Amygdalus (persica) roaeflora

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.50 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 354

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

   真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。

   —— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》

   Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.

   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 red is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 14 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   Only the genus Amygdalus is given; species-level names came later. 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 18.2% of the sheet, foliage 7.3%, the cast red. 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. Filed under red — a red close to carmine, built in washes from a pale ground. 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 1.50 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 26% 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

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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

   Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. 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

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

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   矜红掩素似多才，不待樱桃不逐梅。

   —— 唐·杜牧《见穆三十宅中庭海榴花谢》

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

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    主淤血，血闭瘕邪，杀小虫。桃花杀注恶鬼，令人好颜色。桃凫，微湿，主杀百鬼精物（初学记引云，枭桃在树不落，杀百鬼）。

    —— 神农本草经·桃核仁第三百五十三

    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. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

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. This plate leans red, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. 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. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.