Evidence of the introduction of New World plants in Europe, Asia, and Africa comes from the written record of explorers, correspondents, travelers, and botanists. However, the iconographic record of artists and illustrators in both the New and the Old World is a particularly valuable resource because it provides information on plant characteristics that are often incomplete in the written record and is particularly useful for such fields as taxonomy, genetics, crop domestication, crop evolution and genetic diversity. The New World civilizations developed an advanced agriculture and a rich source of iconographic evidence still survives despite the despoiling of many of their manuscripts by the conquistadores. Images of New World plants in the Old World are derived from illustrated manuscripts, herbals, paintings, and sculpture (Janick, 2007). PROLOGUE The Iberian encounter with the new found lands stumbled on by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was inspired by a shorter trade route to the spice-rich “Far East.” It proved to be the greatest event of the late Middle Ages and marks a convenient beginning to Modern Times. Columbus refused to believe that he had not found Asia, and the New World became known as the West Indies, a misnomer carried over to the present time in reference to the islands of the Caribbean. In anticipation of the riches promised by Columbus, Pope Alexander VI, the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia (born Roderic de Llancol), divided the world in 1494 between Portugal and Spain in a line of demarcation 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. At the treat of Tordesillas, January 24, 1506, the line was changed to 370 leagues west of this point, a miscalculation that not only assured Portugal’s rights to India and the Far East, but provided a toehold in Brazil. After Columbus there were immediate incursions by various Europeans adventurers (Thomas, 2003) and it was soon realized based on a southern voyage navigated by Amerigo Vespucci that the new area was a huge continent and the name America was given on a map by Martin Waldseemuller in 1507. Although Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific in an overland trek over the isthmus of Panama, a sea passage proved more difficult but was found by the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the King of Spain, in the strait that now bears his name in his famous voyage circumnavigating the globe (1519–1522) and chronicled by the Italian passenger Antonio Pigafetta. The English were less successful in finding a Northwest Passage but soon developed their foothold in North America along with the French. During the first two decades after the “discovery” the Americas provided only false hopes. Dyewood, cotton, monkeys, and parrots began to trickle out but the enormous riches desired, in terms of gold, silver, and jewels, treasures alluded to by Columbus for the ears of his greedy patrons, did not materialize. For 20 years the Spanish confined themselves to a small piece of the Isthmus of Panama and the islands of the Antilles. No