Collectanea botanica Pl.27
Cxcidinm barbatum|Collectanea botanica Pl.27
Collectanea botanica Pl.27
About this plate
Collectanea botanica Pl.27 is plate 27, 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 1.49 : 1
- published 1821
- Plate 27
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
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
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. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 11 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
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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 4.6% of the sheet, foliage 2.7%, 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. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
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Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.49 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 9% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
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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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand.
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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. The best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.
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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 localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.
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The Book and the Hand
“Collectanea botanica” was drawn by John Lindley and published 1821-1826. This plate is Plate 27. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
朝饮木兰之坠露兮，夕餐秋菊之落英。
—— 战国·屈原《离骚》
At dawn I drink the dew fallen from magnolia; at dusk I dine on the fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemum.
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
庭下如积水空明，水中藻荇交横，盖竹柏影也。
—— 宋·苏轼《记承天寺夜游》
The courtyard seemed flooded with clear water, weeds crossing in it — in fact the shadows of bamboo and cypress.
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
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.
