The Origin of Cultivated Plants. 2nd ed. 2011. (Cambridge Library Collection, Life Sciences). IX, 468 p. gr8vo. Paper bd.

Alphonse de Candolle (1806-93) was a French-Swiss botanist who was animportant figure in the study of the origins of plants and the reasonsfor their geographic distribution. He also created the first code ofBotanical Nomenclature. Dispite initially studying law, he took overboth the chair of botany at the University of Geneva, and the directorship of Geneva's botanical gardens from his father Augustin deCandolle. He published numerous botanical books, and edited ten volumesof the Prodromus, a seventeen-volume reference text intended to coverthe key properties of all known seed plants. This work, reissued in thesecond edition of the English translation of 1886, is his most famousand influential book, tracing the geographic origins of plants knownto have been cultivated by humans. It is one of the earlies studies ofthe history of crop domestication, and an important contribution tophytogeography.