"Grew was a conscious pioneer in a hitherto neglected area...  His work was primarily marked by his brilliant observation and description of plants and their component parts; having begun by making observations using only the naked eye, Grew supplemented these with the use of a microscope under the tutelage of his colleague [Robert] Hooke. His presentations to the society began in 1672–4 with the roots, branches, and trunks of plants, proceeding thereafter to their leaves, flowers, fruit, and seeds. In each area he was innovative, studying for the first time many features of plants that have since been taken for granted, such as their cell-like structure and the growth rings in wood, and deploying techniques which have since become commonplace, such as the use of transverse, radial, and tangential longitudinal sections to analyse the structure of stems and roots. He was also an innovator in the terminology he used to describe plants, first using such terms as ‘radicle’ or ‘parenchyma’, a word adapted from its use in animal anatomy by Francis Glisson. Grew was primarily interested in the morphology and taxonomy of plants, but this led him to study plant physiology; he thus considered how buds grew, how seeds developed, and other related topics. He also recognized the sexual nature of plant reproduction, though, with characteristic modesty, he acknowledged that this idea had already occurred to the physician Sir Thomas Millington" (ODNB).

Grew, secretary to the Royal Society, compiled this illustrated catalogue of its museum, then housed at Gresham College. Published with the catalogue is Grew’s study of the stomach organs, which is the first zoological book to have the term “comparative anatomy” on the title page, and also the first attempt to deal with one system of organs only by the comparative method. Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.