- Source: De historia stirpium commentarii insignes
De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Latin for Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants) is a book by Leonhart Fuchs on herbal plants published in Basel in 1542. The work covers about 497 plants and has over 500 woodcut illustrations. Over 100 of the plants in the book were first descriptions.
De historia stirpium was illustrated by Albrecht Meyer (who made drawings based on the actual plants), Heinrich Füllmaurer (who transferred the drawings to woodblock), and Vitus Rudolph Speckle (who cut the blocks and printed the drawings).
History
Fuchs tried to identify the plants described by the classical authors. Over a decade, he began to prepare for the publication of his herbal. He stocked the garden attached to his house with rare specimens solicited from friends around Europe, and he assembled a large botanical library.
De historia was initially published in Latin and Greek and quickly translated, with varying degrees of fidelity to his text, into German as New Kreüterbuch in 1543, "The New Herbal" in English and Den nieuwen Herbarius, dat is dat boeck van den cruyden (1543) in Dutch. During Fuchs' lifetime the book went through 39 printings in Dutch, French, German, Latin, and Spanish and 20 years after his death was again translated into English.
Structure
De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes (Notable commentaries on the history of plants) contains the description of about 400 wild and more than 100 domesticated plant species and their medical uses (Krafft und Würckung) in alphabetical order. Fuchs made no attempt at presenting them in a natural system of classification. The first reports of Zea mays and of chili peppers were among the exotic new species. The text is mainly based on Dioscorides. Plants were identified in German, Greek, and Latin, and sometimes English.
The book contains 512 pictures of plants, largely growing locally, in woodcuts. The illustrators were Heinrich Füllmaurer and Albrecht Meyer, and the woodcutter Veit Rudolph Speckle, portraits of whom are contained in the volume. It was printed at the shop of Michael Isengrin in Basel in 1542.
Reception
On publication, Fuchs' herbal set new standards in terms of scholarship and illustration, but was too erudite and too expensive to replace existing herbals.
Legacy
Its appeal to gardeners, botanists, bibliophiles, and the casual viewer was immediate, while the clarity of its plant pictures continues to define a standard for botanical illustrators.
The University of Glasgow states that it is considered a landmark work in its field. Stanford University Press considers it one of the best illustrated books of all time and a masterpiece of the German Renaissance. It set a new standard for accuracy and quality, as well as being the first known publication of plants from the Americas, such as pumpkin, maize, marigold, potato, and tobacco.