Epiphyllum Truncatum
EPIPHYLLUM TRUNCATUM 2/₃ Nat. size
Epiphyllum Truncatum
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.69 : 1
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 where the orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Epiphyllum truncatum: 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.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 20.0% of the sheet, foliage 13.6%, the cast amber 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. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 39% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
行灶朝香炊早饭，小园春暖掇新蔬。
—— 唐·白居易《履道西門二首 一》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange 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. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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 1896 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
“Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse” carries only Edward Step's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1896 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Epiphyllum Truncatum is plate 53, from Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse, drawn by Edward Step. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: New York, Frederick Warne & Co, 1896-1897.
