Historia Plantarum (Theophrastus book)
Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance. Theophrastus looks at plant structure, reproduction and growth; the varieties of plant around the world; wood; wild and cultivated plants; and their uses. Book 9 in particular, on the medicinal uses of plants, is one of the first herbals, describing juices, gums and resins extracted from plants, and how to gather them.
The frontispiece to an illustrated 1644 edition, Amsterdam
Title page of Sir Arthur Hort's edition with parallel Greek and English text, 1916
Boy in Sudan with date palm spathe for artificial pollination, as described by Theophrastus
Aleppo pines, like these at ancient Olympia, yielded wood suitable for shipbuilding, according to Theophrastus in Book 5.
Theophrastus was a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos. His given name was Τύρταμος (Túrtamos); his nickname Θεόφραστος (Theóphrastos) was given by Aristotle, his teacher, for his "divine style of expression".
Statue of Theophrastus, Palermo Botanical Garden
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Strato of Lampsacus. Part of a fresco in the portico of the University of Athens painted by Carl Rahl, c. 1888.
Frontispiece to the illustrated 1644 edition of the Enquiry into Plants (Historia Plantarum)
Theophrastus, depicted as a medieval scholar in the Nuremberg Chronicle
