Icones et descriptiones plantarum minus cognitarum. Decas I.Halle (Saale), Germany, J.J. Curt, 1766. Folio (37.5 x 24.5 cm). With 10 full-page numbered engravings of plants, an engraved image on the title-page, and a woodcut initial on the first page of the preface. Never bound, housed in a modern folder with a printed design of 19th-century marbled paper.

[8], 20 pp.First and only edition of an important botanical work on Greek, Turkish and Armenian plants, which were here studied, classified and named for the first time. The work consists of 10 highly detailed, full-page engravings of these plants, with scientific descriptions of each of them, according to Linnaean taxonomy. The work is very rare on the market, as we have not been able to find another copy in sales records of the past 100 years.The plants included in this work had been collected by botanist Andreas von Gundelsheimer (1668-1715) during his research expedition to Greece, Turkey and Armenia in 1700 with Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708). Gundelsheimer gathered hundreds of specimens during this trip and sent them to herbaria in Berlin and Munich, which is where naturalist Johann Christian Daniël von Schreber (1739-1810) must have found them. A number of these plants, such as the Campanula tridentata, had never been studied and classified before with Linnaeus' methods, so Schreber was the first to do so. Some of these plants are still known under the scientific name he gave them.With an inscription at the foot of the first page of the preface ("A _ _"), remnants of a bookplate on the front pastedown of the folder, the woodcut initial on the first page of the preface has been coloured in at a later date. The title-page is somewhat creased and browned, most leaves are slightly frayed along the edges and slightly foxed. Otherwise in very good condition.l Nissen, BBI 1808; Pritzel 8394; Stafleu & Cowan 11126; VD18 90376080; cf. Thieme/Becker 8, p. 178; not in Hunt.