Flora Danica

A product of The Age of Enlightenment, Flora Danica is a comprehensive atlas of botany, containing folio-sized pictures of all the wild plants native to Denmark, in the period from 1761-1883.

It was proposed by G. C. Oeder, then professor of botany at the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen, in 1753 and was completed 123 years later, in 1883. The complete work comprises 51 parts and 3 supplements, containing 3,240 copper engraved plates. The original plan was to cover all plants, including bryophytes, lichens and fungi native to crown lands of the Danish king, that is Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenburg-Delmenhorst and Norway with its North Atlantic dependencies Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. However, changes were made due to territorial cessations during the period of publication. After 1814, when the double monarchy of Denmark–Norway was abolished, very few Norwegian plants were included, and similar changes were seen after 1864, when the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were ceded. However, in the mid-19-century era of Scandinavism, the Nordiske Naturforskermøde in Copenhagen proposed to make Flora Danica a Scandinavian work. Thus, three supplementary volumes were issued, containing the remaining Norwegian plants and the more important plants only occurring in Sweden.

Publishers/editors through time: