Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin's American Plants offers a detailed account of the Austrian botanical expedition to the Caribbean between 1754 and 1759, culminating in the publication of the Selectarum Stirpium Americanarum Historia in 1763 by the famous Dutch-born scientist – the first Linnaean botanist in the New World. Novel findings about Jacquin's family and early life are given. Through a careful reading of Jacquin's own publications, letters and manuscripts, Santiago Madriñán provides, from a botanist's perspective, a meticulous description of the places visited by Jacquin and the plants he collected. The splendid color illustrations of the plants published in the luxurious second edition of the Selectarum in 1780 are here reprinted, together with an annotated list of the species described.
Santiago Madriñán Restrepo, PhD (Harvard '96), FLS, is Associate Professor of Botany at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Author of the Flora Neotropica Monograph on Rhodostemonodaphne (2004), Flora Ilustrada del Páramo de Chingaza (Second Ed., 2010) and Biodiversidad, Conservación y Desarrollo (Coeditor, 2012).