Gessner - Historia Plantarum - 1541

The First Code of the Plant Kingdom: The Young Gessner Challenges the Chaos of Nature
First Edition
Young and foundational work of scientific thought by Conrad Gessner, the Historia plantarum marks the birth of a new botanical discipline, based on taxonomic rigor and the desire to unify ancient and vernacular nomenclature. Published in Paris in 1541, when the author was just twenty-five, it is Gessner's first printed work and one of the rarest testimonies of 16th-century naturalistic thought. The pocket-sized work, intended for physicians and apothecaries, seeks to restore a rational order to the plant world, connecting the tradition of Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and Pliny with the empirical observations of modern Europe.
Market value
Rarest first Paris edition from 1541, published by Ioannes Lodoicus Tiletanus, with only one copy currently found on the international antiquarian market, offered at over 23,000 euros. The reprints from Basel and Venice of the same year appear more frequently but with lower valuations. The described copy, complete, in elegant late 18th-century binding, with contemporary annotations, ranks among the highest-quality collectible copies.

Physical description and condition - collector's copy
Beautiful and perfectly preserved, 18th-century binding in full red Morocco leather with triple gold fillet on the covers, richly decorated compartments on the spine, lacework on the endpapers, gilded edges, and a blue silk bookmark. The title pages are rubricated in various colors by a later hand. Excellent condition, with fresh and firm pages, occasional foxing, and slight stains. Numerous contemporary marginal notes in the text. The A gathering, containing the preface and index, was bound at the end by mistake of the binder, but the volume is complete and collated. Pp. (4); 2nn; 262; (2); 14; (4).

Full title and author
The History of Plants
In Paris, at John Lodoicus Tiletanus, 1541.
Conrad Gessner

Context and Significance
This work, compiled from Dioscoride, Theophrastus, Pliny, and other Greek and Latin authors, is the first comprehensive attempt at an alphabetical classification of plants. Gessner's goal was to create a coherent repertoire of Latin, Greek, and vernacular names used to identify the same species, eliminating confusion caused by synonyms and linguistic corruptions. His method, based on the analysis of seeds and floral structures, anticipates Linnaean systematics and forms the starting point for modern descriptive botany. As noted in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (V, p. 379), 'Gessner was practically the only botanist of his time to understand the importance of floral structures as a means to establish a systematic key for classifying plant life.'

Printing history and circulation
First Paris edition of 1541, followed in the same year by editions in Basel and Venice. The workshop of Ioannes Lodoicus Tiletanus printed the volume with sharp characters and a manageable size, intended for medical students and apothecaries. The work was widely circulated in the medical-pharmacological environment, but the surviving copies of the original edition are now extremely rare.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Garrison-Morton 1807; Pritzel 3297; Wellisch A 3.1; D.S.B., V, p. 379.
See also J. Morton, Conrad Gesner and the Renaissance of Natural History, Oxford, 1972; L. Baldini, The Botany of the Renaissance, Florence, Olschki, 2000.