Lot Description

CORNUT, Jacques Philippe (1606-1651). Canadensium plantarum, aliarúmque nondum editarum historia nondum editarum historia cui adiectum est ad calcem enchiridion botanicum parisiense. Paris: Simon le Moyne, 1635.

4o (248 x 185 mm). 68 full-page etchings in text. (Some occasional spotting and staining.) Later vellum (some minor soiling). Provenance: early ink notation in margin of H1; Charles Berolzheimer (sold William Doyle Galleries, 3 November 1999, lot 164).
FIRST EDITION, generally considered to be the first Canadian Flora. Cornut was a French physician who never visited North America, but instead received the majority of his plant specimens from the Robins family, who supervised the gardens of Henry IV and the garden of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and the Morin family, who owned several Parisian commercial nurseries. Over thirty species from eastern North America are here described and illustrated for the first time; the importance of which recognized by Linnaeus over a century later as he consulted this work in order to better understand the plants of that region. Cornut also included five South African bulb plants, again illustrated here for the first time. Cleveland Collections 190; Hunt 227; Nissen BBI 406.