Atlas of elementary botany

"I'm crazy about botany: I'm getting worse day by day, I have nothing left but hay in my head, one of these mornings I'll become a plant too, and I've already put down roots in Môtiers." Botany and herbal medicine have always been Jean-Jacques Rousseau's great passions. For him, the study of nature leads to virtue and wisdom and is essential for all philosophers. Between 1771 and 1773 he wrote eight elementary letters on botany, addressed to Madame Delessert, affectionately called "cousin", and intended for her young daughter. By the early 19th century, these letters would become popular throughout Europe. Together with the Reveries of a Solitary Walker, the elementary letters on botany are one of the last works of his life. In them, Rousseau's purpose goes beyond his pedagogy and under his refined pen the art of description acquires power. Cruciferae, papilionaceae, labiatae, liliaceae, umbelliferae trace a poetic herbarium that Enzo Cocco presents to us, a great Rousseau specialist and translator of both the letters and the Fragments to a botanical lexicon, proposed in addition to this edition.