Nerine aurea (1834)
纳丽花属
Nerine aurea (1834)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.40 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. 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
The binomial is Nerine aurea: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet aurea means “golden” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. The Chinese name 纳丽花属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 3.0% of the sheet, foliage 0.7%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. 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 tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 10% of the sheet, centred above 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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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
总待别人般数尽，袖中拈出郁金芽。
—— 唐·王建《宮詞一百首 八十五》
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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
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
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Nerine aurea (1834) is plate 3, 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.
![Crinium Augustum. [Queen Emma] (1834)](/upload/nat/a-selection-of-hexandrian-plants-belonging-to-the-natural-orders-amaryllidae-and-liliacae-2/004-thumb.webp)
