Fundamenta Botanica (Amsterdam, Salomon Schouten, ed. 1, 1736) was one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and issued both as a separate work and part of the Bibliotheca Botanica

Bibliotheca Botanica

Bibliotheca Botanica was written by Swedish botanist, physician, zoologist and naturalist Carl Linnaeus . The book was written and published in Amsterdam when Linnaeus was twenty-eight and dedicated to the botanist Johannes Burman...

.

This book states, for the first time, Linnaeus's ideas for the reformation of botanical taxonomy

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

. The first edition is dated 1736 but it was released on 14 September 1735 (Linnaeus wrote in his personal copy “Typus absolutus 1735, Sept. 3”). The full title was Fundamenta Botanica, quae Majorum Operum Prodromi instar Theoriam Scientiae Botanices by breves Aphorismos tradunt. The first edition was dedicated to Olof Rudbeck, Lorenz Heister

Lorenz Heister

Lorenz Heister was a German anatomist, surgeon and botanist born in Frankfurt am Main....

, Adriaan van Royen

Adriaan van Royen

Adriaan van Royen was a Dutch botanist. He was a professor at Leiden University and is associated with Carl Linnaeus....

, Johann Jacob Dillen

Johann Jacob Dillenius

Johann Jacob Dillen Dillenius was a German botanist.Dillen was born at Darmstadt and was educated at the University of Giessen, where he wrote several botanical papers for the Ephemerides naturae curiosorum, and printed, in 1719, his Catalogus plantarum sponte circa Gissam nascentium, illustrated...

, Antoine de Jussieu

Antoine de Jussieu

Antoine de Jussieu was a French naturalist.Jussieu was born in Lyon, the son of Christophe de Jussieu , an apothecary of some repute, who published a Nouveau traité de la theriaque . Antoine studied at the university of Montpellier, and travelled with his brother Bernard through Spain, Portugal...

, Giulio Pontedera

Giulio Pontedera

Giulio Pontedera was an Italian botanist. He was professor of botany at Padua, and director of the botanical garden there. Although he rejected Carolus Linnaeus' system, Linnaeus was a correspondent of Pontedera's, and named the genus Pontederia after him.-References:...

, Johann Amman

Johann Amman

Johann Amman, Johannes Amman or Иоганн Амман , was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the Royal Society and professor of botany at the Russian Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg...

, Johannes Burman

Johannes Burman

Johannes Burman , was a Dutch botanist and physician. Burman specialized in plants from Ceylon, Amboina and Cape Colony. The name Pelargonium was introduced by Johannes Burman....

, Pierre Magnol

Pierre Magnol

Pierre Magnol was a French botanist. He was born in the city of Montpellier, where he lived and worked for the biggest part of his life. He eventually became Professor of Botany and Director of the Royal Botanic Garden of Montpellier and even held a seat in the Académie Royale des Sciences de...

 and Giuseppe Monti. A second edition was published in Stockholm in 1740 and a third in Amsterdam in 1741. The publication of this work as well as Genera Plantarum

Genera Plantarum

Genera Plantarum is a publication of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus . The fifth edition served as a complementary volume to Species Plantarum . Article 13 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature states that "It is agreed to associate generic names which first appear in Linnaeus'...

 and Systema Naturae

Systema Naturae

The book was one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carolus Linnaeus. The first edition was published in 1735...

 was encouraged by Herman Boerhaave

Herman Boerhaave

Herman Boerhaave was a Dutch botanist, humanist and physician of European fame. He is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital. His main achievement was to demonstrate the relation of symptoms to lesions...

 who had been Linnaeus’s teacher.

The Fundamenta in combination with the Critica Botanica

Critica Botanica

Critica Botanica was written by Swedish botanist, physician, zoologist and naturalist Carl Linnaeus . The book was published in Germany when Linnaeus was twenty-nine with a discursus by the botanist Johannes Browallius , bishop of Åbo...

lays Linnaeus's foundations for his system of nomenclature

Nomenclature

Nomenclature is a term that applies to either a list of names or terms, or to the system of principles, procedures and terms related to naming - which is the assigning of a word or phrase to a particular object or property...

, classification

Classification

Classification may refer to:* Library classification and classification in general* Taxonomic classification * Biological classification of organisms* Medical classification* Scientific classification...

 and botanical terminology that were later reviewed and expanded in the Philosophia Botanica

Philosophia Botanica

Philosophia Botanica was published by the Swedish naturalist and physician Carolus Linnaeus who greatly influenced the development of botanical taxonomy and systematics in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is "the first textbook of descriptive systematic botany and botanical Latin"...

(1751). He does this by means of 365 Aphorisms (principles) arranged into 12 chapters:

Table of contents

Fundamenta aphorisms

I. Bibliotheca (library), Aphorismen 1-52

II. Systemata (systematics), 53-77

III. Plantae (plants), 78-85

IV. Fructificatio (fruit carrier), 86-131

V. Sexus (sex), 132-150

VI. Characteres (characterisation), 151-209

VII. Nouns (names), 210-255

VIII. Differentiae (distinction), 256-305

IX. Varietates (Varieties), 306-317

X. Synonyms (synonyms), 318-324

XI. Adumbrationes (description), 325-335

XII. Vires (forces), 336-365

Bibliographic details

Full bibliographic details including exact dates of publication, pagination, editions, facsimiles, brief outline of contents, location of copies, secondary sources, translations, reprints, manuscripts, travelogues, and commentaries are given in Stafleu and Cowan's Taxonomic Literature.