JOLYCLERC Nicolas Phytologie universelle, ou Histoire naturelle et méthodique des plantes, de leurs propriétés, de leurs vertus et de leur culture.

Stafleu-Cowan, 3388 (detailing the plates after the Plesch copy missing plate 244bis); Sitwell, Great Flower Books, 107 (indicating only 638 plates); Pritzel, 4466 (erroneous plate collation). 

First edition of the descriptive text by C. Nicolas Jolyclerc (1746-1818). A very rare copy with the complete suite of 657 plates engraved and coloured at the time.

Stafleu-Cowan indicates that this edition was available with or without the plates and gives its description only according to the Arpad-Plesch copy, incomplete with plate 244bis in volume IV. Sitwell mentions only 638 plates and most probably misses plates 639-640, published with the last issue and illustrating soda. Pritzel is also mistaken and mentions ‘an atlas of more than 700 plates’.

Jolyclerc (1746-1817) was a French botanist and science writer, a professor of natural history and the first French translator of Linnaeus. He first studied botany as a child with the Benedictines, but left the Church after the Revolution to teach natural history, first in Tulle and then in Beauvois. La Phytologie Universelle is considered to be one of the finest plant books of the late eighteenth century.

“Published with or without plates. We have seen no copy with plates and refer to the notes by Collins (Sotheby 406) on the former Plesch copy. This has 656 plates which are reissues from the botanical plates in Garsault” (Stafleu-Cowan).

Magnificent copy, well preserved in a fine binding by the great binder Bozérian