Aldrovandiana. Historical Studies in Natural History

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2024)
Articoli

Flowers of Aloe vera from Medieval manuscripts to Renaissance printed books

PDF (Italiano)
  • Urs Eggli,
  • Andrew Griebeler,
  • Anastasia Stefanaki,
  • Marie Cronier,
  • Louise Isager Ahl
Urs Eggli
Sukkulenten-Sammlung Zürich / Grün Stadt Zürich
Andrew Griebeler
Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke University
Anastasia Stefanaki
Utrecht University Botanic Gardens
Marie Cronier
Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des textes (CNRS)
Louise Isager Ahl
Natural History Museum of Denmark, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30682/aldro2401m

Published 2024-07-12

Keywords

  • Aloe; Illustration; Medieval manuscripts

How to Cite

Eggli, U., Griebeler, A., Stefanaki, A., Cronier, M., & Isager Ahl, L. I. (2024). Flowers of Aloe vera from Medieval manuscripts to Renaissance printed books. Aldrovandiana. Historical Studies in Natural History, 3(1), 151–185. https://doi.org/10.30682/aldro2401m

Copyright (c) 2024 admin admin; Urs Eggli, Andrew Griebeler, Anastasia Stefanaki, Marie Cronier, Louise Isager Ahl

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Aloe vera is a popular herbal product and its extracts are part of a multi-million-dollar (US) industry. Aloes have been used as a remedy worldwide for centuries. To elucidate the accumulation of knowledge from the Greco-Roman period to the Renaissance, we have sought the earliest surviving illustrations and preserved herbarium specimens of flowering Aloe. This search for illustrations of Aloe vera in Medieval manuscripts and early printed books up to 1590 shows that most of these sources depict and describe only vegetative material. The first illustration we identified of an unambiguously flowering Aloe vera is from an Arabic manuscript dated to the 12th century. The first printed illustration of a flowering plant appeared in 1562 and is based on paintings executed no later than around 1560. The earliest records of flowering Aloe vera are provided by Italian herbarium specimens from the period 1539–1554, but Aloe was successfully cultivated in Italy (Venice) as early as around 1445–1448, and in Germany (Nürnberg) in 1542.

PDF (Italiano)