Jim, I was simply being concise, as it was in private ownership, as opposed to the admittedly very few botanical gardens, such as Padua (founded in 1545) and Leiden (1590). The list of plants growing at Padua in 1591 would make it a strong contender for the largest collection in cultivation at the time.
>From the photographs of the existing garden area at Eichstatt, they do not >appear to cover an extensive area, and neither do the gardens at Padua or >Leiden. They are probably all less than 3 acres. Incidentally one of the plants illustrated, Narcissus Estettensis, commonly known as the Queen Anne daffodil (fully double) is still in cultivation 700 years later, despite being relatively slow to increase vegetatively. It could be a record for a bulbous clone. Large as the Taschen book is, it is small compared with the original published book, which I saw an uncoloured copy of in the Botanical Library in the Natural History Museum, it was approx 3ft x 2ft by at least 5 inches thick. By the way the Robert Brown who stuck the 'h' in Diplarrhena also gave his name to Brownian motion. Gary Dunlop
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