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The first page of the Theatrum Botanicum
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Theatrum Botanicum

Theatrum Botanicum (1640) is impressive! Not only because of its size and the many plants it describes, but also because of the method behind it. John Parkinson, the author, was a bit of a rebel. He didn’t just take other people’s word for it. Instead, Parkinson did his own research and experiments to make sure his descriptions and information about the plants were accurate.

An image of the Theatrum Botanicum opened on a reading table in the Johann Jacobs Museum Library. The image demonstrates the immense size of the book.
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Paradisi in sole

Before Theatrum Botanicum, John Parkinson wrote a book called Paradisi in sole, Paradisus Terrestris (1629). This book was different from others like it. Instead of grouping plants according to their use, it groups them according to these categories: pleasant plants, kitchen plants, and orchard plants. The book describes these plants and how to plant them for a beautiful garden.

An engraving of the garden of paradise with Adam and Eve, as well as various trees, plants and animals.
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  • The European Renaissance, the period from about 1400 to 1600, was a time of great cultural, artistic, and scientific achievement. Scientists and explorers actively sought out and discovered many new plants around the world. New ways of printing books were invented, and people printed and read more books than ever before. Many books were published about plants, especially those used for healing.
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  • Unfortunately, some writers of books on plants made mistakes, or copied mistakes from other books they thought were correct! It was important for people to be able to properly identify plants, especially dangerous plants or those used for healing. Names of plants could also be confusing if they were too like one another. Sometimes very different plants had very similar names!
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  • With so many new plants and so many people around the world describing them, naming and grouping plants became extremely important. Sometimes plants were given names based on what they were used for. For example, “heal dog,” was a remedy for dog bites! Parkinson and some of his colleagues also described and grouped plants based on how they looked or smelled. Can you guess why it might be bad to confuse the plants shown in the image above?
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  • Today, historical plant names tell us interesting stories about our relationship with plants. What do you think plants like “sneezewort” or “mother-in-law’s tongue” were used for?
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  • You can’t protect an endangered plant if you don’t know it exists! It's very important for scientists to identify and group plants and fungi so they can help protect them and keep them from disappearing. Scientists are finding new plants and fungi all the time. Today we know of about 350,000 species of plants and 148,000 species of fungi, but scientists think there could be up to 25 times as many species of fungi out there!
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The European Renaissance, the period from about 1400 to 1600, was a time of great cultural, artistic, and scientific achievement. Scientists and explorers actively sought out and discovered many new plants around the world. New ways of printing books were invented, and people printed and read more books than ever before. Many books were published about plants, especially those used for healing.

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Plant Taxonowhat?

  • Plant taxonomy is the science of naming and classifying plants. Taxonomy is a part of systematics, the study of how things are related to each other.

  • In the 1700s, Carl von Linnaeus created the plant classification system we still use today. It helps scientists to classify, identify, and study plants around the world.

  • Scientists use these classifications to help organize plants or animals into groups based on their characteristics.

  • The classification system starts with the largest group: the kingdom. Different kingdoms include animals, plants, fungi, and more. The plant kingdom is the second largest!

  • Each kingdom is further divided into smaller groups, called phyla. Phyla indicate whether a plant reproduces by releasing spores (like ferns) or seeds.

  • Phyla are further divided into classes, orders, families, genera, and finally species! A species is a specific plant. Can you identify the species of the three plants introduced in the Explore section?

A branch of a Ginkgo tree with bright green leaves in front of a dark background.
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Plant Blindness

Did you know that many people don't notice plants? It's called plant blindness. Plants are crucial for life and in danger. 40% of plant species might disappear. People know about endangered animals, but can't name endangered plants.

A pile of soccer balls
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12 Soccer Balls

Theatrum Botanicum has 1755 pages and describes about 3,800 species of plants. No wonder the book is heavy; it weighs 5 kilograms or 11 pounds, as much as twelve soccer balls!

An illustration of a blooming begonia with broad dark green leaves and light pink blooms in front of a dramatic sky. A butterfly with orange wings flies down towards the begonia.
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Undiscovered

Nearly 4,000 new species of plants and fungi were scientifically named for the first time in 2019. Scientists discover new species of plants and fungi every year. Begonias are a great example! Scientists knew 25 species of begonia in 1800; in 1900, they knew 468. In 2000, there were 1,367 known species. By 2020, there were 1,963.

Botanical fun

A journey through fun plant illustrations.

  • There have been some very funny, beautiful, even strange pictures of plants throughout history. Find some of our favorites in this gallery, starting with an odd and inexplicable image from John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum.
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  • This picture is from a serious book about plants and healing from the 1200s! The image depicts the goddess Diana giving herbs to the centaur Chiron. According to legend, Chiron later named these herbs after Diana.
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  • This book describes the language of flowers! Back in the 1800s, it wasn’t always okay to show your feelings. The book explains how flowers can be used to express different feelings, whether to a secret love or an unsuspecting enemy! The book was a hit and many other authors published dictionaries and books explaining the secret meanings of flowers.
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  • Do you recognize this flower? This bizarre but charming tulip comes from a book called Les fleurs animées (Flowers personified) by J.J. Grandville. The book shows fashionable French women depicted as flowers and poisonous herbs!
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  • This beautiful image of a lotus flower is from the late 1800s. Can you believe it is a black and white photograph painted with watercolors?
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  • These lovely tulips were part of Robert John Thornton’s book The Temple of Flora, published in 1807. Although initially a failure, it is now considered one of the greatest flower books of all time – possibly because of its beautiful illustrations!
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  • This book is a new version of a much older book called De Materia Medica. The new version was published in the 1500s with gorgeous watercolors of giant plants in beautiful landscapes.
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  • Remember Edward Lear? He helped John Gould create his beautiful bird illustrations! But he also had a great sense of humor and created funny drawings like this “Tigerlillia Terribilis” (terrible tiger lily), from his book Nonsense Botany.
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There have been some very funny, beautiful, even strange pictures of plants throughout history. Find some of our favorites in this gallery, starting with an odd and inexplicable image from John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum.

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John Parkinson

John Parkinson (1566/7-1650) was an herbalist, a gardener, and the author of two revolutionary booksthat combined his two passions: Theatrum Botanicum (1640) and Paradisi il sole (1629). Parkinson was one of the first to write a major book on English gardening, and to base his descriptions of plants on scientific observation and experimentation.

A portrait of the author of Theatrum Botanicum, John Parkinson. Parkinson wears an apothecary’s cap and holds a flower in his hand.
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Bibliography

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HERBALS

Anderson, F. J., & Anderson, F. J. (1977). An illustrated history of the herbals. Columbia University Press.

Arber, A. R. (2014). Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany 1470-1670. Project Gutenberg.

Bancroft, H. (1932). Herbs, Herbals, Herbalists. The Scientific Monthly, 35(3), 239–253. http://www.jstor.org/stable/15301

Bruton-Seal, J., Seal, M., & Parkinson, J. (2014). The herbalist’s bible : John Parkinson’s lost classic rediscovered : Theatrum Botanicum (1640). Merlin Unwin Books.

Mabey, R. (2016). The cabaret of plants : forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination (First American edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Neville, S. (2022). Early modern herbals and the book trade : English stationers and the commodification of botany. Cambridge University Press.

Rohde, E. S. (1974). The old English herbals. Minerva press.

NATURE WRITING AND ILLUSTRATION

Carine, M. (2020). The collectors : creating Hans Sloane’s extraordinary herbarium. Natural History Museum.

Bushnell, R. W. (2021). The marvels of the world : an anthology of nature writing before 1700. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Elliott, B. (2011). The world of the Renaissance herbal. Renaissance Studies, 25(1), 24–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24420235

Eriksen, C. B., & Wen, X. (2023). Colouring flowers: books, art, and experiment in the household of Margery and Henry Power. The British Journal for the History of Science, 56(1), 21–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087422000474

Isphording, Eduard. (2008). Kräuter und Blumen. Botanische Bücher bis 1850 im Germanischen Nationalmuseum. Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums.

Knight, L. (2009). Of books and botany in early modern England: sixteenth-century plants and print culture. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..

Mabey, R. (2016). The cabaret of plants : forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination (First American edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Rauh, R. A. (1998). A Millenium and a Half of Fern Illustrations. American Fern Journal, 88(3), 93–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/1547682

Saunders, G. (1995). Picturing plants : an analytical history of botanical illustrations. University of California Press.

GARDENS AND COLLECTING

Antonetti, N. (2006). British Colonial Botanical Gardens in the West Indies. SiteLINES: A Journal of Place, 2(1), 9–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24889258

Edwards, A. (2021). The plant-hunter’s atlas : a world tour of botanical adventures, chance discoveries and strange specimens. Greenfinch, an imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd.

Harris, S. A., & Harris, S. (2011). Planting paradise : cultivating the garden 1501-1900. Bodleian Library.

JOHN PARKINSON

Bentzen, Vilde. (2021). Towards a new Science: John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum. VIC 442 – The Renaissance Book (Digital Exhibit 2021). Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies. Victoria University and the University of Toronto. https://crrs.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/vic4422021/renbook2021

Bushnell, Rebecca. (2021). John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum. In R. Bushnell (Ed.), The Marvels of the World: An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700 (pp. 335-339). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812297812-113

Cabinet. (n.d.) John Parkinson’s ‘Paridisi in sole paradisus terrestris’ 1629. University of Oxford Online Platform for Digital Education, Cabinet. https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/john-parkinsons-paradisi-sole-paradisus-terrestris-1629

Cabinet. (n.d.) John Parkinson’s ‘Theatrum botanicum’ (1640. University of Oxford Online Platform for Digital Education, Cabinet. https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/john-parkinsons-theatrum-botanicum-1640

Francis, J. (2014). John Parkinson: Gardener and Apothecary of London. Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine: From Classical Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, 229.

Parkinson, A. (2007). Nature’s alchemist : John Parkinson, herbalist to Charles I. Frances Lincoln.

Parkinson, John. (1640). Theatrum botanicum: = The theater of plants. Or, An herball of a large extent […].Printed by Tho. Cotes.

Parkinson, John. (1629). Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris. Or a Garden of All Sorts of Pleasant Flowers […] Collected by John Parkinson Apothecary of London 1629.

Riddell, J. N. (1986). John Parkinson's Long Acre garden 1600–1650. The Journal of Garden History, 6(2), 112-124.

PLANT BLINDNESS

Jose, S. B., Wu, C. H., & Kamoun, S. (2019). Overcoming plant blindness in science, education, and society. Plants, people, planet, 1(3), 169-172.

McShea, Patrick. (n.d.). Plant Blindness. Carnegie Museum of Natural History. https://carnegiemnh.org/plant-blindness/.

Native Plant Society of the United States. (n.d.) Plant Blindness. https://plantsocieties.cnps.org/index.php/about-main/plant-blindness

Ro, Christine. (2019, April 29). Why ‘plant blindness’ matters – and what you can do about it. BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190425-plant-blindness-what-we-lose-with-nature-deficit-disorder.

Carrington, Damian. (2020, September 30). 40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/30/world-plant-species-risk-extinction-fungi-earth

PLANTS (CLASSIFICATION, HISTORY, SUSTAINABILITY)

Antonelli, A., Smith, R. J., Fry, C., Simmonds, M. S., Kersey, P. J., Pritchard, H. W., ... & Qi, Y. D. (2020). State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. https://doi.org/10.34885/172

Antonelli, A., Hiscock, S., Lennon, S., Simmonds, M., Smith, R. J., & Young, B. (2020). Protecting and sustainably using the world’s plants and fungi. Plants, People, Planet, 2(5), 368-370.https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10150

Avis-Riordan, Katie. (2021, March 1). Weird and wonderful plant names. The stories behind fun plant names revealed, from a famous movie villain to a Victorian tree-climbing theory. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/funny-plant-name-stories.

IPNI (2023). International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2023. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries and Australian National Herbarium. http://www.ipni.org

Maarten J. M. Christenhusz, Rafaël Govaerts, John C. David, Tony Hall, Katherine Borland, Penelope S. Roberts, Anne Tuomisto, Sven Buerki, Mark W. Chase, Michael F. Fay. (2013). Tiptoe through the tulips – cultural history, molecular phylogenetics and classification of Tulipa (Liliaceae). Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 172, Issue 3, July 2013, Pages 280–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/boj.12061

Mabey, R. (2016). The cabaret of plants : forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination (First American edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Rouhan, G., Gaudeul, M. (2014). Plant Taxonomy: A Historical Perspective, Current Challenges, and Perspectives. In: Besse, P. (eds) Molecular Plant Taxonomy. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1115. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-767-9_1

Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. (2020). State of the World’s Plants and Fungi. https://doi.org/10.34885/172

WFO (2023): World Flora Online. http://www.worldfloraonline.org

Resources

Up Next

  • A green botanical box, also called vasculum, with a gold design of a bird sitting on a pine tree. The vasculum is surrounded by exotic plants and flowers.
  • The first page of the Theatrum Botanicum

Care for a drop of London Monster Soup?

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John Parkinson

The Theater of Plants

Welcome, young botanists, to Theatrum Botanicum! This nearly 400-year-old book has beautiful illustrations and descriptions of around 3,800 different plants. Your mission is to explore this “theater of plants” and identify three unique plants using poetic clues. Along the way, you’ll discover other amazing plants from around the world and learn about the history of botany.

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The Theater of Plants