History of Botany (1530-1860)

"History of Botany (1530-1860)" by Julius Sachs is a late 19th-century exploration into the origins and main ideas of botany, following the progression of plant science from the first plant books in the 1500s to more organized classifications in the 1800s. The book looks at important people and events in botany, discussing the methods and thoughts that influenced how people understood plant life during this time. The book starts with a detailed look at the first steps taken by early botanists, like Otto Brunfels and Leonhard Fuchs, who mainly focused on knowing plants for medicine. Sachs points out the slow change from basic descriptions to a more scientific way, showing how important careful watching and sorting were. He believes real scientific study started when botanists moved past old beliefs and mistakes and began to see natural connections between plants, and this story gets ready for a complete look at botany as its own subject, as Sachs wants to make the complex historical growth within the field clear.