Alloplectus vittatus

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.57 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 488

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

   江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。

   —— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》

   On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.

   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 where the green is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Alloplectus vittatus: 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 美丽亮果岩桐 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 7.8% of the sheet, foliage 18.8%, the cast red with a second note of amber. 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. Filed under green — a moss green, a colour that comes mostly from leaf and stem. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.57 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 64% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.

6. 06

   Season

   Late summer into autumn, variety by variety; a fruit portfolio spans the whole harvest. The year 1854 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

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. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 488. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   一年好景君须记，最是橙黄橘绿时。

   —— 宋·苏轼《赠刘景文》

   Remember the best of the year: the time of yellow oranges and green tangerines.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the green 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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1854.