Salvia Leucantha

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.56 : 1
• published 1818
• Plate 7

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

   夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。

   —— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》

   Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.

   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 Salvia leucantha: 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.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 5.8% of the sheet, foliage 7.5%, the cast red with a second note of yellow-green. 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.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 1.56 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 16% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.

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

   Late spring to early autumn, June through September; under glass they could be had from March. 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

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

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   春风入园林，万卉以艳争相夸。

   —— 宋·王十朋《和韓李花 其一》

   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

    会心处不必在远，翳然林水，便自有濠濮间想也。

    —— 南朝宋·刘义庆《世说新语·言语》

    Where the heart understands, distance is not needed: a screen of trees and a little water, and the mind is already by the River Hao.

    China had its own gardening literature — Chen Haozi's Hua Jing on courtyard planting — which, like European bedding, brought wild plants down to human scale. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1818.