First and only edition of the first illustrated description of the plants of Sri Lanka, complete with 111 detailed etchings, and the portrait of the author. The plants were taken from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), but most were not exclusive to that island and grew throughout the entire South Indian Ocean region, making the work relevant for more than just Ceylon. The work was composed with the help of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who helped to perfect it, and even referenced it in his Species plantarum (1753).
The work describes hundreds of different plants in alphabetical order, including, for example, the Malabar nut, amaranth, cinnamon, and different types of jasmine. As stated in the preface, the work was based on collections of plants made in Ceylon by Paul Hermann (1640-1695), a professor of botany in Leiden, and Johannes Hartog (1663-1722), master gardener at the Cape of Good Hope. Burman frequently makes use of other sources for the present work, but the many plates that are marked "nobis" were made after his own discoveries. The second part of the work, titled Catalogi duo plantarum Africanorum, is a catalogue of plants in South Africa, which was also based on the famous botanical collection of Hermann.
Johannes Burmann (1707-1779) was physician and professor of botany in Amsterdam. He was well acquainted with Carl Linnaeus, who named the genus Burmannia and the family Burmanniaceae after him. Burman wrote 8 works, primarily on plants in Ceylon, Amboina, and the Cape of Good Hope. The present one is his first. The reference works usually refer to the plates as engravings, but they are most likely finely etched. Two different plates are numbered "18", so that many descriptions mistakenly report 110 rather than 111 plates. The dedication on *2 can appear in either of 2 different states, depending on how widely the names are spaced. Sometimes the "consulibus" are on the recto and the "consularibus" on the verso, but here the "consularibus" already start on the recto.
With the bookplate of E. Gruda Forfang, and an oval armorial bookplate mounted on the front pastedown. The work has been rebacked, with the original spine laid down, the leather been rubbed, affecting the gold-tooling on the spine. The hinges have been reinforced with white bookcloth, lacking the front free flyleaf, plates 47-49 have been bound in the wrong order, as usual, the head margin has been cut somewhat short, but without affecting the text of plates, later annotations (the Latin name of the depicted plant) in the lower margins of some of the plates, a very faint water stain in the outer margin of some of the leaves in the second half of the work. Otherwise in good condition. Hunt 501; Nissen BBI 303; Pritzel 1388; Stafleu & Cowan 928; STCN 180651501 (18 copies).