1739 American Tree Germ, large folio, Hill, hand colour, vegetable system, botany

Fine large folio engraving from John Hill’s 

The Vegetable System. Or, The Internal Structure, and the Life of Plants. London: the author, 1770

50 x 29.3 cm

Very rare folio engraving from one of the greatest botanical series of the 18th Century.

The Vegetable System is of great importance because it gave for the first time in the vernacular a comprehensive treatment of the plant kingdom, on a lavish scale ... adopting the Linnaean generic names and introducing binary nomenclature. The first volume (1759) is still in the old [i.e. pre-Linnaean] style, but from the second volume onward ... Linnaean binomials are used, although the sexual system is not followed ...

Cf. Great Flower Books p. 100; Henrey 832; Nissen BBI 886; Pritzel 4070; Stafleu and Cowan 2772.