Leonard Plukenet

Who was Leonard Plukenet?

Leonard Plukenet was an English botanist, Royal Professor of Botany and gardener to Queen Mary. Plukenet published Phytographia in four parts in which he described and illustrated rare exotic plants. It is a copiously illustrated work of more than 2 700 figures and is frequently cited in books and papers from the 17th century to the present. He collaborated with John Ray in the second volume of Historia Plantarum.

Paul Dietrich Giseke compared Plukenet’s species with those of Linnaeus in Index Linnaeanus.

Pluk. mant., refers to the third volume of the first edition of Historia Plantarum, the whole of which was published 1691–1705.