Volume 8 
Number 5 
The Plant World 
& ^Ha^tne of popular 3Sotanp 
MAY, 1905 
THE EARLIEST LOCAL FLORA.* 
By Edward L. Greene, LL.D., 
Associate in Botany, Smithsonian Institution. 
This type of botanical book is one that, within the last century, 
has become very prevalent; the catalogue, descriptive or merely 
enumerative, of the vegetation of some limited area. Among 
such we have a few of the most instructive and fascinating of 
the books that deal with plant life and form, and besides these 
an exceedingly great number of the most inane. Among the 
writings of Linnaeus, the most classic and delightful, is his little 
local Flora of Lapland. 
At the mention of this illustrious name, and of this particular 
book, several readers will infer that this is what is to be dis¬ 
cussed under the caption of the Earliest Local Flora. Some may 
be aware of several others antedating this, and even quite pre- 
Linnaean. The one that I have in mind was done and published, 
and making for its author a deathless fame, considerably more 
than two centuries before Linnaeus was born. I refer to Thalius’ 
“ Catalogue of Trees, Shrubs and Herbaceous Plants of the Hartz 
Mountains,” a small quarto of 134 pages, published at Frankfort- 
on-the-Main in the year 1588. The author calls it a “ short cata¬ 
logue ” “ containing an enumeration,” etc.; a title-page so modest 
that, to read no further, one would not expect much. 
The author was, in his time, a physician, in the practice of 
* Read before the Biological Society of Washington, 25 Feb., 1905. 
This is the second of a series of articles, to be published from time to 
time, on botanical matters of historic interest. 
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