Description

4to (220x310 mm). [2], 74, [1] pp. and 18 leaves of engraved plates. Collation: 1-10⁴. Modern cardboards, lettering piece on spine. Uncut with deckle edges. Some pencil marginalia. Some light foxing and browning throughout, but overall a good, genuine copy. 
First book edition, originally appeared as an excerpt from the historical scientific journal of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae (tomus V, 1781 and Pars II, 1785).
This publication is the first comprehensive and systematic scientific monograph entirely devoted to the Bambuseae (Poaceae) botanical family. Prior to this work, knowledge of bamboo in Europe was fragmentary and confusing, as many species rarely flowered (even decades apart) and specimens collected by travelers were often incomplete. Ruprecht examined and reorganized all the herbarium material available in the major European and Russian collections, describing in Latin for the first time the morphology, stem structure, flowers, and fruits of dozens of Asian and American species. The volume is enriched by eighteen engraved illustrations at the end of the volume, which show anatomical and microscopic details of the floral structures, spikelets, and vegetative characteristics essential for the classification of individual species.
Born in Freiburg im Breisgau and raised in Prague, Franz Joseph Ruprecht studied medicine and botany at the renowned University of Prague. In 1839, the very year this work was published, he was called to Russia to serve as curator of the Herbarium of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, later becoming director of the city's Imperial Botanical Garden. Ruprecht was one of the most brilliant taxonomists of his time. Over the course of his career, he described hundreds of new species from every corner of the Russian Empire (especially the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia), as well as being a pioneering scholar of the origins of soils (particularly chernozium, or Russian "black earth") and marine algae.
Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\RMS\2674559.