To know diverse manner of weeds: the development of weed identification manuals in early modern England and their influence on North American guides

Abstract The history of weed science as a discipline has been a topic of interest for decades, but it is rare for researchers to consider publications prior to the 19th century or that were not focused on North America. In this article, the development of weed identification manuals in early modern England is documented out of two genres of premodern scientific writing: agricultural treatises and illustrated herbals. These two forms of writing intersected in the late 18th century with the publication of Thomas Martyn’s four-volume Flora rustica , an illustrated guide to plants in British agricultural systems. We argue that the key characteristics of modern North American weed identification guides in English (the use of the term weed to categorize plants, descriptions of plant habitats, and the use of detailed descriptions and/or illustrations of plants for identification purposes) originated in these premodern texts.