[2] His De re rustica in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the works of Cato the Elder and Marcus Terentius Varro, both of which he occasionally cites.

In 1794 the Spanish botanists José Antonio Pavón Jiménez and Hipólito Ruiz López named a genus of Peruvian asterid Columellia in his honour.

In ancient times, Columella's work "appears to have been but little read", cited only by Pliny the Elder, Servius, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus, and having fallen "into almost complete neglect" after Palladius published an abridgement of it.

Previously known only in fragments, the complete book was among those discovered in monastery libraries in Switzerland and France by Poggio Bracciolini and his assistant Bartolomeo di Montepulciano during the Council of Constance, between 1414 and 1418.

[11] Cassiodorus mentions sixteen books of Columella, which has led to the suggestion that De arboribus formed part of a work in four volumes.