Tofieldia Palustris

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 “Tofieldia Palustris”, numbered Plate 256 (book page 256). No reliable binomial survives on the plate, so it must be cited by its original title. The Chinese name 粘菖蒲 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name — between a plant and its names there is always translation.

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

   The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography. Stipple could render the softest transition — Redouté's roses depend on it — while lithography suited broad, gentle washes. 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 1.94 : 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 1809 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. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side and the differences declare themselves.

7. 07

   The Book

   “The Liliaceae” was drawn by Pierre-Joseph Redouté and published 1802-1816. This plate is Plate 256, book page 256. 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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   木末芙蓉花，山中发红萼。涧户寂无人，纷纷开且落。

   —— 唐·王维《辛夷坞》

   Lotus blossoms at the branch tips put forth red calyces in the hills. By the silent ravine, they open and fall, open and fall.

   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. Books fill in what the picture omits, and also hide what it shows: look first, read after.

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. Stand back for the habit, step close for the meeting of line and colour.

12. 12

    Afterword

    Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1809.