Flora Sinensis

Flora Sinensis is one of the first European natural history books about China, published in Vienna in 1656.

[1] Its author, Michael Boym, was a Jesuit missionary from Poland (then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth).

[2] The book was the first description of an ecosystem of the Far East published in Europe.

The book also included pleas for support of the Catholic Chinese emperor[who?]

and each page contained a chronogram pointing to the date of 1655, the date of coronation of Emperor Leopold I as the King of Hungary, as Boym wanted to gain support of that monarch for his mission.