The literature of Botany can be traced back to a quite respectable antiquity,
to the period of Aristotle (b.c. 384-322) who seems to have been the first to
write of plants from the truly botanical point of view. Unfortunately, his
special treatise on plants—θεωρία περὶ φυτῶν—is lost; and although there
are many botanical passages scattered throughout his other writings
(which have been collected by Wimmer, Phytologiae Aristotelicae
Fragmenta, 1836), yet none of them gives any indication of what his ideas
of classification may have been. An echo of them is perhaps to be found in
the works of his favourite pupil, Theophrastus Eresius (b.c. 371-286), who
among all his fellows was the most successful in pursuing the botanical
studies that they had begun under the guidance of the master.
Theophrastus left behind him two important, though incomplete, treatises
on plants, the oldest that have survived: the more familiar Latin titles of
which are De Historia Plantarum and [De Causis Plantarum]. The latter is
essentially physiological, touching upon agriculture to a certain extent: the
former is mainly morphological, structural, descriptive, and it is here that
the first attempt at a classification of plants is to be found. In writing the
Historia, Theophrastus was endeavouring, as a Greek philosopher rather
than as a botanist, to "give account of" plants; and in order to do so he
found it necessary to arrange them in some kind of order.