Botany has only a limited presence in classical Islamicate culture. A systematic knowledge of plants, as evidenced first in philological works, derives from references in pre-Islamic poetry to desert flora, mainly in the nasīb (amatory prologue) and raḥīl (camel travel) sections of the qaṣīda, and from references to plants in the Qurʾān (e.g., the lotus, 53:14; yaqṭīn , probably a gourd or other cucurbit, 37:144-6; the olive tree, 24:35; and the date palm, 19:25). This material formed the basis for monographs such as the