Alpini De plantis Aegypti 1592 Venice, F. de Franceschi di Siena, 1592
2 parts in one vol., 4to (230 x 162 mm), ff [4] 80 [recte 84][8], with printer's device on both titles and 50 woodcuts in text, many full-page; title a bit dusty, faint marginal waterstain to preliminary leaves, a very nice, crisp copy in contemporary vellum. £3200
First edition of the first work on the plants of Egypt. Prospero Alpini (1553-1617) was a physician and botanist who graduated from Padua. In 1580 he became personal physician to the Venetian consul to Cairo travelled to Egypt where he resided until 1583. 'Alpini was among the first of the Italian physician-botanists of the sixteenth century to examine plants outside the context of their therapeutic uses. Although he shared his contemporaries reverence for the past, he helped to advance the frontiers of botanical science by taking advantage of knowledge gained through his travels.
'From a scientific point of view, the De plantis Aegypti 91592) is his most important work. The pioneer study of Egyptian flora, it introduced exotic plants to the still-parochial European botanical circles...Fifty-seven plants and trees are described, and forty-none are illustrated. Alpini's medical training led him to approach the new flora in the traditional manner of attempting to correlate these plants with the names and descriptions found in classical sources. When this proved impossible, he described the plant under its local name. The descriptions are based upon specimens that Alpini personally examined, either cultivated in gardens or growing wild. This in itself provided a much-needed corrective to the fables and vague reports associated with Eastern plants. Among the plants previously undescribed in a European botanical text were the coffee bush (Coffee arabica L.), banana (Musa sp.), and baobab (Adansonia digitata L.)...Alpini observed that the fertilization of the date palm was a sexual process, described the phototropic movements of the leaves of the tamarind, speculated that the tree cotton was the byssos of the ancients, and noted the edibility of plants unknown in Europe, such as bammia or okra' (Jerry Stannard in DSB).
The second work, first published in 1591, is 'an early special treatise on balsam plants. According to Sprengel the balsam here principally dealt with is the species Amyris, which Bartholinus is said to have seen in Alpini's garden at Padua. The present book started a rather extensive literature on the subject, which was discussed throughout the 17th century' (l'Art Ancien).
The fine woodcuts are large and clear, in the Mattioli style.
Durling 179; Hunt 164; Johnston 136; Nissen BBI 20; Osler 1799
£3200
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