[Doctors and apothecaries as botanists in the renaissance]

It is often claimed, that the late attempts in the renaissance to classify plants according to Aristotelian principles were caused by insufficient morphological knowledge and terminology, by problems with identification of the plants described by the ancient authorities and by the overwhelming number of new plants from the hitherto unknown parts of the world. These explanations are in the present paper not contested but supplemented with information achieved by analysis of two dialogues on botanical problems, both published in the 1530s, in which the ambiguities of the then new science are discussed. The main object of the studies in botany made by medical doctors was identification of simplicia in the pharmacies and drug-dealers shops. Control of the simplicia sold was a public duty demanded of university professors and medical doctors, and the teaching in plant science consequently concentrated on parmacognosy. As even the best Aristotelian classification is useless in identification of small plant parts, systematic botany in the modern sense was not needed and it is concluded that this fact also contributed to the late interest in classification.