On March 31, 1788, the pharmacognost and botanist Hipólito Ruiz López (Hipólito Ruiz), the pharmacognost Antonio Pavón Jimenez, and the draftsman Isidro Gálvez Gallo returned to Spain after an approximately ten-year long expedition (1777-1788) to the Viceroyalty of Péru. The plant hunters of the team had been very successful: they collected about 3,000 specimens of plants and made about 3,000 life-sized colored botanical illustrations. Of these, 2,230 survived and are preserved in the Archives of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. They described about 150 new genera and 500 new species. In 1798, the first volume of the 'Flora Peruviana, et Chilensis... et icones...' together with their 'Systema vegetabilium...' were published. These volumes were preceeded by the 1794 edition of the 'Florae peruvianae, et chilensis ...prodromus...'. The travel itself was described in detail by Hipólito Ruiz et al. (1940)1.