The Byzantines were particularly interested in plants, mainly for their use in preparing drugs.The recording of herbs went back to antiquity: Nicander of Colophon (2nd century BC) wrote two books on the subject, Theriaca and Alexipharmaca, while the first book of botany by Crateuas contained an alphabetical list of plants and their properties, together with colour drawings of their roots and foliage for recognition and identification purposes. Later, in Late Antiquity, Dioscorides (1st century AD) recorded the therapeutic and pharmaceutical properties of Mediterranean plants in his five-volume work De Materia Medica, a book which served as a model for later medieval and modern illustrated books of botany. The most famous copy, decorated with miniatures of plants drawn ​​in Constantinople in 512, is kept in the National Library of Vienna.

In the 10th century, Emperor Constantine VII commissioned the compilation of Geoponica (Agricultural Pursuits), an unoriginal work that simply brought together information and advice on agriculture, such as vine cultivation and wine production, olive and fruit tree cultivation, ornamental plants and vegetables, and the control of pests, vermin and reptiles, etc. The Geoponica was written in plain language, with many features of everyday speech, and includes advice derived from folk medicine, superstition and magic. It is at this time that knowledge of plants appears to have been systematized all over the known world: entire paragraphs of Geoponica were taken from Persian texts, while several Greek works were translated into Arabic and Persian, and Byzantine Greek and Arab names of plants and herbs were gathered in specialist lexicons.

Specialist books on healthy eating were also written at this time, based on earlier medical works, with instructions as to which foods should be consumed for good health according to the month of the year. One such work was even dedicated to Emperor Michael VII Ducas - doctor and astrologer Simeon Seth’s Properties of Food, containing 228 plant and animal foods.

Late Byzantium saw the compilation of specialist botanical dictionaries, such as the lexicon by Neophytos Prodrominos, a monk from Constantinople, and an anthology by Demetrios Pepagomenos, a famed doctor in the capital, which lists therapeutic plants in alphabetical order, one for each letter of the alphabet. Poets and writers also dealt with plants and herbs in a humorous vein, as can be seen in four humorous poems by Manuel Philes, entitled On Wheat Ears, On Grapes, On Rose and On Pomegranate, dedicated to no less a person than the Emperor. The satirical work Porikologos centres on a trial taking place in the kingdom of plants. Although it is now impossible to see which actual people the author intended to lampoon, the work’s moralizing aim as a denouncement of drunkenness remains clear.