Miniature of the balsam garden of Cairo (Fustat), with seven pools of water and jars to catch the balsam, a plant in the centre, with two knights in armour flanking the gate, with shields with heraldic arms.

Featured on PDR in the collection Tractatus de Herbis (ca.1440)

Selections from a beautifully illustrated 15th century version of the "Tractatus de Herbis", a book produced to help apothecaries and physicians from different linguistic backgrounds identify plants they used in their daily medical practice. No narrative text is present in this version, simply pictures and the names of each plant written in various languages - a technique which revolutionised botanical literature, allowing as it did for easier transcultural exchanges of scientific knowledge. This particular "Tractaus de Herbis", thought to date from around about 1440 AD and known as Sloane 4016 (its shelf-mark in the British Library), hails from the Lombardy region in the north of Italy and is a copy of a similar work by a figure called Manfredus, which itself was a version of…