This is a plate from a magnificent florilegium (a decorative flower book), which was published in the German city of Nuremberg in 1613. The Hortus Eystettensis contains 374 plates that illustrate more than 1,000 flowering plants in the gardens of the Prince-Bishop of Eichstatt. Besler worked on the drawings on and off over a period of 16 years. The illustrations are notable for their elegant design and decorative layout. Each page shows several plants, as here. Each plant is shown with its roots and all, in accordance with the conventions of botanical illustration at the time. The plants are illustrated in order by their season of flowering. An intact copy of the Hortus Eystettensis is in the National Art Library at the V&A. It is a 'white', that is, an uncoloured copy.

As the first of its kind, this book triggered a rush of similar books commissioned by the owners of notable gardens for their personal delight and as a way of showing others that they had the means to cultivate such outstanding floral collections. Because these books were produced primarily as statements of possession, they rarely contained any useful text. Nevertheless they did provide botanists with a record of the new and exotic species arriving in Europe from abroad, and were also useful to designers as a pattern source.