HEDWIG, JOANNE. FUNDAMENTUM HISTORIAE NATURALIS MUSCORUM FRONDOSORUM CONCERNENS EORUM FLORES, FRUCTUS, SEMINALEM PROPAGATIONEM ADIECTA GNERUM DISPOSITIONE METHODICA ICONIBUS ILLUSTRATIS. Lipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusium, 1782
4to. Contemporary leather with tooled spine into panels which contain stamped gilt floral pattern. Title on separate leather with loss. Internal condition good with intermittent minor to moderate foxing. Copper plates very good. Collation: xxiii [1] 112 + 10 engraved plates; 107 [1] + 10 engraved plates. This is two volumes in one with separate title pages, Pars I; Pars II.
Scarce major work on the classification of mosses. Hedwig was a German physician and professor of Botany in Leipzig who was an authority on mosses and is the founder of the field of Bryology, the study of mosses. The moss genus Hedwigia is named after him. He is known to have collected plants in the morning before visiting patients and then working on these specimens in the evening. He figured out the reproductive cycle of mosses with the alternation between sexual and asexual generations. His research also yielded information to separate lichens from mosses. (2 copies in OCLC) (Nissen, 827; Pritzel, 3878; Plesch, 329)
$US4000
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