Herbals, gardening books and botanic terminology in Ireland: a preliminary description for a linguistic investigation by Daniela Cesiri 1. Introduction and main project’s outline he present chapter is meant to present the irst, preliminary results of a project 1 which seeks to examine the popularised lex- icon used to describe the Irish lora during the so-called Late Modern period (1720-1910 c.). he text types taken into consideration for the project’s pur- poses include Irish herbals as well as botany and gardening books published in Ireland. hey were addressed to an Irish audience and, in particular, to a public of amateurs. he texts used for the study will be examined along with their distribution across the centuries in order to investigate their possible evolution as a textual genre compared with similar kinds of publications available in England for a British public. Indeed, the project will seek to explore the pos- sibility of an Irish independent approach to the discipline. he terminology used in these texts is highly interesting from a lexicological and a lexicographical viewpoint since plants and herbs are presented both with their Latin (specialised) name and with their English (popular) name. he authors of the texts under analysis deal with autochthonous species, so they often include the plant’s popu- lar name in Irish Gaelic as well. In this case, the complexity of the Irish terminology in botany would increase considerably. 1 he project entitled “Popularising natural sciences: a diachronic approach to the description of Irish lora” is part of the main project “Popularising spe- cialized discourse in a diachronic perspective” between the University of Pal- ermo (Italy) and the University of Salento (Italy), co-inanced by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (prot. n. 2008C7BR9H).