Collectanea botanica Pl.26
Collectanea botanica Pl.26
Collectanea botanica Pl.26
About this plate
Collectanea botanica Pl.26 is plate 26, from Collectanea botanica, drawn by John Lindley. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, Richard and Arthur Taylor, 1821-1826.
Twelve ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.44 : 1
- published 1821
- Plate 26
Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.
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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.
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.
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Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
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Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 4.1% of the sheet, foliage 13.1%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.44 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 40% of the sheet, centred above centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.
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Season
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable; the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. The year 1821 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Note the season. Phenology is the most practical tool of appreciation.
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Provenance
Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The volume was made in 1821-1826, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.
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The Book and the Hand
“Collectanea botanica” was drawn by John Lindley and published 1821-1826. This plate is Plate 26. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
天地有大美而不言，四时有明法而不议。
—— 《庄子·知北游》
Heaven and earth have great beauty and do not speak.
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.
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The Written Tradition
宁古无时，宁朴无巧，宁俭无俗。
—— 明·文震亨《长物志》
Better old than fashionable, better plain than clever, better spare than vulgar.
China had the Bencao Gangmu and the Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Realities; Europe moved from herbal woodcuts to chromolithography. Both trusted pictures to finish what words could not. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.
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Symbolism
The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
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What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1821 gave a whole day to a single flower.
