Lexicon rei herbariae trilingue

Author	Kyber, David
Full title	Lexicon rei herbariae trilingue ex variis et optimis, qui de stirpium historia scripserunt, authoribus concinnatum per Davidem Kyberum Argentinesem. Ad lectorem: Orphanus hic liber est et posthumus, optime lector. Huic tu non momi, sed patris esto loco. Item Tabulae collectionum in genere et particulatim in XII menses in usum pharmacopolarum conscriptae per Conradum Gesnerum, medicum Tigurinum, in quibus obiter stirpium quarundam nomina Germanica et alia quaedam a nemine hactenus tradita docentur.
Year	1553
Place	Strasbourg
Publisher/Printer	Rihel
Era	16th century
Form/Genre	Dictionary/Lexicon, Other (see description)
Discipline/Content	Biology
Digital copies
Original	Lexicon rei herbariae trilingue (e-rara.ch) Alternative link: MDZ, Google Books
Digital sourcebook	868519
Description	This botanical dictionary in three languages (Latin, Greek, German) was published after the author’s premature death as the distich on the title page already indicates: Orphanus hic liber est et posthumus, optime Lector; / huic tu non momi, sed patris esto loco. – “This book is an orphan and born after its father’s death, dear reader; you should become like its father, not its criticizer.” Shortly before his death, the author had sent the manuscript to Conrad Gessner and asked for corrections. Gessner then published the lexicon with only minor changes, as he explains in a letter to Lucius Kyber (fol. a 4v–a5r), David’s father. A letter to the reader (fol a 6r–v) – again from Gessner’s pen – informs about the content (not just word meanings, but also etymologies and descriptions), the intended readership (not just medical students and pharmacists, but also students of grammar and philology), as well as the sources. Gessner lists five ancient Greek authors (Aristotle, Nicander, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Plutarch), three ancient Latin bodies of text (Pliny the Elder, Columella, and other agronomical writers), as well as a fair number of modern authors, including Leonhart Fuchs, Hieronymus Bock, Jean Ruel, Valerius Cordus, and Conrad Gessner. The last part of the paratext consists in the Idyllium Epitaphium in Davidem Kyberum […] (fol. a7r–8v), a Greek dialogue between Gessner and Nikolaus Gerbel about David Kyber. The entries are ordered according to the Latin alphabet, but the lemmata can also be Greek. As has been announced in the letter to the reader, most entries offer more than just translations of plant names, and contain short descriptions, etymologies as well as references to the sources. Some entries can cover several pages. Most lemmata are plant names, but there are also a few terms for plant structures, some adjectives, and even verbs. The articles adduce hardly any evidence gathered from own observations, but mostly from literary sources. Gessner added his own Tabulae collectionum in genere et particulatim in XII menses in usum pharmacopolarum conscriptae to the volume. The tabulae offer an overview of plants ordered according to the months, in which they can be found.
References	Kettler 2008, 777–795.
Cited in
How to cite this entry	Kyber, David: Lexicon rei herbariae trilingue, in: Noscemus Wiki, URL: http://wiki.uibk.ac.at/noscemus/Lexicon_rei_herbariae_trilingue (last revision: 30.09.2022).