Itti Achuthan Memorial Hortus Malabaricus Sasyasarvaswam

It aims at growing around 600 plants out of the 742 mentioned in Hortus Malabaricus, the first printed treatise on Asian Medicinal Plants, at Chaliyam, calicut district in kerala. its named after Itti Achuthan, a traditional medical practitioner of the 17 th century and author of the book ‘Keralaramam.'

Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, is a treatise in the scientific classification of plants in Latin written by Hendrik Andrian van Rheede, the Dutch Governor General of Malabar. It is a 12-volume book with information on 742 medicinal plants in the Malabar region.

The plants were described in detail with illustrations. The local names of the plants were printed in Malayalam, and thus Hortus Malabaricus, printed at Amsterdam in Holland in the 17 th century, became the first book in which Malayalam alphabet appeared on print.

About 100 years later A century later, Carl Linnaeus, known as the Father of Taxonomy, is said to have depended on Hortus Malabaricus to get information regarding plants in Asia. Linnaeus had used the same method used in Hortus Malabaricus to classify the plants shows the importance of the book.

K.S. Manilal,of the kerala university who translated the book into Malayalam and English, has found that around 100 species of plants mentioned in Hortus Malabaricus had disappeared.