsessi consulis et exercitus liberator,
ab aratro vocatus ad dictaturam venerit, ac rursus fascibus depositis, quos festinantius victor
reddiderat, quam sumpserat imperator, ad eosdem iuvencos et quattuor iugerum avitum
herediolum redierit” (Columella, De re rustica 1.praef.). For Washington’s emulation of
Cincinnatus, see Wills (1994).
6 Mezzadria was finally abolished in Italy after the Second World War, by laws passed in
1964 and 1982. The current prosperity of the Tuscan countryside affords cogent proof of
how damaging the old feudal system was to human welfare and agricultural innovation.
Discussion of the topic still carries an immense political charge in Italy. A good introduction
is Snowden (1989: 8–70).
7 The classic work on climate history and the Little Ice Age is Lamb (1982) (often reprinted).
See also e.g. Free and Robock (1999).

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 NOTES 201

8 An early report on the discovery of the mosaics by Maria Antonietta Tomei of the
Archaeological Superintendency, Rome (now reshuffled as the Soprintendenza Speciale per
i Beni Archeologici di Roma, or SSBAR, spawn of the dread MIBACT, Ministero dei Beni e
delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo), news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6664941.stm (accessed
April 3, 2021).
9 My translation. First published by Angelo Ridolfi (1810: 61–6), this is letter 216, dated
December 10, 1513, in the one-volume Machiavelli edition of Ciliberto and Accendere
(2018: 2873–7).
10 The menus recorded by Rossetti (1584) mention tortelli di zucca frequently: 71, 100, 115,
177, 215, 241, 243, 318, 335, 350, 357, 404, 415, 421, 449, 510, tortelli stuffed with
sturgeon and squash, 487 (storione e zucche), and a dish with pieces of sturgeon and Zucca
marina di Chioggia (Cucurbita maxima) “pezzetti di storione impilotati con zucca marina.”
11 See Alex Revelli Sorini and Susanna Cutini, “Tortini di riso pel Moro,” with recipe.
Available online: www.taccuinistorici.it/ita/news/moderna/personaggi/Ludovico-il-Moro-e-
il-dolceriso.html (accessed April 3, 2021).
12 He also insisted on having a black-skinned valet, see Benzoni (2006).
13 Scythes had been known since antiquity, but were not used in Europe until the twelfth–
thirteenth centuries; see Bonicalzi et al. (1978: 20).
14 For “Spanish grass,” see Sider (2005). The word “alfalfa” has been known in English since
1764 (see Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com).
15 Bay (2019) is the primary source for this summary and provides a detailed analysis of this
garden.
16 As reported by Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII, who was Agostino’s younger
brother Sigismondo’s great-grandson, in Chisiae familiae commentarii, Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana, MS Chigi a.I.1, ff. 33v–34r (cf. Cugnoni 1879: 65): “Celsus quidem Cittadinus
vir eruditissimus narravit mihi malorum medicorum limoniorumque extitisse copiam
immensum, audisseque se dictitatum a suis maioribus Augustinum postulasse a patritio
quodam Neapolitano L. viviradices, habuisseque perhumaniter supra mille, omnesque inibi
sevisse.”
17 In a long poem called Suburbanum Augustini Chisii composed early in 1512, the humanist
Biagio Pallai, who wrote, as we have seen above, as Blosio Palladio, called Chigi’s Viridario
the “true home of Venus” (“haec Veneris sit vera domus; cui tota rubentis Pomonae et
viridis cesserunt Numina Florae”), and reassures Chigi that he is “rex animo” (Rowland
2005: 63).
18 Leonicenus 1492; Maria Conforti, “Testi antichi e nuovi saperi: botanica e materia
medica.” Available online: https://www-oed-com.udel.idm.oclc.org/view/Entry/4896?redi
rectedFrom=alfalfa#eid (accessed April 23, 2021); Paolo Pellegrini, Niccolò da Lonigo,
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 78 (2013), http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/niccolo-
da-lonigo_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ (accessed March 3, 2021).
19 Cynthia Pyle has traced the direct relationship between humanist literary scholarship and
empirical study of nature. See e.g. Pyle (1996, 2010).
20 The UNESCO citation is available online: whc.unesco.org/en/list/824 (accessed March 3,
2021).

Chapter 5
1 Rauwolf’s herbarium is in the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, University of
Leiden.
2 Cf. Blunt and Raphael (1979); Givens et al. (2006). Research since 2000 is modifying the
total numbers but not the trend.

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3 The Carrara Herbal (c. 1390–1405; Kyle 2017) and the Codex Bellunensis are in the British
Library. Both are available online: www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Egerton_
MS_2020 and at www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_41623 (accessed
April 3, 2021). The mid-fifteenth-century Codex Roccabonella (also Codex Benedetto Rinio)
is in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. The text that accompanies the images of the Carrara
Herbal is an Italian translation from medieval Latin. The Latin text of this originally Arabic
work remained influential to the early sixteenth century. It was printed in 1473 as Liber
Serapionis agregatus in simplicibus medicinis and in 1497 as Liber Serapionis de simplici
medicina.
4 Codex Bellunensis ff. 20r and 28v (tamarind), and 95v (acacia); see Mariani Canova et al.
(2006: 1:52–3).
5 This album is in the Wellcome Library, London, MS 336. Available online: wellcomelibrary.
org/item/b18763571# (accessed April 3, 2021).
6 Cibo’s albums are in the British Library, 2 vols, MS Add. 22332–3. Both volumes are
available online: www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_22332 and
www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_22333</URI> (accessed April
3, 2021). The text accompanying the images in the Cibo albums is from Pietro Andrea
Mattioli’s Italian version of Dioscorides (Mattioli 1544 and later editions).
7 The Cibo herbarium is in the Biblioteca Angelica, Rome; En Tibi in Naturalis, Leiden; the
Merini herbarium in the Museo di Storia Naturale in Florence; the Hurtado de Mendoza
herbarium in the Escorial Library, Madrid. The pages of En Tibi are available online:
http://bioportal.naturalis.nl/result?theme=en_tibi (accessed April 3, 2021). For surveys of
herbariums in Europe, see Hurka and Neuffer (2011); Stafleu (1987); and Thijsse (2016).
8 An example is MS 346, Herbarius, Latinus (c. 1490) with an inscription by Johann Reuchlin,
Wellcome Library, London.
9 The Gessner plant albums (c. 1540–65) are in the University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg
(Germany), Historia plantarum, 2 vols, c. 490 folios; and in the University Library of Tartu
(Estonia), more than 150 folios. The volumes at Erlangen are available online: gateway-
bayern.de/BV039778087 and gateway-bayern.de/BV040149451 (accessed April 3, 2021).
The Fuchs drawings (c. 1535/40–64) are in the Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Vienna, 9 vols. The Michiel albums (c. 1545–75) are in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice,
5 vols (730 species), see also Chapter 8 note 1 of this volume. These particular collections
originated in preparation for future publications.
10 The Oellinger herbal and the Camerarius Florilegium are in the University Library of
Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany). The Oellinger herbal is available online: gateway-bayern.
de/BV040687699 (accessed April 3, 2021).
11 Cesalpino’s work inspired Linnaeus and he has often, somewhat anachronistically, been
regarded as the latter’s forerunner.
12 The Garets are mentioned more often as sources than anyone else in Clusius’ Exoticorum
libri decem (1605); James Jr. forty times and Pieter thirty-two times, while James Jr. also
occurs fourteen times in Clusius’ Rariorum plantarum historia (1601).
13 Manuscript letters (9) from James Garet (Jr.) in London to Clusius (1583–1601, in French);
manuscript letters (7) from Pieter Garet in Amsterdam to Clusius (1601–5, in Dutch), all in
Leiden University Library, VUL 101. Cf. Egmond (2010: 175–207, esp. 202–3).
14 On its botanical results, see especially Pardo Tomás and López Piñero (1996); on its
publication history, Andretta and Brevaglieri (2013: 70–4) and Mason (2009: 149–72).
For more general Iberian colonial science and plants, see Cañizares-Esguerra (2006) and
Bleichmar et al. (2008).

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 NOTES 203

15 On Europeans bioprospecting in a colonial setting, see Schiebinger (2007).

16 Its first English translation appeared as early as 1598.
17 Four volumes of the Ratzenberger herbarium are in the Herzogliche Bibliothek Gotha,
three in the Naturkundemuseum im Ottoneum, Kassel (Germany).
18 The vicissitudes of the Early Modern intercontinental drugs trade lie beyond the scope
of this article, but see in particular Bartels (2003); Cook (2007); Fontes da Costa (2015);
Guerra (1966); Roberts (1965); Walker (2008, 2013).
19 Naturally, Europeans were by no means the only intermediaries involved in intercontinental
trade. See for such exchanges in the Portuguese empire especially Walker (2016).
20 Manuscript letter from James Garet to (September 9, 1589, in French); and manuscript
letter from Charles de Tassis to Clusius (January 25, 1589 in French), referring to Garet, the
potatoes and tomatoes; both Leiden University Library, VUL 101. Cf. Egmond (2010: 202–3).
21 Interestingly, Clusius did not incorporate Garet’s suggestion, and does not connect the
potato with the solanum family (1601: lxxix–lxxxi).
22 The text of the Spanish report of 1579–80 by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa is translated
and discussed in Mason (2015: 2). Modern edition of the original manuscript by Batista
González (2000).

Chapter 6
1 Rabelais (1546: 333–8); translation by M. A. Screech (2006). Lazzaro (1990: 24) discusses
this passage and its implications for botanical nomenclature.
2 See Peter Hainsworth’s introduction to Petrarch (2010: xxiii), for discussion of the poet’s
play on Laura’s name.
3 Note Jaynie Anderson’s comments on the lack of resemblance of Giorgione’s sitter and
Petrarch’s evocation of his beloved (1997: 475–6): “All Renaissance readers knew that
Petrarch’s Laura, as portrayed by Simone Martini, was blonde, that she had blue eyes, that
she was chaste, that she was an ideal beauty, and that she was unlike Giorgione’s Laura, who
is dark-haired, dark-haired, whose beauty is unidealised, and whose chastity is questionable.
The reference to Petrarch in both portraits is not a simple one, and suggests an ironic
paragone, both painters surpassing the poet’s description.”
4 By striking his hoof on Mount Parnassus, Pegasus created the spring Hippocrene (“horse
spring”), haunt of the Muses.
5 Ancient Carthage, whose site lies close to modern Tunis, was a Phoenician colony: hence
“defeating the Phoenicians.”
6 See also Paracelsus in Waite’s translation (1894: 189): “So the euphrasia or herba ocularis
is thus called because it cures ailing eyes. The sanguinary herb is thus named because it
is better than all others to stop bleeding. The scrofulary (chelidonium minus) is so called
because it cures the piles better than any other herb. And so with many other herbs, of
which I could cite a vast number, all of which were named on account of their virtue and
faculty …”
7 For a study of the centrality of metamorphosis in sixteenth-century culture, see Jeanneret
(2001).
8 As early as 1502, Pinturicchio was commissioned to decorate the Piccolomini Library in
Siena Cathedral “with such fantastic forms, colours and arrangements as are now called
grotesques (… che oggi chiamano grottesche).” See Kayser (1963: 20).
9 Nicolas Robert, Portrait de Gaston d’Orléans (1608–60). Original: Vélins, portefeuille 75
f. 2. Reproduction tirée de Archives du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, série 6 vol.
1, 1926.

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10 La Guirlande de Julie is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds français N.A.F.

19142, and is available online: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451620k (accessed
April 4, 2021).

Chapter 7
1 Although this may have represented revolutionary new thinking in England, it was not such
a new idea on the Continent. In 1576, Matthias de Lobel, a Flemish physician and botanist
of international reputation, published a book, Stirpium observationes or “Observations on
the history of plants” and, like Parkinson (who owned an extant copy of this book, heavily
annotated in his own hand), he included flowers and plants purely for their ornamental
value.
2 For more on depictions of gardens in Early Modern paintings, see Strong (2000).
3 These may seem somewhat exotic varieties to be growing in ordinary gardens, but it would
appear that their cultivation was commonplace: cucumbers had been grown in England
since medieval times: purchase of seeds appear in the accounts of the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s gardener at Lambeth for 1322 (Harvey 1974: 94) and notes on its cultivation
appear in an instruction manual on planting a kitchen garden written “for the helpe and
comfort of poore people” by Richard Gardiner of Shrewsbury (1599); in his Herball of
1597 John Gerard describes and illustrates seven kinds of cucumber, four kinds of melon,
seven kinds of pompions, and two types of gourd (762–78). They are referred to by
contemporary authors almost interchangeably, Gerard for instance noting that “doubtless
the Muske Melon is a kinde of Cucumber” (770). It has recently been brought to my
attention that “cucumbers,” as usually translated from early medieval European sources,
were not Cucumis sativus but Cucumis melo, or Chate melon (Paris et al. 2012).
4 The Oglander Manuscripts in the Isle of Wight Records Office are abbreviated to OG in
citations.
5 The outline of the garden as laid out by Sir Thomas Tresham, together with the famous
garden lodge, can still be seen at Lyveden today. The concentric circles which comprised
Tresham’s “moated orchard” were first identified from an aerial photograph taken in 1940
by a Luftwaffe pilot: Eburne (2008: 123). For more on the gardens at Lyveden New Bield,
see Eburne (2008: 114–34) and Dix (2011: 170–1).
6 For more on the rise of conspicuous consumption in the early seventeenth century, see Peck
(2005) and Thomas (2009: 110–46).
7 For a full discussion of this phenomenon, see Goldgar (2007), who convincingly argues that
the extremes of tulipmania have been vastly exaggerated, the known “facts” being based on
contemporary moralizing propaganda. For a brief period between the summer of 1636 and
the spring of 1637 tulips were remarkably expensive. Because tulip bulbs spend most of the
year out of sight beneath the ground, sales took the form of contracts not just for unseen
goods, but also unknown goods—the changes that could occur in the bulbs from one year
to the next were not always for the better. Contracts were passed on for higher and higher
sums, the potential for double-dealing was huge and when the time came, buyers could not
pay and sellers could not deliver. Not surprisingly, the bottom dropped out of this market
very quickly. That tulipmania happened is not disputed, but it did not have the seismic
effects on personal fortunes and the wider economy that we have been led to believe.
8 Sir Thomas Hanmer’s manuscripts in the Bettisfield Estate Records, National Library of
Wales, Aberystwyth, are abbreviated to B in citations.
9 For more on the lives and plant hunting exploits of the John Tradescants, see Leith-Ross
(1984).

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 NOTES 205

10 Sir Thomas Temple’s manuscripts in the Temple Family Papers, Huntington Library,
California, are abbreviated to ST in citations.
11 Sir Arthur Ingram’s papers among the Temple Newsam Manuscripts, West Yorkshire
Archive Service, Leeds, are abbreviated to WYL in citations.
12 John Harvey based this assertion on his study of early nurserymen and early plant catalogs,
where he found little evidence of commercial trade catalogs of seeds and plants for sale
until after 1660 (Harvey 1972, 1974). However, looking at this question from the point
of view of those buying the plants as opposed to those selling them suggests a different
conclusion.
13 Parkinson describes and illustrates two carnations named after Tuggie in Paradisus terrestris
(1629: 313); Thomas Johnson mentions Tuggie in his revised edition of Gerard’s Herball,
coupling his name with both John Parkinson and John Tradescant (Johnson 1633: 589,
785); while Tradescant himself notes in the back of his copy of Parkinson’s Paradisus
terrestris that he had “4 more Roses whereof Mr Tuggy Hathe two” (Leith-Ross 1984:
199).
14 Although it is impossible to know exactly what Oglander meant by “French flowers,”
comparing this with other contemporary evidence of flower enthusiasts who also obtained
plants and bulbs from France, often at high prices, it seems that there was some kind of
implied prestige attached to buying plants from the Continent. By the early seventeenth
century, the Continent, and particularly France, was seen as a primary source of everything
that was luxurious, stylish, and fashionable (see e.g. Francis 2018: 217; Peck 2005: 13).
Although Oglander gives no more details about the plants he has purchased, he clearly
thinks it is noteworthy that they are French.
15 See for instance, Strong (2000: fig. 44, Artist Unknown, “View of a complete garden in the
manner of de Vries’ Hortorum Formae,” c. 1620, and fig. 7.9).
16 As indicated in Sir John Oglander’s “Observations in husbandrie” OG/AA/28.

Chapter 8
1 The catalog Di sana pianta: Erbari e taccuini di sanità (1988) reproduces twenty-one of these
illustrations, probably by Domenico Dalle Grechi, from Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
Venice, MSS It, cl. II, 26–30. Michiel’s text has been published, but accompanied by only a
small selection of the illustrations reproduced in monochrome (De Toni 1940).
2 British Library MS Add. 22332 and 22333.
3 His albums are available online: http:137.204.21.141 (accessed April 7, 2021). The
Bologna collection of his printed works (some volumes hand-coloured) is also available
online: amshistorica.unibo.it/ulissealdrovandi-opereastampa (accessed April 4, 2021).
4 The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (M
917/945), is available online: www.themorgan.org/collection/Hours-of-Catherine-of-
Cleves/thumbs (accessed April 4, 2021).
5 In general, see Arano (1976). Manuscript versions of the Tacuinum Sanitatis can be found
at several online sites. The manuscript discussed here, now in the Austrian National Library,
has been published in facsimile, most recently in 2004 (Unterkircher), and is available
online: data.onb.ac.at/rep/10020524 (accessed April 4, 2021).
6 For more details see Riley (2007: 305–6).
7 There are two sources available online for these frescoes (neither of them very easy to find).
The older one indexes the plants: hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/udine/default.html (accessed
April 4, 2021). The newer one is a tour of the frescoes: vcg.isti.cnr.it/farnesina/ (accessed
April 4, 2021).

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 206 NOTES

8 This manuscript, now at the Getty Center, has been reproduced in facsimile (Hendrix and
Vignau-Wilberg 1992) and the facsimile is available online: https://www.getty.edu/art/
collection/objects/1487/joris-hoefnagel-and-georg-bocskay-mira-calligraphiae-monumenta-
flemish-and-hungarian-fols-1-129-written-1561-1562-illumination-added-about-1591-1-
596/ (accessed April 7, 2021).
9 See letter G in Casale (1996: 36–7); also Casale (1991: 120).
10 The album is available online: www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-T-BR-2017-1-1
(accessed April 4, 2021). See also www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/press/press-releases/tefafs-top-
masterpiece-to-the-rijksmuseum (accessed April 4, 2021).
11 The album, still at the Austrian National Library, is available online: https://onb.digital/
result/10009912 (accessed April 4, 2021).

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Martin de Victoria.
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Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. The Signature of All Things: On Method. New York: Zone Books.
Aʿlam, Hūšang. 1989. “Botanical Studies on Iran, i. The Greco-Islamic Tradition.”
Encyclopedia Iranica, IV(4): 390–401.
Alciatus, Andreas [Andrea Alciato]. 1531. Emblematum liber. Augsburg: Heinrich Steyner.
Alpagus Bellunensis, Andreas (ed.). 1527. Avicenne Liber canonis medicine. Venice: Junta.
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 CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Dalby, once a librarian at Cambridge University Library, UK, lives in France,
writes on food history (Siren Feasts, 1997; Empire of Pleasures, 2000; Food in the
Ancient World from A to Z, 2003; The Breakfast Book, 2015), and translates historical
sources on farming and food (Cato on Farming, 1998; Tastes of Byzantium, 2010;
Geoponika, 2011; The Treatise of Walter of Bibbesworth, 2012). His latest book, on
which he collaborated with his daughter Rachel, is Gifts of the Gods: A History of Food
in Greece (2017).

Florike Egmond is a Dutch historian who lives in Rome. She specializes in the cultural
and visual aspects of early modern natural history, and has worked for various research
projects based at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her most recent book is Eye for
Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500–1630 (2017).

Jill Francis is an independent researcher whose first monograph, Gardens and Gardening
in Early Modern England and Wales was published in 2018. She has devised and runs
garden history courses in the Midlands area and also lectures in early modern history at a
variety of institutions, including the universities of Birmingham and Worcester.

Annette Giesecke is a specialist in the history, meaning, and representation in literature

and the arts of ancient Greek and Roman gardens and designed landscapes. Her work
extends to Near Eastern garden traditions and cultural uses of plants in antiquity. She is
Professor of Classics at the University of Delaware, USA and is an Archaeological Institute
of America National Lecturer. Her books include A Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity
(ed. and contrib., 2022), The Mythology of Plants: Botanical Lore from Ancient Greece
and Rome (2014), and The Good Gardener? Nature, Humanity and the Garden (ed. and
contrib., 2015).

Elizabeth Hyde is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Kean University,
New Jersey, USA. Her first book, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the
Reign of Louis XIV (2005) explores the collection, cultivation, and political importance
of flowers in early modern France. She edited A Cultural History of Gardens in the
Renaissance, 1400–1650 (2013) and is currently writing Of Monarchical Climates and
Republican Soil: Nature, Nation, and Botanical Diplomacy in the Franco-American
Atlantic World.

David Marsh was awarded a PhD for a thesis on “The Gardens and Gardeners of Later
Stuart London” in 2005. A freelance lecturer and researcher, he is co-convenor of the
Garden History seminar at London University’s Institute of Historical Research and a
trustee of the Gardens Trust, for whom he writes a weekly garden history blog.

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 CONTRIBUTORS 233

Luke Morgan is Director of Art History at Monash University, Australia and an elected
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His most recent book is The Monster
in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design (2016).

Gillian Riley is a freelance food historian. Her publications include The Oxford Companion
to Italian Food (2007), Food in Art: From Prehistory to the Renaissance (2015), A Feast
for the Eyes (1995), and translations of Giacomo Castelvetro, The Fruit, Herbs and
Vegetables of Italy (1989, 2012) and Maestro Martino, Libro de Arte Coquinaria (2005).

Ingrid D. Rowland is based in Rome as a professor in the Department of History and the
School of Architecture of the University of Notre Dame, London, UK. Her books include
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (2008), Giordano Bruno: On the Heroic Frenzies
(2014), From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town (2014), The Collector of Lives:
Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art (with Noah Charney, 2017), and The Divine Spark
of Syracuse (2019).

Malcolm Thick is an historian of food and agriculture, and a regular attendee of the
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery and the Leeds Symposium on Food History
and Traditions. His most recent publication, “The Sale of Produce from Non-Commercial
Gardens in Late Medieval and Early Modern England” (2018, Agricultural History
Review, 66 (1): 1–17), won the 2019 Sophie Coe prize for food history. Malcolm is a
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

9781474273435_txt_rev.indd 233 02-09-2021 19:28:29

 INDEX

Note: Page locators in italic refer to figures.

Abbas I, Shah 6–7 Apadana Palace, Persepolis 99

acanthus 140–1 Apollo 111, 137, 138, 139, 140, 156
Acosta, Cristóbal 15, 71–2, 126 aquavit 49
Acosta, José 15, 66 arbor infelix 109
Aelian (Claudius Aelianus) 98, 108 architecture 7, 107, 114, 141
aemulatio 143–4 Arcimboldo, Giuseppe 180, 186–8, 189, 190
Aeneid 108, 111 Arenberg, Count Anton of 132
Aertsen, Pieter 186, 187 Ariosto, Ludovico 109, 110
agave 192 art and nature 145–7
agricultural tools 105–106, 106 artichoke (Cynara spp.) 86, 186, 193
agriculture, developments in 30–2, 93, 102, artificial plants 145–6
105–107 Asia 9, 15, 133
Alciato, Andrea 140, 141 plant discoveries in 63–5, 67, 128
alcoholic beverages 46–9, 65 spices from 57–63, 117, 133–4
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 177, 178, 180–2, 182, 188, trade routes to 82, 119
192, 194 treatises on medicinal plants from 126,
alfalfa 106 127, 130
Allegory of Summer 189, 191 asparagus 190, 193
aloe 89 auriculas 168, 169
Amador de los Rios, José 15, 20, 66, 67, 69, Aztecs 16, 22, 65, 129
92
‘Ambra’ 137–9 Bacon, Sir Francis 158, 174–5
Americas Badger, George Percy 58, 59, 61, 67
European interest in medicinal plants of banana/plantain (Musa spp.) 67
126, 128–30 banquets 26–7, 188
medicine from Europe reaching 132–3 barley (Hordeum vulgare) 33, 35, 37–9, 38, 49
plants appearing in European texts 15, Basket of Fruit 191
77–8, 126 Bauhin, Jean and Gaspard 125, 127
Spanish commissioning of plant research beans, consumption of 32, 34, 45, 50
16, 90–1, 129–30 tracked in paintings 190, 192
Spanish exploration and control of 12–13, (see also haricot bean (Phaseolus
82–3, 85–6, 88, 134 vulgaris))
transplanting of Old World plants to 1, beer 37, 39, 46, 48
21–2, 25–6, 66–9, 95, 134 Belon, Pierre 9, 15, 21, 55
transplanting of plants to Old World from Besler, Basilius 14, 124, 183
12–13, 20, 22–5, 41, 65–6, 69–75, Beuckelaer, Joachim 186, 186, 190
82–3, 85, 88, 95 Bimbi, Bartolomeo 192, 194, 194
analogy 144 bitter orange (Citrus x aurantium) 13, 21–2,
Anguillara, Luigi 121 67–9, 68
animal fodder 29, 32, 39, 50–3, 106 black pepper (Piper nigrum) 58–60, 59
Annunciation with Saint Egidius 184 Boccaccio 109–110
antipathy 144 Bocskay, Georg 188

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 INDEX 235

Boodt, Anselm Boethius de 188 cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) 58

Books of Hours 13, 68, 83, 183 carrots 50, 52
Bosse, Abraham 154, 155 cashew nut (Anacardium occidentale) 70–1,
Botanical Garden of Padua 98, 116, 120, 121 71–2, 199n12
Botanical Garden of Pisa 116, 124 cassava (Manihot esculenta) 20
botanical gardens 98, 116, 120, 121, 151, catalogues, plant
177, 180, 182–3 commercial trade 167, 205n12
astrological influences on layout of 144 of plant collections 151–2, 154, 165, 170,
in colonial settlements 134 177–8, 205n1
in England 93 of plants of distant origin 15–16
in Italy 98, 116, 120, 121, 124, 144, 182 Cavendish, Thomas 1–2, 13, 119
at Leiden 16, 180 Cecil, Sir Robert 162, 165
botany Cecil, Sir William 90
early modern 100–102, 120, 151 Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) 107
and illustration for collectors 180–3 Cesalpino, Andrea 125
and illustrations for naturalists 177–80 Château de Marly 156
increasing divide between herbal medicine chestnut (Castanea sativa) 33, 42, 112
and 118, 125–6, 136 chicha de molle 65
Bourdichon, Jean 13, 68, 83 Chigi, Agostino 13, 68, 83, 107, 109, 113–14,
Bracciolini, Poggio 9, 18, 58, 101, 102 185, 201n17
Brancion, Jean de 24 chilli (Capsicum spp.) 4, 12–13, 57, 72, 73–5,
Brazil 67, 69, 71, 72, 73–4, 129, 133 183, 195, 200n15, 200n16
bread grains 33–43 China 5, 7, 7–9, 8, 56, 57, 133
barley 33, 37–9 chocolate 66, 199n9
chestnuts 42 Cibo, Gherardo 116, 123–4, 123, 178, 179
maize 41–2 cider 49
millet, spelt and buckwheat 42–3 cinnamon (Cinnamomum spp.) 57–8, 67, 132
oats 39–41 canella bark mistaken for 11, 69, 75
rye 36–7 Columbus’ search for 11, 134
in times of famine 50 Peter Martyr on 20
wheat 33–6 citrus fruits 1, 13, 14, 21–2, 104, 184, 194
Bretagne, Anne de 13, 68, 83–5 bitter orange 13, 21–2, 67–9, 68
brewing 46, 48 classical antiquity
Brunfels, Otto 119, 125, 180, 195 arboreal traditions 97–9, 108–109, 110
buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) 32, 42, 44 and early modern plant knowledge
building materials 107 100–102
bulbs, flowering 91, 151, 152, 164, 166, 168, rediscovery of works on plant medicine 4,
174 15, 100, 115–16
planting times 175 symbolism in Renaissance gardens
(see also tulip) 111–15
classification systems, early attempts at 91,
cabinets of curiosities 80, 120, 150, 163, 116, 126, 154
182–3, 187–8 Clouet, François 190
Cabot, John 82, 83, 85 clover (Trifolium spp.) 51, 52
cacao beans (Theobroma cacao) 13, 26, 65–6 cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) 61–2, 63, 69
Cadamosto, Alvise 11 Clusius, Carolus 9, 12, 15, 16, 21, 55, 60, 61,
Camerarius the Younger, Joachim 25, 124, 69, 126, 127, 128, 133, 135, 163–4,
127, 144 177, 180, 182
Campi, Vincenzo 185–6, 190 on cashew nuts 71
canella bark (Canella winterana) 11, 69, 75 on chillies 73, 74, 75
caper (Capparis spinosa) 55, 81 on Chinese spices 56, 56, 118
Caravaggio 191–2 on cloves 62, 63

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 236 INDEX

Exoticorum libri decem 9, 16, 17, 25, 56, emblems 140–1

63, 125 marvels 145–7, 149
on molle 65 signifiers of power 148–50
on nutmeg 62 symbolic uses of laurel 137–40
on pepper berry 59 Cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) 192
Rariorum plantarum historia 13, 16, 118,
125, 180 Dante 109, 110, 111
on sunflowers 24, 25 Daphne 137–9, 138
on tamarind 63 De materia medica 14, 72, 100
on tomatoes 73 De Vos, P. 62, 66, 69, 134
on tulips 164 Diana 109–110, 112
visit to Seville 88–9 Díaz, Bernal 21–2, 26, 27, 65, 69, 75, 88
Clytie 148–9, 148 Dioscorides 4, 14, 57, 72, 90, 100, 101, 124,
coca (Erythroxylon coca) 19 127, 177
coconut (Cocos nucifera) 56 doctrine of signatures 141–5, 147
Codex Bellunensis 122 Dodoens, Rembert 9, 14–15, 22–4, 25, 125,
collection of plants (see plant collectors) 133, 135–6, 135, 180
Colón, Fernando 11, 12, 66 Drake, Francis 119
Colonna, Francesco 145–6 Dudley, Robert 90
Columbian Exchange 25–7, 56–7 Dűrer, Albrecht 51, 195
lines of transmission 18–22 Duret, Claude 143, 143, 145
from New World to Old World 12–13, 20, durian (Durio zibethinus) 64
22–5, 41, 65–6, 69–75, 82–3, 85, 88, 95 Dutch East India Company 62, 134
from Old World to New World 1, 21–2,
25–6, 66–9, 95, 134 ebony (Diospyros sp.) 2, 10, 107
Columbus, Christopher 2, 11, 12, 13, 82, 197n3 emblems, plants as 140–1
Cabot’s encounter with 83 England
on chillies 12–13 agriculture 30, 32
searching for spices 11–13, 75, 134 brewing 48
transfer of plants from New World 12–13, chillies 73
41, 82, 85 cider 49
transfer of plants to New World 21, 25–6, exploration of world beyond Europe 82,
66, 69 85, 119
Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus 101–102, grains 33–5, 36, 38–9, 40, 41
103 hop gardens 48, 102
compound medicines, printed instructions for improvements in horticulture 18–19, 81–2,
preparation of 126–7 93
Conti, Niccolò de’ 9, 58, 64 improving grazing land 52
convenientia 143, 144, 145 market towns 53
copying, chains of 122 wheat seed-to-yield ratio 36
Cortés, Hernán 26, 65, 69, 133 wine consumption 47
Cotán, Juan Sánchez 195 (see also gardens, English)
Credulity Tree 145 Erédia, Manuel Godinho de 130
Cretan herbs 55–6 estate management 156
Crivelli, Antonio 184 Euryale ferox 64, 199n7
crop rotation 106–107 exchange networks, plant 88, 91, 92–3, 93–4,
Cuba 12, 134 165–6
cubeb (Piper cubeba) 60, 199n6 exploration (see trade and exploration)
cucumber (Cucumis sativus) 25, 184, 204n3 eye diseases, plants to cure 142, 142
culture, plants in 137–56
cultural signifiers 150–6 famine 29, 30, 49–50
doctrine of signatures 141–5, 147 Fanshaw, Sir Henry 167, 170

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 INDEX 237

farming gardening books 18, 80, 90, 158, 160, 160,

books 18 161, 164–5, 171
developments in 30–2, 93, 102, 106–107 gardens
fashionable flowers 151, 152–4, 153 Ancient Roman 103, 104
Faustus, Dr. 78, 79 of Central and South America 88
Felici, Costanzo 3, 45, 177, 178–9 Chinese 7–9
Flegel, Georg 188–9, 191 collaboration of art and nature 146–7
flower arranging 7–8 convent and monastery 111
Forest of Matter 110 Dutch East India Company 134
forests 109–110 experimental transformations of plants
Foucault, Michel 5, 142–5, 147, 149, 153, 145–6
154 French 146, 151
The Four Elements: Earth 186 hospital 133
Fragoso, Juan 15, 24 irrigation technology 107
Frampton, John 89 Italian Renaissance 9, 21, 103, 104–105,
France 111–15, 120, 139–40, 145–6, 158,
agriculture 31 185
Bourbon kings 148, 150, 151, 156 Persian 6, 7
chestnuts 42 retiring to 103–104
cider and perry 49 (see also botanical gardens)
estate management 156 gardens, English 90, 92, 158–62
exploration of world beyond Europe 83, 85 and improvements in horticulture 18–19,
food crops 35, 36, 41, 42, 46 81–2, 93
garden produce 45 layout 158–9, 159, 162, 170, 171, 172,
gardens 146, 151 175, 204n5
plants as cultural signifiers 150–6 new ways of gardening 174–5
times of dearth and famine 50 orchards 3–4, 18–19, 161–2
wine 47 ornamental flowers 3, 170–4
Francesca, Piero della 141 produce 44, 45, 81, 204n3
“French flowers” 167, 173, 175, 205n14 Garet, James 19, 21, 91, 117, 119, 120, 128,
frescoes 13, 68, 83, 114, 115, 145, 183, 185 132, 134, 163, 164
fruit Garet, Pieter 19, 91, 119, 128
discoveries of 63–6 Garzoni, Giovanna 188, 192–4, 193
pineapple 20, 72, 86, 87 Gaston, duc d’Orléans 150, 151
transplanting 1, 66–9, 72–3 Gerard, John 3, 25, 90, 92, 93, 157, 163, 164,
(see also citrus fruits) 167
fruit orchards 1, 2, 8, 32, 49, 173 Herball 15, 25, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43,
improvements in cultivation 18–19, 81 44, 78, 83, 84, 88, 92, 93, 125, 164,
nurseries supplying plants 167 204n3
productivity and ornament of 3–4, 161–2 Germany 30–1, 47, 125
Fuchs, Leonhart 14, 57, 79, 80–1, 83, 88, grains 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43
124, 125, 180, 181 Gessner, Conrad 72–3, 121, 124, 133
Giles of Viterbo 110
galanga (Alpinia spp.) 60 ginger (Zingiber officinale) 60–1, 69
Galen 4, 56, 60, 120 Giovanni da Udine 13, 83, 114, 185
Gambara, Cardinal Gianfrancesco 113 grain
gardeners 160, 161, 172 bread 33–43
plant exchange networks 88, 91, 92–3, failure of harvests 49, 50
93–4, 165–6 -fermented alcohol, division of Europe
produce 43–5 between grape-fermented and 46–7
professional 92, 93, 165, 167 trade 35–6
wealthy ‘amateur’ 90, 92, 93–5, 160, 174 Grand Trianon 148–9, 148

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 238 INDEX

grapevine (Vitis spp.) 46, 102, 166 hop (Humulus lupulus) 31, 32, 48, 102
New World 26, 66, 198n12, 198n13 horticulture
training 160, 161 experiments in 194
Grassi, Giovannino de’ 183–4 improvements in 18–19, 81–2, 93
The Great Turf 50, 51, 195–6 London as centre of 91–3
Greek mythology 140, 156 new methods of 174–5
Clytie myth 148–9, 148 (see also gardens; gardens, English)
metamorphosis of Daphne 137–9, 138 hospitals 133
symbolism in Renaissance gardens 111–15 Hyll, Thomas 90, 160–1, 160, 161, 172
Grim Reaper 106, 106
grottesche 145 illustrations of plants 122, 124, 125
Grove, Richard 133, 134 for collectors 180–3
guaiacum (Guaiacum officinale) 128–9, 131, as cultural signifiers 151–2
132 move from less stylized to more accurate
guava (Psidium guajava) 65 14, 122, 154–5, 155
for naturalists 177–80
Hakluyt, Richard 2, 9, 10, 91 India 9, 67, 83, 119, 130, 132
Handel, Georg Friedrich 97–8 ginger farming 61
Hanmer, Sir Thomas 164, 166–8, 173–4, 175 introduction of cashew to 71–2
haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) 2, 13, 45, 84 medicinal plants 56, 126, 130, 133
Hariot, Thomas 24 spices 58–60
Harrison, William 16, 18–19, 33, 36, 47, 48, trade routes to 82, 119
81–2, 160 indigenous knowledge 86, 88, 90–1, 129, 130
Hartlib, Samuel 49, 52, 93 Ireland 41, 46, 49
Hatton, Christopher 90 irrigation technology 105, 107
hay 52 Italy 45, 102, 124, 158
heliotrope 149, 150 chestnuts 42, 112
herbals creation of Venice 107–108
comparative visual materials and descriptions grains 35, 36, 42, 105
124 maize 41–2
copying 122 mezzadria 102, 200ch4n6
distribution outside Europe 133 olives 45–6
manuscript 14–15, 121–4, 129 Renaissance gardens 9, 21, 103, 104–105,
printed 121, 122, 124–8, 133, 190 111–15, 120, 139–40, 145–6, 158, 185
Herbert, Thomas 1–2
herbs 161, 190, 203n6 James I, King 93
Cretan wild 55–6 Jesuits 129, 133
flavouring alcohol 48, 49 Jones, John Winter 58, 59, 61, 67
indigenous knowledge of 135–6
in kitchen gardens 81, 160, 161 kitchen gardens 44–5, 81, 204n3
medicinal 120, 126, 129, 133–4 kvas 48
use in cooking 190, 191
(see also botanical gardens) la Bruyère, Jean de 152–3
Hercules 111–12, 113 la Fosse, Charles de 148, 148, 149
Heresbach, Konrad 18, 31, 40, 42 The Large Piece of Turf 50, 51, 195–6
Hernández, Francisco 16, 24, 25, 72, 73, Laura 139, 203n3
90–1, 129 laurel (Laurus nobilis) 111, 137–40, 141, 150
Herodotus 98 le Moine de Morgues, Jacques 190
Herrtage, Sidney J. 39 Leate, Nicholas 92–3, 95
Hesperides 111, 112 lemon (Citrus x limon) 1, 21, 104, 184
Hoefnagel, Joris 13, 188 Leonardo da Vinci 105, 139, 144
Holinshed, Raphael 16, 81 Leoniceno, Niccolò 115–16

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 INDEX 239

Léry, Jean de 67, 69, 72, 74–5 Martyr d’ Anghiera, Peter 11, 20, 21, 26, 69,
Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum herbis 85, 86, 198n13
(Little Book of the Medicinal Herbs of marvels, plants as 145–7, 149
the Indians also known as Codex de la mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) 11
Cruz Badianus) 129 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea 14, 72, 100, 121, 127,
Ligozzi, Jacopo 192 177, 180
Linschoten, Johannes Huygen van 2, 130 Maudslay, A.P. 21–2, 69
Lobel, Matthias de 80, 91–2, 125, 126, 204n1 media and readership, changing 9–10, 121–8
Lockey, Rowland 159, 159 Medici, Cosimo de’ 104–105, 116
London Medici family 139, 185, 192, 194
brewing 48 Medici Francesco I de’ 140
as centre of horticulture 91–3 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 137–9, 193
commercial nurseries 166–9 medicinal gardens (see botanical gardens)
community of apothecaries, physicians and medicine and plants 117–36
botanists 91–2 changing media and readership 121–8
cosmopolitan nature of 78–80, 91 changing relations between Europe and
markets 53–4 rest of world 119–21
long pepper (Piper longum) 60, 128 circulation patterns of herbs and knowl-
Lopes, Fernão 1 edge 133–4
Louis XIV, King 148, 151, 156 classical texts 4, 15, 100, 115–16
Low Countries 31, 42, 48, 50, 53 Cretan herbs 55–6
painting 186, 186, 187, 188, 190 to cure eye diseases 142, 142
soil improvement 50–1 details lost in transport and translation 131
(see also Netherlands) development of knowledge based on obser-
Lubbock, Tom 196 vation 120
Lucullus, Lucius Licinius 103 from Europe reaching Far East and New
luxury foods, plants as 55–76 World 132–3
cultural preferences 75 European interest in plants from Asia and
discoveries in East and West 63–6 New World 126, 128–30
spices 57–63 European response to knowledge from
transplanting from New World to Old other continents 130–2, 133–6
69–75 field trips in Europe to search for 121
transplanting from Old World to New medicine chests 132
66–9 pharmacopoeias 126–7
Lyveden New Bield 162, 204n5 practitioners in plant medicine 119–20
specialization and disciplinary split 118,
Machiavelli, Niccolò 103 126–7, 136
MacNutt, Francis Augustus 11, 20, 26, 69 Western texts on new 15, 88–9, 126
Madonna della Vittoria 184 melegueta pepper (Aframomum melegueta)
Madonna, images of 109, 113, 139, 184 58
Magellan, Ferdinand 10, 61 melon (Cucumis melo) 25, 92, 160, 204n3
maize (Zea mays) 41–2, 41, 85, 88, 185 Mendoza
Columbus’ misidentification of 12, 19–20 banquet 26–7
introduction in Europe 19–20, 31 herbarium 129
Malinalco, Augustinian monastery of 26, 27 Mendoza y Vargas, Francisco de 22, 69
mandrake (Mandragora) 74, 154, 155 Mexico 13, 22, 26, 73
mango (Mangifera indica) 64 cacao 65–6
Mantegna, Andrea 184 catalogue of Nahuatl plant names 16, 24
Market Scene 187 experimental plantings of Asian spices 22, 69
markets for produce, development of 53–4 Hernández’s trip to 16, 24, 90–1, 129
Markham, Gervase 18, 47, 67, 89, 158–9 paradise murals in monastery of Malinalco
Marlowe, Christopher 9, 78, 79, 80, 85 26, 27

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 240 INDEX

millet (Setaria italica or Panicum miliaceum) Padua (see University of Padua)

42 Palladio, Andrea 102, 116
Mills, J.V.G. 58, 60, 64, 67 pantagruelion 147
molle/Peruvian pepper (Schinus molle) 65 papaya (Carica papaya) 133
Monardes, Nicolás 4, 15, 24, 25, 69, 88, 89, Paracelsus 141, 142
126, 180 Parkinson, John 3–4, 18, 23, 68, 74, 88,
Montausier, Charles de 151 94, 94, 95, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163,
Montezuma 69, 88 164–5, 167, 169, 170, 175
Morgan, Hugh 132 on beans 45
Mostaert, Jan 88 on eating sunflowers 25
Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban 195 on root crops 50
Myers, Kathleen Ann 86 on spring-flowering bulbs 174
on strawberries 22
naming plants 154 on tobacco 12
(see also classification systems, early on tomatoes 73, 76
attempts at) on yucca 95
nature and art 145–7 Passe II, Crispijn van de 152, 153
‘nature as model’ 147 pasture land 50–3
Navarrete, Martin Fernandez de 3, 11, 12, 66, Payne, W. 39
73, 82 peanut (Arachis hypogaea) 65
Netherlands 114–15, 119, 125 Pena, Petrus 91
tulip trade 115, 152, 163 peony 7
(see also Low Countries) Persia 5–6, 6, 89, 99, 103
Norden, John 32, 52 Xerxes and his plane tree 97–8
nurseries, commercial 166–9, 205n12 Peruvian pepper/molle (Schinus molle) 65
nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) 61, 62 Petrarch, Francesco 139
pharmacopoeias 126–7
oak (Quercus spp.) 104, 109, 111, 146 Philip II, King 90, 129, 132, 194
oats (Avena sativa) 35, 39–41, 40 Pigafetta, Antonio 57, 61, 62
Oellinger, Georg 124 pineapple (Ananas comosus) 20, 72, 86, 87
Oglander, Sir John 160, 167, 173, 175 plane tree (Platanus orientalis) 97–9, 112,
The Old Man of Artimino 183–4 116
olive (Olea europaea) 45–6 plant collectors 92, 120, 150–4, 163, 165
Ombra mai fu 97, 98 botany and illustration for 180–3
oranges (see bitter orange (Citrus x auran- presaging age of commissioned collections
tium)) 93–5
orchards (see fruit orchards) Plato 110
ornaments, plants as natural 157–75 Plato’s Academy 103–104
availability of new, exotic plants 162–5 Pliny the Elder 104, 108, 124
colour throughout the year 174 Leoniceno’s critique of 115–16
commercial nurseries 166–9 Pliny the Younger 97, 99, 104
flower gardens 170–4 Poggio a Caiano 139, 194
informal networks of exchange 165–6 Poland 30, 36, 39, 42, 47, 92
and new methods of gardening 174–5 garden produce 44–5
and new spirit of conspicuous consumption wheat exports 35–6
8, 157–8, 163 Poliziano, Angelo 116
types and uses of gardens 158–62 Pollaiuolo, Piero dal 137–8, 138
Orta, García de 15, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, poncier 21
67, 89, 127, 130, 180 Porta, Giovanni della 141, 142, 142
Ovid 137, 139, 148–9 Portugal 36, 41, 71–2
Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo de 15, 65–6, 66–7, colonies 62, 66, 72, 73, 81, 129–30,
72, 85–6, 87, 88 132–3

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 INDEX 241

exploration of world beyond Europe 82, Russia 30, 36, 42, 49

83, 89, 119, 130 rye (Secale cereale) 33, 35, 36, 37
Treaty of Tordesillas 83, 85
potato (Solanum tuberosum) 21, 105, 128, Saint Helena 1–2, 2
131, 134 Santa Maria del Popolo 109
power, plants as signifiers of 148–50 sarsaparilla (Smilax sp.) 130
pumpkin (Cucurbita spp.) 83–5, 84, 194, 194 Savery, Roelant 190
purslane (Portulaca oleracea) 2–3 Scandinavia 39, 41, 49
scented plants 161
Qāsem Abūnaṣrī Heravī 5–6 Scotland 40–1, 49
Quattrami, Evangelista 119–20 scriptores de re rustica 18, 102, 103
quinine 129 scythes 105–106
Scythian Lamb 143, 143, 145
Rabelais, François 137, 147 Seferis, George 97, 99
Raleigh, Walter 9, 10, 92 Serés, Guillermo 22, 26, 27, 62, 65, 88
Raphael 111, 115, 185 serfdom 30
Rauwolf, Leonhart 15, 121 Serres, Olivier de 156
rediscovery, discovery and 4, 9, 13–18, 55, Serse (Xerxes) 97–8
56–7, 120 Shakespeare, William 109
of spices 56, 57–63 Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum sp.) 56, 56
religious communities 110, 119–20, 133 Sidney, Sir Robert 157, 166
Renaissance gardens, Italian 9, 21, 103, signatures, doctrine of 141–5, 147
104–105, 111–15, 120, 139–40, 145–6, silphium 121
158, 185 Spain
representation of plants 177–96 agriculture 31, 106, 107
botany and illustration for collectors 180–3 chillies 73, 195
cultural signifiers 151–2, 156 cider 49
frescoes 13, 68, 83, 114, 115, 145, 183, city markets 53
185 commissioning of plant research in Americas
move from less stylized to more accurate 16, 90–1, 129–30
14, 122, 154–5, 155 custom houses for American imports 85
naturalists and botanical illustration exploration of world beyond Europe
177–80 12–13, 82–3, 85–8, 134
paradise murals in monastery of Malinalco food plants depicted in fine art 195
26, 27 grains 35, 36, 39
Persian floral and foliate decoration 7 maize 41, 88
realism in illustration and fine art 183–90 medicinal plant trade 89, 128, 129
signifiers of power 150 plants from New World 20, 41, 66, 83, 85,
still life 152, 184, 190–5 88, 95
Reresby, Sir John 170–3 plants to New World 21–2, 25–6, 66, 69,
resemblance 141–5, 147 95
rice 105 Treaty of Tordesillas 83, 85
Robert, Nicolas 150, 151, 154 wine 46, 47
Robertson, James Alexander 10, 62 specialization 122, 123–4, 126–7, 136
Romania 35, 42 Speckle, Rudolph 180, 181
Romans, Ancient 98, 100, 102, 107 spelt (Triticum aestivum) 42, 43
scriptores de re rustica 18, 102, 103 spices 56, 57–63, 117
veneration of trees 108–109, 110 circulation routes 133–4
villa life 103, 104 Columbus’ search for 11–13, 75, 134
root crops 50, 52 methods for identifying potential sources
rose (Rosa) 5–6, 95, 111 of 11–12
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 187–8, 189 transplanting oriental, in Mexico 22, 69

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 242 INDEX

spirits 46, 49 tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) 13, 72–3, 74,

squash (Cucurbita spp.) 74, 83–5, 84, 105, 75–6, 105, 177, 183, 195, 199n14,
194, 194, 195 200n17
Stanley of Alderley, Lord 62 Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de 154
staple foods, plants as 29–54 trade and exploration 77–95
alcoholic beverages 46–9 books on 10–13, 15
animal fodder 29, 32, 39, 50–3 changing relations between Europe and
bread grains 33–43 rest of world 119
developments in agriculture 30–2 establishing the new 86–90
garden produce 43–5 Hernández’s trip to Mexico 16, 24, 90–1,
imports 29 129
markets, development of 53–4 impact on English gardens 81–2
olives 45–6 importance of exotic plants 77–8
in times of famine 29, 30, 49–50 London as a hub of 78–80, 91–3
star anise (Illicium verum) 1–2, 117, 118 Netherlands at centre of plant 114–15
still life 152, 184, 190–5 new interest in gardening 93
Stonehouse, Reverend Walter 170, 171 New Worlds and their plants 82–3
strawberry (Fragaria spp.) 22 obtaining exotic specimens 93–5
sugar cane (Saccharum spp.) 66, 69 in Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean 89
sunflower (Helianthus annuus) 22–5, 131, plant exchange networks 88, 91, 92–3,
144, 148, 149–50, 198n9 93–4, 165–6
Surflet, Richard 33, 36, 42, 46–7, 49, 50 pumpkins 83–5
sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) 112 Spanish control of Americas 85–6
sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) 20 transportation of seeds and bulbs 91
symbolism 108, 111–15, 137–40 Tradescant the Elder, John 164, 165, 167, 170
sympathy 144 Transylvanus, Maximilianus 57, 61, 62
Treaty of Tordesillas 83, 85
Tacuinum Sanitatis (Maintenance of Health) treehouses 146–7
183 trees
tamarind (Tamarindus indicus) 63, 122, 124 in classical antiquity 97–9, 108–109, 110
technology and science 97–116 Daphne’s metamorphosis 137–9, 138
agricultural developments 105–107 Madonna icons hanging in 109
building materials 107 Renaissance forests in art and literature
classical tradition and early modern plant 109–110
knowledge 100–102 Tresham, Sir Thomas 162, 204n5
natural philosophy and knowledge of Tuggie, Ralph 167, 168, 205n13
plants 115–16 tulip (Tulipa) 114, 115, 152, 153, 163–4, 175
plant lore from classical antiquity 97–9 mania 153, 163, 204n7
symbolic gardens 111–15 turmeric (Curcuma longa) 60, 61
trees 108–110 Turner, William 73, 77, 80
use of timber 107–108 turnips 50, 52
villa life in Ancient Rome and Renaissance Tusser, Thomas 18, 36, 39
Italy 103–105
Temple, Sir Thomas 165–6, 173 Ulloa, Alfonso 11, 12, 26, 66
terebinth (Pistacia atlantica) 55 university medicinal botany chairs 120
theriac 120 University of Padua 14, 120
Thirsk, Joan 32, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 45, 49, botanical garden 98, 116, 120, 121
53, 54
Thomas More and Family 159, 159 Valckenborch the Elder, Lucas van 188–9
timber 107–108, 112 Varro, Marcus Terentius 102, 103
tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) 12, 32, 131, 134 Varthema, Ludovico di 56, 58–9, 61, 64, 67

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 INDEX 243

Vasari, Giorgio 21, 146–7 vodka 49

Vatican 113, 139, 185 Voynich manuscript 122
Vaughan, Rowland 52
Vega, Garcilaso de la 15, 19, 65, 67, 72, Ware Park 167, 170, 175
73 Wedding in Bermondsey 188
Velasquez, Diego 195 Weiditz, Hans 125, 195
vélins 151 West Indies 11, 13, 60, 72, 75, 89, 95, 126
Venice 107–108 Weston, Sir Richard 52
Venus 114 wheat (Triticum spp.) 33–6, 34
Vergil 102, 108–109, 111 whisky 49
Vertumnus – Rudolf II 187, 189 wine 46, 47, 102
Villa d’Este, Tivoli 111–13, 112, 120, 146 division of Europe between grain fermented
Villa Farnesina (formerly Chigi) 68–9, 83, alcohol and grape fermented 46–7
113–14, 115, 185 Winter’s bark (Canella winterana) 11, 69, 75
Villa Lante 113, 139 Worlidge, John 45
villa life 103–105
Villa Medicea di Castello 9, 21, 104–105, Xerxes 97–8
146–7
Villa Medici, Pratolino 140, 146 yucca 94, 95
vines (see grapevine (Vitis spp.))
violet (Viola) 101 Zhang Qiande 7–8
Vitruvius 107, 114, 141 zoophytes 143, 143, 145

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