Calliopsis bicolor

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.52 : 1
• published 1818
• Plate 92

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

   真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。

   —— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》

   Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.

   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 Calliopsis bicolor: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet bicolor means “two-coloured” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. The Chinese name 两色金鸡菊 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 7.0% of the sheet, foliage 2.5%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Chrysanthemums are herbaceous with deeply lobed, downy leaves. Each 'flower' is a head — ray florets around the rim, disc florets in the centre, hundreds of small flowers in one.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 1.52 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 11% of the sheet, centred above 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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand.

6. 06

   Season

   Deep autumn, around the Double Ninth in the ninth month — after the first frost, when everything else is gone. The year 1818 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

   Native to China, adopted in Japan as the imperial crest, carried to Europe by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and remade by Victorian breeders. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Flora Italiana” was drawn by Gaetano Savi and published 1818-1824. This plate is Plate 92. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   乌桕微丹菊渐开，天高风送雁声哀。

   —— 《秋思·乌桕微丹菊渐开》

   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

    菊春生夏茂，秋花冬实，备受四气，饱经露霜，叶枯不落，花槁不零。

    —— 明·李时珍《本草纲目·草部》

    The chrysanthemum sprouts in spring, thrives in summer, flowers in autumn, seeds in winter; it takes all four seasons and all the frost, and its leaves wither without falling.

    The Bencao Gangmu notes that the shoot may be eaten, the leaf steeped, the flower taken as food, the root used as medicine, the petals stuffed into a pillow, the whole brewed into wine. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In China, seclusion and long life — and, after Tao Yuanming, the will to go home; in Japan, imperial authority. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

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.