Manipulating Flora: Seventeenth-Century Botanical Practices and Natural Philosophy

The study of plants and vegetal bodies has always played an essential role in the knowledge of nature for both theoretical and practical purposes. Since the Middle Ages, the practical perspective had prevailed, as the study of vegetation lacked disciplinary autonomy and was primarily an aspect of medical training. Plants were mainly subject to medicinal or pharmacological uses, although a great variety of topics, such as the naturalistic study of plants, the building of gardens, or the symbolical approach to flora, reflected a more comprehensive attention to the vegetal world.