ABSTRACT
Only when paper, which is a much better material for drying living plants than parchment, became available more widely and more cheaply after the invention of the printing press (around 1450) did a herbarium vivum came within everyone’s reach. It is therefore investigated why the first herbaria apparently came into being only in the second quarter of the sixteenth century and whether there may have existed older ones. Another question, addressed here, is where the cradle of the herbarium stood: Italy or England? What purpose did they serve and was the physician and botanist Luca Ghini (1490-1556) really the one who made the first herbarium at the time he was teaching materia medica at the Bologna university, as is generally assumed, or was the inventor someone else? Furthermore, the still extant and lost herbaria are discussed in this chapter.
