Solanum marginatum

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.76 : 1
• published 1781
• Plate 596

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 Solanum marginatum: 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 茄属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 15.9% of the sheet, foliage 8.1%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Fruit plates pair the whole fruit with a section: the outline identifies the variety, the cut reveals skin thickness, core size and seed arrangement — the evidence of registration.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 1.76 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 38% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   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.

6. 06

   Season

   Late summer into autumn, variety by variety; a fruit portfolio spans the whole harvest. The year 1781 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

   Temperate fruits came mostly from Eurasia, later from the Americas. Nineteenth-century nurseries printed varietal albums for trade and exhibition: every fruit on the page was a saleable claim. 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

   “Icones Plantarum Rariorum” was drawn by Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin and published 1781-1793. This plate is Plate 596. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   昔日居邻招屈亭，枫林橘树鹧鸪声。

   —— 唐·刘禹锡《酬朗州崔员外与任十四兄侍御同过鄙人旧居见怀之什时守吴郡》

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the fruit becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    后皇嘉树，橘徕服兮。受命不迁，生南国兮。

    —— 战国·屈原《九章·橘颂》

    O lovely tree, the orange, sent to serve here below; you take your charge and will not move, born in the southern land.

    The Book of Songs has a quince given and a jade pendant returned — fruit as ritual gift already in pre-Qin China. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In China the pomegranate means many sons, the peach long life, the orange good fortune; in Europe the apple is temptation and knowledge, the grape abundance and sacrifice. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.

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. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.