Purple Lobelia

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast crimson
• upright 1.64 : 1
• published 1829
• Plate 889

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.

1. 01

   First Look

   竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。

   —— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》

   A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.

   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.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Purple lobelia: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 4.9% of the sheet, foliage 1.8%, the cast crimson with a second note of red. 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. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.64 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 26% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing.

6. 06

   Season

   Late spring to early autumn, June through September; under glass they could be had from March. The year 1829 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

7. 07

   Provenance

   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 volume was made in 1829-1847, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Edwards' Botanical Register” was drawn by Sydenham Edwards, John Lindley and published 1829-1847. This plate is Plate 889. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   春色满园关不住，一枝红杏出墙来。

   —— 宋·叶绍翁《游园不值》

   Spring cannot be shut inside a garden: one branch of apricot reaches over the wall.

   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.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    会心处不必在远，翳然林水，便自有濠濮间想也。

    —— 南朝宋·刘义庆《世说新语·言语》

    Where the heart understands, distance is not needed: a screen of trees and a little water, and the mind is already by the River Hao.

    China had its own gardening literature — Chen Haozi's Hua Jing on courtyard planting — which, like European bedding, brought wild plants down to human scale. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1829 gave a whole day to a single flower.