Sulphur-coloured Ismene

Twelve ways of seeing

One plate, read twelve times over: its name, its colour, the burin and the brush, the shape of the sheet, the season, the soil it came from, the book it belongs to, its language of flowers, the poem it answers to, the lore behind it, how to look, and what remains.

1. 01

   The Name

   The plate is titled “Sulphur-coloured Ismene”, numbered Plate 1136. No reliable binomial survives on the plate, so it must be cited by its original title. Neither a Chinese name nor a reliable binomial survives: the plate can only be cited by its printed title, and left to speak for itself.

2. 02

   Form and Colour

   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. Filed under green — a moss green. That colour comes mostly from leaf, calyx and stem; the flower occupies a small patch. A botanical plate establishes the plant before it points at the bloom. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.

3. 03

   Line and Colour

   The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography. Stipple could render the softest transition — Redouté's roses depend on it — while lithography suited broad, gentle washes. Look closely at the line and the colour: an unbroken line means engraving, colour crossing the outline by half a millimetre means hand-colouring. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins above and below — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.67 : 1). No details are appended: this is a plate for looking, not for keying out.

5. 05

   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 1829 on the plate is the year of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier.

6. 06

   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.

7. 07

   The Book

   “Edwards' Botanical Register” was drawn by Sydenham Edwards, John Lindley and published 1829-1847. This plate is Plate 1136. The image is in the public domain; the hand-colouring on the paper is still one person's hand, two centuries ago.

8. 08

   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. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.

9. 09

   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 green the corolla becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    Classical Lore

    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. Chinese flower books ranked plants by character; European floras described them by form and name. This plate belongs to the second tradition, yet bears reading by the first. Printed in 1829, at the moment the two traditions began to see each other.

11. 11

    How to Look

    Look at the edge: where the plant is cropped tells you how it was seen — as specimen, as garden plant, or as wild thing. Stand back for the habit, step close for the meeting of line and colour.

12. 12

    Afterword

    The flower of 1829 is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.