Flora Graeca Sibthorpiana, Volume 3 and 4

Flora Graeca, was published in 10 volumes between 1806 and 1840, and was the product of a survey in the late C18, by John Sibthorp who collected and described the flora. He was accompanied by Ferdinand Bauer who prepared and illustrated the specimens. The engravings for the printing were made by Sowerby and the work as a whole is considered one of the finest examples of botanical illustration.

This new edition is, according to the current editors, a ‘pseudo -facsimile’ version. The original Flora Graeca is in folio format. The plates have been reduced to fit a print area of 16 x 24 cm. Small plants sometimes occupy only a portion of the centre of an otherwise blank page in the original, with the calligraphed name at the far bottom. In such cases the size has been modified so that the drawing fills a reasonable part of the page and the name has sometimes been moved closer.

For each species there is a two – page spread. The colour plate is reproduced on the right-hand page. On the upper half of the facing left-hand page is a text block in English and on the lower half a dot map produced from the more than 70,000 records stored in the Flora Hellenica Database (for species not occurring within the borders of present-day Greece the map is omitted).

The text block contains the following elements: a) Currently accepted scientific name, with authority and place of publication, b)Important synonyms, with authority but without place of publication, c) Comments on taxonomic status, distribution, ecology, flowering time and other features of interest, d) A brief description, emphasizing diagnostic characters.