Pinax theatri botanica

The Pinax theatri botanica (1623), meaning "Illustrated Exposition of Plants," was a significant botanical work by Gaspard Bauhin. This book was one of the earliest comprehensive attempts to catalog all known plant species. Bauhin listed and described approximately 6,000 species.1

Crucially, the Pinax theatri botanica introduced the practice of naming plants using a genus and species designation, a system known as binomial nomenclature. This method of naming, later refined and widely adopted by botanists like John Ray and Carolus Linnaeus, forms the foundation of modern plant taxonomy. Bauhin's work was a major step towards a scientific classification of the plant kingdom.12