01 J.H.Kniphof, Botanica in Originali seu Herbarium Vivum , Halle, 1757 - 1764; an early example of Nature Printing, where natural specimens are pressed into service.
Here the old symmetries in the designed titlepage are constructed from deployments of the real thing.

02 Daniel Rabel, Theatrum Florae in quo ex toto orbe selecti mirabiles venustiores as praecepui flores tanquam ab ipsus deae sinu proferuntor, Paris 1622, and one of the great Florilegium (Anthologies of Flowers). The highly coloured/wrought titlepage is signed by "Guillelmus Theodorus pinxit [painted] 1624".
 
03 John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, London 1629 - this is a famous early book on horticulture and also made celebrated Parkinson's own garden in Long Acre which provided many of the observations and suggestions in the book. He was apothecary to James I and died in 1650.
 
04 N.J.Jaquin, Florae Austricae , a book of rare plants found in Austria, published in Vienna in 1773 1778 with plates by Franz von Schneidl. It was very much the patriotic event to pursue Royal sponsorship and produce a large, sumptuous volume or volumes devoted to gathering together in one volume the flora of a nation state, eg FLORA - Graeca, Londoniensis, Danica .There is a great simplicity to this design - no artificial framing and panels - a reduction to a central appropriate image and a simplified arrangement of letterforms.

SINGLES

Titlepage to John Sibthorp's Flora Greca.., 10 vols London to 1840

Titlepage to Thomas Moffat's Insectorum..., London 1634

John Parkinson, 1567 - 1650, Theater of Plants, London 1640 a medical herbal that sought to identify 17 classes of 'tribes' of plants.

Titlepage to Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, London , eighteen editions before 1600

Willem Piso Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Leyden 1648

E.Swert Florilegium Amsterdam 1647-54

John Worlidge, Systemae Agriculturae London 1716

R.A. Austen, A Treatise on Fruit-trees, Oxford 1657

E.Bettoni, Storia Naturale Milan 1865-8

de la Salle, La Salade, Paris, c1438-47

anon. , Nederlandsch Bloemwerk, Amsterdam 1794

HORTICULTURAL IMAGERY

JOHN EVELYN, Silva, sleected pages