![Convolvulus [Ipomoea oenotheroides] (1817) (Convolvulus [Ipomoea oenotheroides] (1817)) - Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/043-original.webp)
Convolvulus [Ipomoea oenotheroides] (1817)
牵牛属
Convolvulus [Ipomoea oenotheroides] (1817)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- slightly upright 1.27 : 1
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.
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 Convolvulus is given; species-level names came later. The Chinese name 牵牛属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 9.2% of the sheet, foliage 1.3%, the cast red with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Garden annuals and low perennials: many small, brilliantly coloured flowers to a stem, with leaves palmately lobed, pinnate or entire — the mainstay of the Victorian bedding scheme.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 18% 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. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
小园新种红樱树，闲绕花行便当游。
—— 唐·白居易《酬韓侍郎張博士雨後遊曲江見寄》
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
Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late spring to early autumn, June through September. Gathered from everywhere by plant hunters and the glasshouse trade: pelargoniums from South Africa, campanulas from European mountains, lobelias from North America, fuchsias from Chile. The year 1817 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town” carries only Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann'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. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1817.
About this plate
Convolvulus [Ipomoea oenotheroides] (1817) is plate 43, from Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town, drawn by Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: 1817-1820.
![Cleome juncea. [Cadaba aphylla] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/042-thumb.webp)
![Cucumis, Melothria pendula [Coccinea quinqueloba] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/044-thumb.webp)
![Gardenia Nov. Sp. [Hyperacanthus amoenus] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/002-thumb.webp)
![Gardenia Nova Sp. [Burchellia bubalina] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/003-thumb.webp)
![Gloriosa [Gloriosa superba] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/004-thumb.webp)
![Hexand. Mono. [Mimusops obovata] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/005-thumb.webp)
![Hibiscus [Hibiscus calyphyllus] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/006-thumb.webp)
![Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/007-thumb.webp)
