Dorothee Rippmann

dass die Erde die Mutter und die Sonne der Vater der Pflanzen ist.

Ab s t r a c t : ... that the Earth is the mother and the Sun the father of the plants. The encyclopaedic knowledge of Bartholomaeus Anglicus on plants in the Solar Age This paper looks at medieval botany, and shows the gap between ancient concepts of reproduction in the ages before Linné and modern biological science. Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ Encyclopaedia De proprietatibus rerum (13 century) is looked at with respect to ecology and botanical history. The book De plantis et herbis discusses the being, growth and decay of plants as part of living nature and the image of creation. The hypothesis: The author was reflecting on the environment as well as the results of man’s colonising intervention in nature. The terminology with which he describes his botanical material is discussed. He uses binary oppositions to illustrate the propagation and growth of the plants and explains the principle of procreation by extrinsic macrocosmic powers, the characteristics of the anima vegetabilis, the species and biodiversity, and the comparison of wild and cultivated plants (silvaticus :: domesticus, hortensis). He adjudges the domestication of plants as positive. The question remains, whether there was an interdependence between scholarly transmission of knowledge and agrarian and horticultural practice in the age of the deforestation of land.