Tansy-leaved Hawthorn

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.53 : 1
• published 1829
• Plate 1168

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

   搜尽奇峰打草稿。

   —— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》

   Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.

   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

   No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 7.9% of the sheet, foliage 3.8%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Flowering trees and shrubs put out branches first; blossoms open before or with the leaves, usually five thin, translucent petals around a cluster of fine stamens.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.53 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 34% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

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. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.

6. 06

   Season

   Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. The year 1829 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.

7. 07

   Provenance

   East Asia and temperate Eurasia. Plum, peach and apricot are Chinese in origin, grown for three thousand years; cherry and crabapple went east to Japan and west to Europe. 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 1168. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   玉不自言如桃李，鱼目笑之卞璧耻。

   —— 唐·李白《鞠歌行》

   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

    桃之夭夭，灼灼其华。之子于归，宜其室家。

    —— 《诗经·周南·桃夭》

    The peach tree young and lovely, its blossoms blazing; this girl goes to her new home, and it will be well with her house.

    Lin Bu of Hangzhou famously took the plum as his wife and the crane as his son; the Book of Songs already used peach blossom to open a wedding song. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    Plum is solitude, peach is marriage, apricot is spring itself, crabapple is a fragile fate; the hibiscus, opening at dawn and falling at dusk, is impermanence. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

12. 12

    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.