Throughout the seventeenth century, Dutch merchants travelling and trading in the East and West Indies brought back to the Netherlands specimens of new and exotic plants. The spectacular frontispiece to this catalogue of the plants found in the botanic gardens in Amsterdam provides an allegorical depiction of the supreme role the city played in the botanical world at the time.
Seated in the centre of a beautiful garden, the city of Amsterdam receives plants from the four corners of the world (left), the bounty of which is then distributed to the people (right).

The botanist Jan Commelin was a specialist in exotic plants and helped to establish the botanical garden in Amsterdam where they could be cultivated and observed by the public. The first volume of this catalogue was published in 1697 and contains finely illustrated hand-coloured depictions of the plants found in the garden.

The illustrations were mostly made by the accomplished botanical artist Jan Moninckx (c. 1656-1714) and his daughter Maria, though some others were completed by Johanna Helena Herolt (1668-1723), the eldest daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian.