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Rare handbook for the cultivation of hyacinths

ARDÈNE, Jean Paul de Rome d'.
Traité sur la connoissance et la culture des jacintes.
Avignon, Louis Chambeau, 1759. 12mo. With 2 engraved folding plates. Contemporary calf, gold-tooled spine, marbled endpapers, red edges. 156 pp.
€ 500
First edition of a book on hyacinths, printed in 1759, by the French priest and botanist Jean Paul Rome dArdène. "Jean Paul Rome d' Ardène retired, about 1750, from his duties as 'supérieur' of the college at Marseilles to the Château d' Ardène, diocese of Sisteron, where he created a botanical garden and gave himself to the study of flowers" (Hunt). DArdène is famous because of his studies on flowers. In 1746 he had already published a book on ranuncula, titled Traité des renoncules. It went through 3 further editions in French and 1 in German, so it apparently proved popular. After this work, DArdène wrote the present book on hyacinths. Its 12 chapters discuss different aspects of hyacinths, including the etymology of the name, the right conditions for cultivating the flower and its common diseases. The book ends with two engraved folding plates with hyacinths, followed by an explanation of what we can see on those plates. The book was reprinted in French in 1765 and an Italian translation of this hyacinth study was printed in Viterbo, Italy in 1763. After this book, DArdène also wrote books on tulips (1760) and carnations (1762). The present first edition of the Traité sur la connoissance et la culture des jacintes seems to be very rare: the botanical literature mentions it only in the catalogue of the Lindley Library and a note in Hunt. Nissen and BMC (NH) note only the Traité des renoncules and Hunt describes only that book. We know only other copies of the present first edition: in the Lindley library, the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
In very good condition. Cat. Lindley libr., p. 10; Hunt, II 526 (note); WorldCat (2 copies); cf. BMC (NH) I, p. 58; Nissen, BBI S. 5 45na.
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Related Subjects:

Natural history  >  Botany (General) | Floras & Flowering Plants