It analyzes the works of the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Florentine merchant Galeotto Cei, and royal officer Tomás López Medel. These are natural histories written in the firsts decades of the sixteenth century. It is an approach to the ways how Europeans conceived plants of the Americas. This study shows the different initiatives oriented to comprehend the New World nature and the relationships that established conquerors and indigenous people. In the early sixteenth century the depictions focused on food. It allows a glimpse into the repercussion of the rising of colonial society: the taste issue favored the distinction between social groups; the necessity characterized everyday life; elements theory and the great chain of being served to classify and include the flora from the Indies, according to European frameworks. In these natural histories, medicinal plants took secondary priority. It demonstrates the difficulties of collecting information due to the excessive secrecy of the indigenous people. It started to change in the 1560s when it had an increasing interest in medicines. Due to the gathering of information practices and information networks were formalized, the physician’s figure and medicinal treatises gained prominence with respect to the literature on New World nature written during the early sixteenth century.