Working tirelessly for ten years, the pharmacist Johannes --Wilhelm Weinmann (b 1683 in Regensburg) collected the entire botanical knowledge of the Baroque age, to create an impressive four-volume compendium illustrated with 1,025 copper engravings. From that unjustly forgotten treasure, the author of this new comparative illustrated volume has selected those plants still found in the Vienna Woods.Original photographs and brief botanical descriptions are juxtaposed with the corresponding engravings and excerpts from the original texts. Then as now, the aim was to "capture nature in vivid colour"; this is brilliantly achieved here by colour photographs taken against a black background, showing the splendid specimens to best advantage. Thus the work creates a link between the great cultural treasure in the library of Heiligenkreuz Abbey and the plants and flowers in today's Vienna Woods Biosphere Park.- 200 historical illustrations- Juxtaposed with modern colour photographs - Botanical explanations