![Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817) (Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817)) - Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/007-original.webp)
Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817)
金莲木科
Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817)
Ten ways of seeing
- slightly upright 1.18 : 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
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 金莲木科 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
The sacred lotus lifts shield-shaped leaves above the water with a seed pod standing at the centre; waterlilies float their notched leaves and rest their flowers on the surface.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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. 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
鱼跃莲东荡宫沼，蒙蒙御柳悬栖鸟。
—— 唐·温庭筠《鸡鸣埭曲》
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
in Buddhism it is the seat of the pure land; in Egypt the waterlily is sunrise and rebirth. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
each flower opens at dawn and closes by afternoon, lasting three days. The sacred lotus is native to warm Asia and cultivated in China for three millennia. 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. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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
Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817) is plate 7, 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.
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