Leptospermum emarginatum

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.55 : 1
• published 1818
• Plate 50

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

   凡画山水，意在笔先。

   —— 唐·王维《山水论》

   In painting, the intention precedes the brush.

   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 Leptospermum emarginatum: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 鱼柳梅属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 6.5% of the sheet, foliage 7.0%, the cast amber with a second note of 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 1.55 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 14% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. 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. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

6. 06

   Season

   Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. The year 1818 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Note the season. Phenology is the most practical tool of appreciation.

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 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 50. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   疏影横斜水清浅，暗香浮动月黄昏。

   —— 宋·林逋《山园小梅》

   Sparse shadows slant across the shallow water; hidden fragrance drifts in the dusk of the moon.

   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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1818.