About the Book
This encyclopædia set out to include every plant found in or introduced into Britain, and to give for each one the description, specific character, culture, history and application in the arts.
Its ambition was to combine in one volume what had needed several: a species plantarum in both the Linnean and Jussieuean arrangements, a historia plantarum, a grammar of botany, and a dictionary of botany and vegetable culture — the whole intended so that a beginner "who is a mere English reader" could identify any plant.
This digital edition is built from a dual-engine OCR of all 1,182 pages, reconciled page by page, with the original wood engravings. Substantial entries have a page to themselves; the shortest are gathered into alphabetical runs, as they were on the printed page.