Iris faetidissima, seu Xyris – Spatola fotida – Glayeul puant. (Iris foetidissima, Stinking Iris, Roast beef plant) (1772-1793)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.45 : 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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Iris faetidissima: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Iris: Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow, for the many hues of the flowers. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Irises carry rhizomes or bulbs, sword-shaped leaves in two ranks, and six tepals — three falls drooping, often bearded or speckled, three standards erect.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. 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: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
蓝田日暖玉生烟。
—— 唐·李商隐《锦瑟》
In warm sun over Lantian, the jade gives off smoke.
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.
Symbolism
In China sweet flag hung at the door wards off evil at midsummer; in Europe the iris is the messenger, since Iris was the rainbow goddess who carried divine words. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Late spring to early summer, peaking in April and May, before the summer rains. Temperate north. In China iris and sweet flag belong to the Dragon Boat festival. The year 1772 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Hortus Romanus juxta systema Tournefortianum” carries only Giorgio Bonelli's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1772.
