Dodoens was educated at the municipal college in Mechelen before beginning his studies in medicine, cosmography and geography at the age of 13 at the University of Leuven (Louvain), under Arnold Noot, Leonard Willemaer, Jean Heems, and Paul Roelswhere.

He graduated with a licentiate in medicine in 1535, and as was the custom of the time, began extensive travels (Wanderjahren) in Europe till 1546, including Italy, Germany, France, and a stay in Basel 1542–1546.

[8][9][3] In the early sixteenth century the general belief was that the plant world had been completely described by Dioscorides in his De Materia Medica.

Europe became fascinated with natural history from the 1530s, and gardening and cultivation of plants became a passion and prestigious pursuit from monarchs to universities.

Collecting became a discipline, specifically the Kunst- und Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosities) outside of Italy and the study of naturalia became widespread through many social strata.

The great botanists of the sixteenth century were all, like Dodoens, originally trained as physicians, who pursued a knowledge of plants not just for medicinal properties, but in their own right.

Chairs in botany, within medical faculties were being established in European universities throughout the sixteenth century in reaction to this trend, and the scientific approach of observation, documentation and experimentation was being applied to the study of plants.

[10] Otto Brunfels published his Herbarium in 1530, followed by those of Jerome Bock (1539) and Leonhard Fuchs (1542), men that Kurt Sprengel would later call the "German fathers of botany".

His De frugum historia (1552), a treatise on cereals, vegetables, and fodders [11] marked the beginning of a distinguished career in botany.

[b][16] The Cruydeboeck's Latin version published at the Plantin Press in Antwerp in 1583 under the title Stirpium historiae pemptades sex sive libri XXXs was a considerable revision.

This edition included additional information on American plants prepared by Joost van Ravelingen, the brother of the publisher and a botanist and physician like Dodoens himself.