Andromeda (Comarostaphylis) formosa

Twelve ways of seeing

One plate, read twelve times over: its name, its colour, the burin and the brush, the shape of the sheet, the season, the soil it came from, the book it belongs to, its language of flowers, the poem it answers to, the lore behind it, how to look, and what remains.

1. 01

   The Name

   The plate is titled “Andromeda (Comarostaphylis) formosa”, numbered Plate 173. No reliable binomial survives on the plate, so it must be cited by its original title. Neither a Chinese name nor a reliable binomial survives: the plate can only be cited by its printed title, and left to speak for itself.

2. 02

   Form and Colour

   A bulb of overlapping fleshy scales gives the lily its Chinese name, 'hundred-fold'; six tepals reflex as the flower opens, around six stamens with long, T-shaped anthers. Filed under green — a moss green. That colour comes mostly from leaf, calyx and stem; the flower occupies a small patch. A botanical plate establishes the plant before it points at the bloom. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the touch of the brush.

3. 03

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Images grew more accurate and less personal. Look closely at the line and the colour: an unbroken line means engraving, colour crossing the outline by half a millimetre means hand-colouring. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins above and below — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.48 : 1). No details are appended: this is a plate for looking, not for keying out.

5. 05

   Season

   Early to high summer, June and July; the flowers last only days, so artists drew them just as they opened. The year 1854 on the plate is the year of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier.

6. 06

   Provenance

   Temperate north — China, Japan, Europe. Long used in Chinese medicine, lilies were hunted in East Asia by nineteenth-century collectors and transformed European gardens. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

7. 07

   The Book

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 173. The image is in the public domain; the hand-colouring on the paper is still one person's hand, two centuries ago.

8. 08

   Symbolism

   In the West the white lily is Marian purity, held by the angel of the Annunciation; in China the name sounds like 'a hundred years in harmony', a wedding wish. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   梨花淡白柳深青，柳絮飞时花满城。

   —— 宋·苏轼《东栏梨花》

   Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green; when the catkins fly, flowers fill the town.

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

10. 10

    Classical Lore

    The Bencao Gangmu describes the bulb as garlic-like, edible and medicinal; Song writers already noted that the leaves vary while the flowers stay white. Chinese flower books ranked plants by character; European floras described them by form and name. This plate belongs to the second tradition, yet bears reading by the first. A flora asks what it is; a flower book asks what it means. Read both or half-read the plate.

11. 11

    How to Look

    Watch how far the tepals reflex, and the anther colour: green before opening, brown as the flower fades. A sectioned bulb is the mark of a botanical plate. If you look at one thing, look at how flower meets stem; that joint is the hardest to draw and the surest to identify.

12. 12

    Afterword

    The flower of 1854 is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.