The Herball or generall Historie of Plantes [5 xilografie botaniche] - 1597

We offer 2 sheets, one with 3 and the other with 2 wood engravings of plants drawn for John Gerard's The Herball or generall Historie of Plantes in his first edition of 1597.

Gerard was the most prestigious plant scholar in the English sphere, alongside William Turner (circa 1508–1568) and John Parkinson (1567–1650); a careful observer, gardener and enthusiastic collector, skilled and brilliant in writing, John Gerard was in fact a barber-surgeon, but he will go down in history as a botanist by virtue of this work.

The 2 sheets are in excellent condition with a slight marginal browning; they depict in total 5 plants, indicating the Latin and English names. Since nomenclature was still far from standardized at the time, these are the common names of the period, not scientific ones.

The first sheet shows plants with dense leaves: Mercurialis mas and next to it the variant Mercurialis foemina, a herbaceous plant common both in plains and in hills. At that time, the position of the flowers at the base of the leaves rather than grouped in inflorescences determined the idea of the plant's sex.
On the back of the sheet is shown Parietaria, a wall-loving plant, from which its name derives, a cause of allergies and similar to the nettle.

On the second sheet appear Lycium, sive Pyxacantha, with beside it Lycium Hispanicum. The first is a Mediterranean spiny shrub with succulent berries, the second a supposed, at the time, typical variant of Spain, but devoid of spines.

All five wood engravings feature an old, delicate coloration.

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