The "article" in question is a tweet. The "rare botanical text" is just an example the author of the tweet made up in order to generate sympathy.

The tweet is about a 404 Media article about the practice. It's linked elsewhere here.

	▲	dwedge a day ago \| parent [-]
		Does the 404media article mention that rare botanical book? I saw an excerpt here elsewhere of their examples and it wasn't in that list. Also I had a family member work in libraries. They got rid of books for very small prices based on how many people checked them out. Not how easy they were to replace. One example was a 100 year old gold leafed book they sold for £5 to someone who removed every page to sell separately.