![Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834) (Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834)) - A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ](/upload/nat/a-selection-of-hexandrian-plants-belonging-to-the-natural-orders-amaryllidae-and-liliacae-2/022-original.webp)
Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834)
石蒜科、百合蝎尾蕉、面罩鹦鹉属、火铃花科
Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- slightly upright 1.28 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
Only the genus Amaryllis is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 11.9% of the sheet, foliage 4.0%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Bulbous plants store the year underground — bulb, corm or tuber — then send up a few thick leaves and a single scape, with six tepals in cup, funnel or star.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 19% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
卢家少妇郁金堂，海燕双栖玳瑁梁。
—— 唐·沈佺期《古意呈補闕喬知之》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
The tulip was an imperial emblem in Istanbul and a speculative bubble in Amsterdam; the hyacinth sprang from a boy's blood in Greek myth. What bulbs share is concealment: next year kept underground. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Early spring to early summer, genus by genus: tulips and hyacinths first, gladiolus and amaryllis later. Three homelands: the Mediterranean, Central Asia and South Africa. The tulip came from Ottoman gardens and became a Dutch mania. The year 1834 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ” carries only Priscilla Susan Bury's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1834 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834) is plate 22, from A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ, drawn by Priscilla Susan Bury. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, R. Havell, 1834.
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