During the 12th century the growth of biology was sporadic. Nevertheless, it was during that time that botany was developed from the study of plants with healing properties. Because of the interest in medicinal plants, herbs in general began to be described and illustrated in a realistic manner. Although Arabic science was well developed during the period and was far in advance of Latin, Byzantine, and Chinese cultures, it began to show signs of decline.

European learning, on the other hand, was rapidly increasing and best exemplified perhaps by the mid-15th-century German scholar Johannes von Cuba (1430–1503) . The Gart der Gesundheit (German, for The Garden of Health) was edited in 1485 and was one of the first printed herbals in German. The Gart der Gesundheit is an important late medieval work concerning the knowledge of natural history, especially that of medicinal plants. 382 plants, 25 drugs from the animal kingdom and 28 minerals, are described. The book was edited by Peter Schöffer in Mainz, an apprendice of Gutenberg. About 100 of the 379 illustrations in the Gart der Gesundheit were done by Erhard Reuwich whose woodcuts depict the character of plants in clear lines.

Over the period 1530–40, Germans led the march to publish books about plants, with fresh and vigorous illustrations, contrasted sharply with earlier texts, whose authors had been content merely to copy from old manuscripts. Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566) published descriptive well-illustrated texts about common wild flowers. He was the author of a large book about plants and their uses as medicines, a herbal, which was reprinted in 1583. It has about 500 accurate and detailed drawings of plants, which were printed from woodcuts. The drawings are the book's most notable advance on its predecessors. Although drawings had been used in other herbal books, Fuchs's herbal book proved and emphasized high-quality drawings as the most telling way to specify what a plant name stands for. Because of his works, he is often referred to as the German father of botany, may be considered the forerunners of modern botanical floras (treatises on or lists of the plants of an area or period).