Emanuel Sweert was a Dutch nurseryman active at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Having received exotic plants from merchants returning from Africa, Asia and the Americas, in 1612, Sweert decided to produce this florilegium to advertise his wares at that year’s Frankfurt Fair, one of the largest trade fairs in Europe.
The book depicts around 560 bulbs and flowers. However, the plates were not taken from the plants in Sweert’s nursery. They were instead reproduced from those used by Johann Theodor de Bry in his Florilegium novum (1612), which had in turn been taken from those used in Pierre Vallet’s florilegium of the gardens of the French king Henry IV (Le Jardin du roy tres Chrestien Henry IV, 1608). The work was very popular and went through six editions before 1647.