Description

Flora Graeca Sibthorpiana is the earliest of the modern Floras, consisting of 10 volumes of hand-coloured engravings of the plants of Greece and Asia Minor, authored by the English botanist John Sipthorp and illustrated by the Austrian botanical artist Ferndinand Bauer. Sibthorp carried out two botanical expeditions to the mainland of Greece, the Greek islands, Cyprus and Asia Minor in search of botanical specimens which would identify the herbal remedies mentioned by the 1st century AD herbalist and medical doctor Pedianos Dioscorides. The first of the two expeditions took place between 1786 and 1787 and the second between 1794-1795. During the first expedition Sibthorp was accompanied by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Lukas Bauer, who undertook to draw the botanical specimens. Sibthorp died in 1796 without completing his work, as a result of the tuberculosis he contracted during the second expedition to Asia Minor. Prior to his death he drew up a will which bequeathed his estate to Oxford University, on condition that its rents were used to publish the Flora Graeca Sibthorpiana. His executors the botanist John Hawkins and the lawyer Thomas Platt appointed the botanist James Edward Smith as editor and publisher of the work. Smith published six volumes between 1806 and his death in 1828. Each volume includes 100 plates except the last one, which includes 66. They were engraved by James Sowerby from the drawings made by Ferdinand Bauer. After Smith's death, volumes seven to ten were published by botanist John Lindley. Prima centuria is Volume I of the series, and was published in 1806; it includes plate numbers 1 to 100. The Trinity College Dublin Herbarium Flora Graeca Sibthorpiana collection includes 47 pages from that volume.