CASPAR COMMELIN (1667/8-1731) Praeludia Botanica ad Publicas Plantarum exoticarum demonstrationes, dicta in Horto Medico, cum demonstrationes exoticarum 3 Octobris 1701, & 29 Maii 1702. Leiden: Frederick Haringh, 1703. Final blank. 33 engraved plates by Pieter Sluyter, one folding. (Without the two unsigned leaves of text required between H4 and I1, small tear to folding plate, tear to lower blank margin of plate 29, some light old marginal dampstaining.) Later old-style marbled-paper boards, letterpress title-label on backstrip. First edition, "important because of the first description of a number of South African plants" (Stafleu). Caspar Commelin (or Commelijn) succeded his uncle Jan Commelin as Professor of Botany and director of the Botanical Gardens at Amsterdam, at a time when South African flowers were being introduced to Europe through the agency of the Dutch East India Company. In the present work and his later work Hortus medici Amsterdamensis (1706) Commelin recorded these introductions. The succulents -- the Aloes in particular -- make up the largest group in the work, but, paradoxically, the most important individual plant recorded from a horticultural point-of-view, is not a succulent but the Geranium africanum . Figure 1 and the subsequent description fixes the date of introduction of what is the ancestor of most of the geraniums in modern gardens. The unsigned gathering is lacking in a number of copies (e.g the Massachusetts Horticultural Society copy) but should be bound between pp.64 and 67. It takes the form of two leaves describing the Aloe Americana Polygona . Dunthorne 80; Hunt 405; Nissen BBI 388; Pritzel 1836; Stafleu & Cowan 1185.
CASPAR COMMELIN (1667/8-1731) Praeludia Botanica ad Publicas Plantarum exoticarum demonstrationes, dicta in Horto Medico, cum demonstrationes exoticarum 3 Octobris 1701, & 29 Maii 1702. Leiden: Frederick Haringh, 1703. Final blank. 33 engraved plates by Pieter Sluyter, one folding. (Without the two unsigned leaves of text required between H4 and I1, small tear to folding plate, tear to lower blank margin of plate 29, some light old marginal dampstaining.) Later old-style marbled-paper boards, letterpress title-label on backstrip. First edition, "important because of the first description of a number of South African plants" (Stafleu). Caspar Commelin (or Commelijn) succeded his uncle Jan Commelin as Professor of Botany and director of the Botanical Gardens at Amsterdam, at a time when South African flowers were being introduced to Europe through the agency of the Dutch East India Company. In the present work and his later work Hortus medici Amsterdamensis (1706) Commelin recorded these introductions. The succulents -- the Aloes in particular -- make up the largest group in the work, but, paradoxically, the most important individual plant recorded from a horticultural point-of-view, is not a succulent but the Geranium africanum . Figure 1 and the subsequent description fixes the date of introduction of what is the ancestor of most of the geraniums in modern gardens. The unsigned gathering is lacking in a number of copies (e.g the Massachusetts Horticultural Society copy) but should be bound between pp.64 and 67. It takes the form of two leaves describing the Aloe Americana Polygona . Dunthorne 80; Hunt 405; Nissen BBI 388; Pritzel 1836; Stafleu & Cowan 1185.
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
