Bibliotheca Botanica

The first edition appeared in 1736 with the full title Bibliotheca Botanica recensens libros plus mille de plantis huc usque editos secundum systema auctorum naturale in classes, ordines, genera et species; it was an elaborate classification system for his catalogue of books.

Linnaean authority Frans Stafleu describes the book:[3] The Bibliotheca is a concise history of botany in a dry, enumerative, but very efficient style.

The often enlightening and amusing names for the various categories of botanists show not only a good knowledge of the literature, but also an awareness of the fact that botanical history is human history.The term "methodists" (methodici, equivalent to present-day systematists) was coined by Linnaeus in his Bibliotheca Botanica to denote the authors who care about the principles of classification in contrast to the collectors who are concerned primarily with the description of plants paying little or no attention to their arrangement into genera etc.

His Bibliotheca Universalis, a general compendium of some 12,000 items in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew arranged by authors' forenames, appeared in 1545 as an attempt to bring some order into the rapidly increasing range of literature consequent to the Renaissance and the introduction of printing.

[7] Full bibliographic details including exact dates of publication, pagination, editions, facsimiles, brief outline of contents, location of copies, secondary sources, translations, reprints, travelogues, and commentaries are given in Stafleu and Cowan's Taxonomic Literature.