Flora Graeca 2000

"Sibthorp and Smith''s Flora Graeca, illustrated by Ferdinand Bauer and often described as ''Oxford''s finest botanical treasure'', is considered the most splendid and expensive Flora ever produced. The collections include not only the printed volumes but also the original hand-coloured drawings from which the printed engravings were made, the original botanical specimens they illustrate, unpublished drawings of the Fauna Graeca and a unique series of topographical Mediterranean Scenes, also never published. Accompanying these are diaries and notebooks from the two expeditions to the Levant in which Sibthorp set out to discover the wild plants described by Dioscorides in c.AD 60- and in doing so laid the foundations for modern botanical exploration"