Two BHL contributors – the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London, UK and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia, USA, have recently embarked on a collaborative project to digitise works of art by women botanical artists. Kew’s Metadata and Digitisation Officer Joanna Durant sheds some light on two of these often under-represented botanical pioneers.

Why Digitise?

Historically, female botanists and botanical artists were rarely given as much credit as their male counterparts. Botanical art was often viewed as a pleasant pastime for women who had time on their hands whilst their husbands were at work, and the contribution that these women made to the advancement of scientific illustration was often undermined.

To highlight the importance of these historically, scientifically and socially significant collections, Kew’s Library, Art and Archives department, in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, is in the process of digitising its out of copyright work by women artists, spanning several centuries.

Kew holds over 200,000 prints and drawings, and this working resource is available to staff and visitors to the department, often providing a reference tool against preserved herbarium specimens. The ultimate aim of this collaborative effort is to ensure that high quality images of illustrations and their associated data is safely stored in digital format for future generations.

The benefits of this process are threefold. We are improving access to our unique collections (the images and data will be available online), we are preventing any potential loss of information (if the worst happened and the collections were somehow lost or damaged), and we are extracting and collating artwork that is currently being stored with specimens in the herbarium. The artwork is then being rehoused in more appropriate storage conditions as the project progresses.

Think of it as a huge inventory, with photography, data transcription and then the upload of digital files to nicely wrap it all up.

One of Kew’s Library, Art and Archives temperature-controlled Stores used to house illustrations and rare books.

Botanical Pioneers

There seems to be a pattern that emerges when you start to research botanical artwork created by women, particularly those who lived and worked in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries. “Very little is known about her…” “She published her work anonymously…” or, very commonly, was only known by her husband’s name. There are even instances of artwork not being signed or attributed to any particular artist at all.

These often-unrecognised artists made a huge impact on our current understanding of botany. From the anatomical structure of plants to the habitats in which they grew and the communities that relied on them, women botanical artists were real trailblazers in their field.

Mary Anne Stebbing and the Empty Chair

“Mrs T. R. R. Stebbing” can be found on numerous acquisition labels on illustrations in Kew’s collection. It is actually referring to the early 20^th century botanical artist Mary Anne Stebbing (née Saunders), under her zoologist-husband’s name, Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing.

Born in around 1845 into a family of keen naturalists, Mary began gathering and sketching plants at an early age, and her ambition was to “illustrate the British flora by water-colour drawings”. Sadly, a fire in 1881 destroyed much of her early work, but her resulting later illustrations took on a more detailed and scientific feel with various anatomical sections of plants and notes on habitats and locations included.

Mary illustrated many species for her husband’s scientific publications, often branching out from botany into Crustacea. Interestingly, she was never credited for her vital contributions, and despite working in scientific collaboration with her husband, the papers were always published in his name. However, in her husband’s obituary in 1926, Nature referred to Mary as “an accomplished botanist”, inferring that by this time she was very much viewed as a botanist in her own right among her peers.

However, there is more to the story of Mary Anne Stebbing than meets the eye, and it is a fascinating glimpse into Edwardian social history.

Mary’s husband, Thomas, was a member of the Linnean Society – a prestigious society dedicated to the study of evolution and natural history and one which was, traditionally, strictly men only. Thomas felt strongly that women should also be accepted as members, and Mary was successfully invited to become one of the first female members in 1905. To mark this occasion, a painting was commissioned by the Treasurer, Frank Crisp, by the artist James Sant.

In the painting, Mary is positioned prominently in the foreground, in front of her husband. Also pictured is Catherine, Frank’s wife, who was also being admitted as a new Society member. In a telegraph from Frank after the painting was completed, his attitude towards the significance of Mary’s position within the artwork can be seen: “we must surely have at the table a lady fellow who has done something, not one without a record”. Whether the absence of Mary’s name on her and her husband’s papers was being referenced, or whether Crisp simply didn’t believe that she was worthy of scientific recognition, we may never fully understand. Press coverage of the painting was scathing – one newspaper advised not missing a glimpse of the picture as it would “make you laugh”. Crisp withheld the artwork until his death in 1919, but by that time, the painting had been altered. Both Mary and Thomas had been painted out, with Mary being replaced by an empty chair.

Watercolour of a Castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) showing various enlarged sections by Mary Anne Stebbing (c1845 – 1927). Copyright of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

Sarah Anne Drake

An interesting example of an artist of whom very little is known is Sarah Anne Drake (1803 – 1857), or “Miss Drake”, as she often signed her work.

Born in Norfolk, UK, Sarah Anne Drake moved to London in around 1830. Through a family friendship, she was brought into the household (possibly to act as a children’s governess) of John Lindley, the then secretary of the Horticultural Society of London and a keen botanist. John soon recognised that Sarah was an extremely talented artist, and within a few years she had been commissioned to illustrate his famous publication Sertum Orchidaceum (1837 – 1841).

The 19^th century saw an explosion of interest in orchids (one might even describe it as an obsession). For the Victorians, orchids represented romance and seduction, and scientists were keen to illustrate these incredible and exotic plants to accompany their publications. Sertum Orchidaceum was indeed a lavish example of this botanical craze.

A plate for Sertum Orchidaceum entitled Aerides quinquevulnera by Sarah Anne Drake (1803 – 1857). Copyright of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

John Lindley, Jane Loudon and Ladies botany

Sarah Anne Drake also provided highly technical illustrations for several other publications at the time, including another written by John Lindley, the fascinatingly titled Ladies Botany (1834 – 1837).

John Lindley used this publication in his quest to make botany more “scientific” – he was one of a growing number of scientists and philosophers who became fixated with challenging botany’s reputation for being “unmanly”, “amateur” and above all, feminine. Botany was viewed as a separate discipline distinct from mainstream science, and academics such as John Lindley aimed to defeminise and modernise it. In Ladies Botany, the author attempts to displace the traditional Linnaean system of study (which was viewed as being strongly wedded to the amateur student) with a more natural system. Unfortunately, the rhetoric in the publication is gendered and, when read now, can be described as condescending.

It wasn’t until 1842 that a popular book successfully began to introduce the natural system of study, with the publication of Botany for ladies; or a popular introduction to the natural system of plants by Jane Loudon (1807 – 1858).

This book takes the reader through the botanical orders and introduces de Candolle’s systematic description of species, and opens with a frank statement from the author that as a child she could “never learn botany”. The introduction describes how books on the subject, with the exception of John Lindley’s, were “all sealed to me”, and also includes the following telling sentence: “It is so difficult for men whose knowledge has grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, to imagine the state of profound ignorance in which a beginner is, that even their elementary books are like the old Eton Grammar when it was written in Latin – they require a master to explain them.”

The influence of women botanists and botanical artists on the progression of botanical knowledge can be traced back for centuries, and the way that these women were viewed by the male-dominated field of science is a fascinating glimpse into an important part of our social history. It is the aim of organisations such as BHL, Oak Spring and Kew Gardens to document and disseminate the incredible achievements of these women for future generations.

Further Reading and References

Figuring it out: Science, gender and visual culture by Ann B. Shteir and Bernard Lightman

Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel by Amy King

Portrait engraving of the Duchess of Beaufort by Joseph Nutting, after Robert Walker, circa 1690-1722 (image from the National Portrait Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons)

Prominent botanist and cataloger of gardens, William Sherard (1659-1728), was hired by an aristocrat to tutor her grandson in botany for “hee loving my diversion so well.” This was Mary Somerset, the first Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715), an accomplished gardener and botanist in her own right. She sought solace in “natural learning” and tending plants, some cultivated in what she referred to as her “infirmary.” As detailed in landscape historian and conservator Mark Laird’s splendid A Natural History of English Gardening (2015), her gardening activities were a refuge from bouts of depression. She remarked in a letter of her cataloging: “When I get into storys of plants I know not how to get out.”  Laird’s chapter on Mary Somerset, and other recent scholarly investigations, examine her work and help elevate her role in the history of science. Rather than simply a diversion from melancholia, she was dedicated in her studies, blossoming late in her life.

The English noblewoman was born Mary Capel and is also known by the name from her first marriage, Mary Seymour, Lady Beauchamp. She gave birth to nine children and oversaw, with an exacting eye, two estates—Badminton House in Gloucestershire and Beaufort House in London with their famous gardens. Mary Somerset began intensely collecting and cultivating plants in the 1680s. In widowhood, beginning in 1700, it became even more of a consuming passion. Somerset’s specimens, both exotic and domestic, were featured in her and other important gardens.

The Capel (also Capell) Family by Cornelius Johnson, circa 1640 (photo: National Portrait Gallery, London; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-capel-family-156922). Mary Capell, later the Duchess of Beaufort, is to the far right of this affectionate portrayal. The background landscape provides a glimpse of the family’s Italianate gardens of Hadham Hall in Hertfordshire, where Mary Capel grew up.

Everhard Kick, Polygala Blue Convolvulvus, Badminton florilegium (image from Wikimedia Commons)

The herbarium Mary Somerset compiled to record her efforts grew to twelve volumes containing her dried plant specimens. She bequeathed this significant work to a great friend, the family physician and neighbor in Chelsea, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), who in turn donated it to the British Museum. The work now is in the Botany Library of the Natural History Museum in London. Another manuscript of her flora is preserved in the paintings of Everhard Kick (also known as Everard Kickius), a Dutch artist, and Daniel Frankcom. They composed a two-volume florilegium (1703-5) in sixty-eight folios of her prized exotics and occasional favored native plants. This catalog remains at Badminton House. These were private undertakings, a record of her individual mind and accomplishments. Apart from these bound works and manuscript collections of letters and records, there are other sources to trace this remarkable woman’s pursuits and how she was viewed by contemporaries.

In the early modern period, plant collecting relied on an informal scientific network—a circle of botanists, nurserymen, gardeners, apothecaries, physicians, and explorers—for information. Although excluded from the culture of the coffeehouse and other intellectual clubs and the Royal Society, Mary Somerset was an active participant in the exchange of botanical knowledge. She was not just a patron but an influential gardener whose analyses of plants were taken seriously by many contemporary scientists who were her correspondents and mutual suppliers of seeds, including John Ray, Jacob Bobart, Samuel Doody, Robert Southwell, George London, and Richard Bradley. Preserved correspondence reveal her contributions, as do mentions of her in important publications of the time.

Explorer, physician, collector, and long-serving President of the Royal Society, Hans Sloane, in his Preface to the first volume of A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christohers and Jamaica (1707) acknowledges the value of Somerset’s active role in his colonial plant trade. He wrote:

“The Plants themselves have been likewise brought over, planted, and throve very well at Moyra, in Ireland, by the Direction of Sir Arthur Rawdon; as also by the Order of the Right Reverend Dr. Henry Compton, Bishop of London, at Fulham; at Chelsea by Mr. Doudy; and Enfield by the Reverend Dr. Robert Uvedale; and in the Botanic Gardens of Amsterdam, Leyden, Leipsick, Upsal, &c. but especially at Badminton in Gloucester-Shire, where they are not only rais’d some few handfuls high, but come to Perfection, flower and produce their ripe Fruits, even to my Admiration; and that, by the Direction of her Grace the Duchess of Beaufort, who at her leisure Hours, from her more serious Affairs, has taken pleasure to command the raising of Plants in her Garden.”

Mary Somerset received seeds from all over the world, including the Cape of Good Hope, Sri Lanka, Japan, and the West Indies, and tended them with great care. She was one of the early adopters of the late 17^th-century innovation, the “tropical stove” or hothouse, to propagate plants. At a time when women, if employed in aristocratic gardens at all, tended to be low-paid weeders, the converted greenhouse at Badminton was presided over by a female assistant, known only as Mary or Martha.

Beaufort House in London had greenhouses as well as expansive gardens. This home of Mary Somerset, and that of Sloane, were nearby to the Chelsea Physic Garden, founded for the promotion of medicinal botany in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries. There was a mutual trading of specimens and seeds with the four-acre physic garden.

Lycium afrum, one of the plants nurtured in Gloucestershire and Chelsea that Mary Somerset is credited with introducing. Illustration from: Plantarum indigenarum et exoticarum icones ad vivum coloratae. Jarhg. 3 (1790). Contributed in BHL from Harvard University Botany Libraries.

Among the plants nurtured in Gloucestershire and Chelsea that Mary Somerset is credited with introducing were Globe amaranth (native to Asia; in William Townsend Aiton, volume 2, Hortus Kewensis), Comptonia asplenifolia (native to North America; in Encyclopaedia Londinensis 1810), Canarina campanula, Pinus strobus L. (White pine, native to North America), Lycium afrum, and Iva frutescens (John Claudius Loudon, Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, 1838; Philip Miller, The Gardener’s and Botanist’s Dictionary, 1807; and Hortus Collinsonianus, 1843). But she also grew florists’ flowers, such as carnations, nasturtiums, tulips, and auriculas as well as evergreens and oranges, most often in dedicated sections of her vast gardens, and, of course, to adorn her great homes.

Passiflora caerula. The blue passion flower is another cultivar of the Duchess of Beaufort (see Loudon’s Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum).

William Sherard helped instruct Mary Somerset in taxonomic methods of documenting her plants. The botanist had studied with Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in Paris and Paul Hermann in Leiden and helped edit a revision of Caspar Bauhin’s Pinax Theatri Botanici. The requests from numerous scientists and botanical authorities for the tending of seeds at both Badminton and her London gardens was not simply to provide the necessary environment for nurturing specimens, but for her ability to cultivate these exotics and to compare them with native plants, providing details on what thrived and what did not. That is, her observations, descriptions and opinions were respected and sought.

Another correspondent of Somerset’s was botanist James Petiver (1663 or 1664-1718). He wrote a series for the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (1711-14), “Account of Rare Plants Lately Observed in Several Curious Gardens about London and particularly the Company of Apothecaries’ Physic Garden at Chelsea.” Included in this description is Somerset’s neighboring garden in London. Nothing remains of that estate except perhaps some of her specimens that may have ended up in the Physic Garden. Beaufort House at Cheyne Walk was purchased in 1737 by Sloane. After being left vacant for twenty years, he had the home and gardens demolished in 1740.

Philip Miller (1691-1771), who had a distinguished career at the Chelsea Physic Garden, in the Catalogus Plantarum of 1730 notes Somerset’s contributions. The gardener records names of some of the “many learned and curious persons, nobility and gentry” who sought to transform “our former poorly furnish’d gardens.” Included was:

“Her Grace the Dutchess of Beaufort did also collect a numerous quantity of rare Plants into those famous Gardens of Badmington, where she preserved and maintained them with great Care in wonderful Beauty for many years; but as this Collection consisted chiefly of our most tender Exotick Plants, so we shall have Occasion to mention that Noble Person when we come to treat those Plants in another Place.”

Engraving of the Chelsea Physic Garden, from the Surrey Bank (from Wellcome Images (no. L0003897) via Wikimedia Commons)

It is notable that Mary Somerset, in contrast to many of her fellow botanists, was not just interested in dried specimens and their identification but thoroughly engaged in horticulture—cultivating plants to thrive and creating gardens that were famous in their time. As Stephen Switzer noted in his 1718 Ichnographia Rustica, or, The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener’s Recreation, “how much of her time she virtuously and busily employed in the garden.”

Colored engraving of Beaufort House, occupying part of the former estate of Sir Thomas More, in Chelsea, 1708, by Johannes Kip. From Britannia Illustrata (image from the Museum of London) the bird eye’s view shows the surrounding gardens, orchards and greenhouses.

A more complete survey of printed acknowledgements and identifications of plants which Mary Somerset helped introduce will expand the portrait of a complex woman who sought relief from depression in gardening and horticultural and botanical studies. There is the challenging task of pinpointing more of her plants by comparing the portrayals in the Sloane herbarium and the Badminton florilegium with representations in publications in the pre-Linnaean era. As the Biodiversity Heritage Library makes more of this literature, including landscape history, available online, the ability to explore Somerset’s participation and influence is greatly aided.

Beaufortia decussata. The genus Beaufortia was named for Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort. Illustration from: Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. v. 42 (1815). Contributed in BHL from the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

References

Chambers, Douglas. “‘Storys of Plant'”: The Assembling of Mary Capel Somerset’s Botanical Collection at Badminton,” in Journal of the History of Collections, volume 9, 1997, pages 49-60.

Davies, Julie. “Botanizing at Badminton House: The Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, First Duchess of Beaufort,” in Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science; editor, Donald L. Opitz (2016).

Duthie, Ruth. “The Planting Plans of Some Seventeenth-Century Flower Gardens,” in Garden History, volume 18, no. 2 (Autumn 1990), pages 77-102.

Laird, Mark. A natural history of English gardening, 1650-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Munroe, Jennifer. “’My Innocent Diverson of Gardening’: Mary Somerset’s Plants,” Renaissance Studies, volume 25, number 1, February 2011, pages 211-123.

This post was originally published on the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library website in November 2014. It is authored by (now retired) Edward J. Valauskas, Curator of Rare Books.

Kokiʻo ʻula. Art by Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair. Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. 1885. Contributed in BHL from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

How does a young woman create the most important record of Hawaiian flowers in the nineteenth century? Who helps her identify plants and find a London publisher? Why does she leave New Zealand for Niihau, the Forbidden Island? Thanks to a magnificent book in the Rare Book Collection of the Chicago Botanic Garden Library (and a little research), we can answer these questions.

With 44 delightful chromolithographed plates, Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands is no ordinary book. Its illustrations introduced the world to an exotic, endemic, and vanishing flora. Indigenous Flowers provides a marker to measure the impact of humans on the fragile ecosystem of two Hawaiian islands, yet another signal of the Anthropocene epoch. Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair (1840–90) was probably the most unexpected ambassador for plant conservation. Her breadth of botanical experiences in the Pacific, in both New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands (better known today as Hawaii), gave her a particular vision to recognize the effects of humans on local flora and fauna.

Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair (1840–90)

Isabella was born in Scotland, and migrated across the globe with her family to Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861. A little more than 16,000 people of European descent resided in Canterbury at the time, making it the second most populous city in the country. Her father, William McHutcheson (1810–1905), moved to this faraway locale thanks to the energetic efforts of his sister Elizabeth McHutcheson Sinclair (1800–92). Better known as Eliza, she managed family prospects successfully, in part because her husband and son perished at sea in 1846.

After several decades in New Zealand, Elizabeth decided to try her luck elsewhere, moving to British Columbia in Canada in 1863. Eliza and her family found that the natives of British Columbia were quite different from Maori, and the mountainous, wooded terrain was much more difficult to clear and prepare for settlement and agriculture. Eliza decided to abandon Canada for California, but a friend recommended the Sandwich Islands instead.

In September 1863, Elizabeth Sinclair, et al. arrived in Honolulu via a circuitous route on the ship Bessie, starting in Vancouver and stopping in Los Angeles. Moving with speed, Eliza bought the island called Niihau for $10,000 from Kamehameha V (1830–72), the fifth monarch of Hawaii. Niihau, measuring about 70 square miles (or less than a third of Chicago’s 228 square miles), became the base for the expanding Sinclair family, including Isabella who married her cousin Francis.

Isabella and Francis worked with the Sinclair clan on Niihau, but decided to settle on the southern shore of the adjacent island of Kauai in Makaweli. Kauai is a little more than 17 miles southwest of Niihau, so Francis (known also as Frank) could easily move between family duties on the islands. Isabella, fortunately for botanical and artistic posterity, had the time and inclination to explore the vegetation of Kauai and Niihau.

Wiliwili. Art by Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair. Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. 1885. Contributed in BHL from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

The Sinclair family was respected by natives on both islands, since Eliza, the matriarch, was recognized as a “chiefess.” Isabella, via the locals, was able to secure a great deal of information about her botanical discoveries, including vernacular names and medicinal properties. She explored extensively on Kauai, including Waimea Canyon, some 10 miles long and nearly 3,000 feet deep. Isabella used her specimens to create delicate and detailed watercolors for each plant. She organized her botanical information with notes on habitat and flowering times.

Isabella noticed that many of her Hawaiian flowers had similarities to those she found in New Zealand. She decided to take a bold step and contact the world’s expert on the Pacific flora, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911). Hooker, director of Kew, was the author of the first descriptions of New Zealand’s flora in Flora novae-zelandiae (1853–55). Hooker collected specimens as a member of the British expedition to the Southern Ocean aboard the HMS Erebus between 1839–43. He quickly recognized the diversity of floras of different localities in the Pacific, but also saw similarities. His phytogeographical speculations were the first to trace botanical links to southern Africa, Asia, and South America.

In Flora novae-zelandiae, Hooker guessed that geology had some role to play in the botanical similarities of widely dispersed plants:

“Beyond the bare fact of the difficulty of accounting by any other means for the presence of the same species in two of the islands, there appeared nothing in the botany of the Antarctic regions to support or even to favour the assumption of a double creation, and I hence dismissed it as a mere speculation which, till it gained some support on philosophical principles, could only be regarded as shelving a difficulty; whilst the unstable doctrine that would account for the creation of each species on each island by progressive development on the spot, was contradicted by every fact.

It was with these conclusions before me, that I was led to speculate on the possibility of the plants of the Southern Ocean being the remains of a flora that had once spread over a larger and more continuous tract of land than now exists in that ocean; and that the peculiar Antarctic genera and species may be the vestiges of a flora characterized by the predominance of plants which are now scattered throughout the southern islands.”

Hooker found that the flora of New Zealand was largely endemic, by his calculations two-thirds “peculiar” (his description) to the islands, while one-third related to Australia or South America. A more recent calculation, in the first volume of Harry Howard Allan’s masterful Flora of New Zealand, finds that 80 percent of the plants are endemic.

ʻIeʻie. Art by Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair. Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. 1885. Contributed in BHL from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

Hooker needed more data to confirm his notions of a primeval landmass, which today we know as Gondwana. His duties at Kew certainly prevented him from carrying out more field-work, so he was dependent on his colleagues and talented amateurs, like Isabella in Hawaii. Hooker knew the risks of depending on citizen scientists. In Flora novae–zelandiae, he issued a cautionary reminder:

“The very many aspirants to a knowledge of science whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in the Colonies, though well educated in the ordinary acceptation of the term, have never been trained to habits of observation, or of reasoning upon what they read in the book of nature, nor have they been grounded in the elements of natural science; they are hence prone to rely for information on these speculative subjects (which they seek with avidity) upon a class of works that are, with very few exceptions, by authors who have no practical acquaintance with the sciences they write about, or with the facts they so often distort.”

Imagine Hooker’s surprise when he first heard from Isabella! She sought his taxonomic advice on the scientific names of her discoveries in the northern outposts of the Sandwich Islands. Isabella provided exquisite details on the occurrence of each plant, plus a bonus of amazing watercolors. She was no ordinary observer of flowers, thanks to her New Zealand experiences and connections to both the Maori and Polynesians.

Hooker encouraged Isabella to publish her watercolors and observations in a book on flowers of Hawaii. She must have been both flattered and embarrassed to have one of the greatest botanists on the planet recognize the value of her efforts. Finally in 1884, Isabella and her husband made the long voyage to London to put her findings into print as Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands.

Published by Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington in London, Indigenous Flowers was also an experiment. It was one of the earliest books to use “perfect binding” which is anything but perfect. Probably in an effort to reduce costs for the volume, letterpress and chromolithographic plates in Indigenous Flowers were glued rather than sewn to the binding. Given the small press run, this perfect binding has led to copies losing pages and plates over time, probably encouraging some extant copies to move to the guillotine for print merchants. Four years after the appearance of the London edition in 1885, Houghton in Boston published an American version (which is even scarcer than the rare London edition). Hooker pressed Isabella to write as an introduction to her work some impressions of the flora of the islands. With extraordinary prescience, Isabella recognized the fragility of the habitats on her beloved islands:

“The Hawaiian flora seems … to grow in an easy careless way, which, though pleasingly artistic, and well adapted to what may be termed the natural state of the islands, will not long survive the invasion of foreign plants, and changed conditions. Forest fires, animals, and agriculture, have so changed the islands, within the last fifty or sixty years, that one can now travel for miles, in some districts, without finding a single indigenous plant; the ground being wholly taken possession of by weeds, shrubs, and grasses, imported from various countries.”

According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden, the Hawaiian Islands are home to more than 1,300 endemic plant species, of which 100 are extinct and 273 are threatened or endangered. Isabella Sinclair recognized this problem 130 years ago in Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. Her book provides a standard for measuring the flora of those islands as well as providing an artistic expression of the beauty of these special plants.

Nukuiwi. Art by Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair. Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. 1885. Contributed in BHL from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

Harold St. John (1892–1991), professor of botany at the University of Hawaii, analyzed the content of Indigenous Flowers. His resulting paper, published in 1954 in the journal Pacific Science, found that Isabella described in Indigenous Flowers 37 indigenous species. Of these, 23 were native to Kauai but not Niihau, while 15 were found on both islands.

Mark Twain visited Hawaii for several months in 1866 as a reporter for the newspaper The Sacramento Union. He was quite impressed by the beauty of Hawaii and the lives of the natives. Decades later, he wrote:

“For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.”

Thanks to Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair’s Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands, we can experience that magical world, battling for survival.

Two of the most important early contributors to our understanding of orchids were the artist Franz Bauer (1758-1840) and the English botanist and gardener John Lindley (1799-1865), who was to become known as the “father of modern orchidology”. The publication of the Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants [from sketches prepared between 1792 and 1832] between 1830 and 1838 combined Bauer’s great skill and Lindley’s knowledge and industriousness to produce an invaluable artistic and scientific work. The Natural History Museum, London (NHM) has recently uploaded their copy of this volume to sit alongside the Missouri Botanical Gardens’ own volume.

Plate 21. “The parts of fructification of Dendrobium speciosum from a sketch by Mr. Bauer in 1793”. Bauer, Franz Andreas and Lindley, John. Illustrations of Orchidaceous plants. 1830-1838. Contributed in BHL from Natural History Museum, London.

Lindley and Bauer were likely to have met in London under the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820). Bauer had settled in Kew by 1790 as their first artist in residence and was profiting from the technological developments in Kew’s heating of its glasshouses. The change from hot dry air and flue systems to heating by hot water circulating through cast-iron pipes enabled a better control of humidity, a prerequisite for the successful growing of tropical orchids. The following influx in orchidaceous species provided Bauer with a plethora of material to dissect and examine under a microscope and his skill in depicting scientifically accurate and aesthetically pleasing work flourished.

Lindley, on the other hand, was an assistant to Robert Brown (1773-1858) in Banks’s library and herbarium until Banks’s death in 1820. Although his life-long fascination was with orchids, he initially studied roses leading him to publish the volume A botanical history of roses, which he illustrated himself. In 1822, he was appointed by the Royal Horticultural Society as assistant secretary where he supervised their plant collections, and in 1829 he was appointed Professor of Botany at the University College, London, developing a reputation as a leading figure in orchidology and an excellent teacher. His recognition of several major groups of orchids according to the type of pollen and its arrangement on the column is still the basis of orchid classification today.

It was during this period that Lindley set about publishing Bauer’s many drawings of orchids studied under a microscope, of which Bauer had started these drawing in 1792 and continued beyond the first publication of the volume in 1832. Lindley provided the text on the organisation of Orchidaceae in his prefatory remarks, detailing many of the characteristics of orchids he had observed over his lifetime and referencing the various writings available to him at the time.

He states in his preface that “it has been found indispensable to represent Mr Bauer’s drawings by means of lithography instead of engraving on copper” and as such the final published volume contains thirty-five lithographed folio plates. Lindley was conscious of the changes he was making to Bauer’s drawings and goes on to state that he hopes “…that the defects of some of the plates as works of art will not be prejudicial to them as illustrations of science”. The plates are either un-coloured or hand-coloured with the individual components on each plate numbered with an index of what is depicted following each plate. Lindley lithographed several of Bauer’s drawings with the remaining being lithographed by Maxim Gauci (1774-1854).

The plates are based on Bauer’s drawings and illustrate various characteristics of the orchid plants, from floral structure to seeds and pollen. The plate below shows the single anther of a Bletia flower at a magnification of 100 times and a few pollen grains at a magnification of 400 times. Bauer ultimately sketched thousands of pollen grain at various magnifications, but in this example, he was able to soak the pollinia in water and thus discover the elastic tissue that connects the pollen grains together.

Plate 8. “A view of the pollen-masses of Bletia verecunda dissolved in water; from a sketch by Mr. Bauer in 1801”. Bauer, Franz Andreas and Lindley, John. Illustrations of Orchidaceous plants. 1830-1838. Contributed in BHL from Natural History Museum, London.

The volume recently uploaded to BHL via the Natural History Museum contains a manuscript dedication by Mr Meyer, Bauer’s friend and executor, to Franz Bauer, attached to the front flyleaf. This letter reads:

“In memory of Francis Bauer Esq.re, FRS & FLS, & c. Botanical Painter to His Majesty George 3rd. And Resident Draughtsman for fifty years to the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, where he devoted himself to the advancement of natural science under the magnificent patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. the President of the Royal Society. In the delineation of plants he united the accuracy of the profound naturalist with the skill of the accomplished artist to a degree which has been only equaled by his brother Ferdinand and in microscopical drawing he was altogether unrivaled. In this branch of his most useful labours, the world will ever contemplate with admiration his elaborate illustrations of animal and vegetable structures, especially those which are preserved in the British Museum, and in the University of Göttingen. He was born 4th of October 1758 at Feldsperg in Austria, and came to England from Vienna with the Baron Joseph Jacquin in 1788. He settled at Kew in 1790, where he continued to live in the enjoyment of an exalted reputation, and in the affection and respect of all to whom his generous character, his unassuming manner, and his deep religious feelings were known until 11 December 1840 when he died at the age of 82. While the works of Francis Bauer are his imperishable monument friendship inscribes this record on his honored tomb. [From Mr Bauer’s friend and executor Mr Meyer, 38 Sackville Street, Piccadilly, February 26 1846, at Stanhope Cottage. Wm. Clift (Mr Meyer, Mrs Haverfield’s, Kew Green. March 3, 1846)”

Further reading:

Stewart, Joyce and Stearn, William T. (1993) The orchid paints of Franz Bauer, The Herbert Press

Cooper, Paul M. (2015) The Bauer brothers, Natural History Museum, London

Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houtton de. Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum. Decas Primas. 1791. Engraving after Henri-Joseph Redouté. Contributed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

At the end of the 18th century, French naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière spent two years exploring and collecting plants in the Levant. The expedition ultimately resulted in the publication of a beautifully-illustrated work on the botany of the region, Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum (“Rare Syrian Plant Images”).

Born in Alençon, a commune in Normandy, France, in 1755, Labillardière studied medicine in Montpellier, receiving his doctorate in Paris, before turning his interests to natural history (Allorge 2006, 306). Embarking at Marseilles in 1787, Labillardière was originally destined for southern Turkey until, upon arriving in Cyprus, he learned that the plague was desolating Antioch (now Antakya) and regions north of Aleppo, so he elected to visit the Holy Land, Lebanon and Damascus instead. His travels ultimately took him as far north as Mons Cassius near the Turkish-Syrian border (Rix 2012, 67). After nearly two years, he returned to France, stopping at Cyprus, Corsica, and Sardinia along the way.

Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houtton de. Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum. Decas Second. 1791. Engraving after Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Contributed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

Labillardière arrived back in France in 1789 with a collection of nearly 1,000 dried plants and many living specimens. The living plants were given to André Thouin, head gardener of the King’s Garden, while the dried collections were purchased by Le Monnier, the King’s doctor. Labillardière then set out to publish the results of his expedition (Allorge 2006, 306).

Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum was published in five parts between 1791-1812. Thanks to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives, you can explore the entire work for free in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houtton de. Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum. Decas Quatra. 1812. Engraving after Pierre-Antoine Poiteau. Contributed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

“Decas Primas” of Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum, issued in 1791, included 22 pages and 10 engraved plates after artwork by the Redouté brothers, Pierre-Joseph and Henri-Joseph. Nicknamed “the Raphael of flowers,” Pierre-Joseph is possibly the most celebrated flower painter in the entire history of botanical art. He published over 2,100 plates depicting over 1,800 species – many of which had never before been illustrated for publication – throughout his career (Tyrrell 2018). Born to a family of Belgian painters, both of Pierre-Joseph’s brothers, Henri-Joseph and Antoine-Ferdinand, also, unsurprisingly, became painters.

After the “Decas Second” was issued in 1791, featuring 18 pages of text and another 10 plates again by the Redouté brothers, Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum experienced a hiatus in publication of nearly two decades as Labillardière embarked on an expedition under Rear Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux in search of the ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, which had disappeared several years earlier after leaving Botany Bay, Australia. The voyage provided Labillardière with the opportunity to collect additional botanical specimens in Australia and Tasmania (Allorge 2006, 306).

Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houtton de. Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum. Decas Quinta et Ultima. 1812. Engraving after Pierre-Antoine Poiteau. Contributed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

Having returned to France in 1796, and after being elected to the French Academy in 1800, Labillardière continued classifying the plants from his Levant expedition. “Decas Tertia” of Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum, containing 16 pages and 10 plates, appeared in 1809, followed by “Decas Quatra” and “Decas Quinta et Ultima”, both in 1812 and also consisting of 16 pages and 10 plates each. The plates in the final three parts were engraved after drawings by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin (ibid., 307).

Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houtton de. Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum. Decas Quatra. 1812. Engraving after Pierre-Antoine Poiteau. Contributed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

Published over a 21 year period in five parts and 50 plates, complete copies of Labillardière’s Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum are rare. We are grateful to Kew Gardens for digitizing their copy and ensuring that everyone, everywhere can enjoy this rare treasure through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

References

Allorge, Lucile. 2006. “French Naturalists in the Levant During the Ottoman Empire.” Medicographia, 28, no. 3: 301-309.

Rix, Martyn. 2012. The Golden Age of Botanical Art. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Tyrrell, Katherine. 2018. “About Pierre-Joseph Redouté.” Botanical Art and Artists. Accessed on September 20, 2018. https://www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-pierre-joseph-redoute.html.

“The Fig Tree”. Blackwell, Elizabeth. A Curious Herbal. v. 1 (1737). Contributed in BHL from the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

In 1737, Elizabeth Blackwell published the first weekly installment of a very ambitious project. The final work, entitled A Curious Herbal (1737-39), ultimately consisted of 500 plates of plants alongside 111 pages of text providing descriptions of their medicinal uses. Endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians, the publication helped satisfy the need for an up-to-date reference work for apothecaries.

The motivation to produce this remarkable herbal arose from equally remarkable circumstances.

The daughter of a successful merchant, Elizabeth married Alexander Blackwell at the age of 28. Her husband had a long history of operating outside of the law, and his shady business dealings resulted in huge debts that ultimately landed him in debtor’s prison.

With her husband in prison and a child to support, Elizabeth decided to use her artistic skills to produce a new herbal to support herself and pay her husband’s debts. Using specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden as models for her illustrations, Elizabeth drew, engraved, and colored all 500 plates herself and used Joseph Miller’s Botanicum Officinale (1722) as a point of reference for the text, while her husband provided the translated names of the plants.

The Herbal’s income secured Alexander’s release from prison. Sadly, he soon accumulated more debts, which required Elizabeth to sell some of the rights to her publication in order to raise additional funds. Ultimately, her husband left his family for Sweden, where he served as a court physician to the Swedish king until his involvement in a political conspiracy resulted in his execution. [1]

Little else is known of Elizabeth’s life, but her herbal is a lasting testament to her artistic skill and entrepreneurial prowess.

A Curious Herbal is the subject of a chapter in Dr. Anna K. Sagal’s first monograph project, Botanical Entanglements: Women, Plants, Literature, and Artwork in the Eighteenth Century, which will be published by the University of Virginia Press in fall 2021.

The book, which has been generously supported by the Newberry Library’s Monticello College Foundation & Audrey Lumsden-Kouvel Fellowship, explores how women — who were always considered amateur naturalists — participated in discourses which were often culturally barred to them. By engaging in literary and artistic projects that intersected with scientific discourse, these women made space for themselves in what was otherwise an overwhelmingly male-dominated conversation. The monograph features several women writers and artists, including Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Mary Delany, Maria Edgeworth, Maria Jacson, Priscilla Wakefield, and Henrietta Maria Moriarty, along with Blackwell herself.

By providing free, online access to relevant literature, such as Blackwell’s Herbal, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has been an important resource for Sagal’s research on the project.

“Thanks to BHL, which provides access to texts by little-known women-naturalists and the male-authored texts that influenced them, I can conduct research around the globe without leaving my office,” shares Sagal. “Although I do have access to some research libraries and archives, many botanical texts are held by overseas libraries, which I do not have the funds to travel to.”

Dr. Anna K. Sagal. Image credit: McMaster University

Sagal, a Teaching Fellow at Cornell College, has been studying eighteenth century British literature for eleven years. She first discovered BHL about a year ago, while searching the Internet for botanical texts. Now, when actively working on her monograph project, she uses BHL daily, most often reading titles online, but sometimes downloading select pages for later offline reference.

“I really appreciate the breadth and depth of resources pertaining to eighteenth-century botany,” affirms Sagal. “Much of the content from the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden is very useful to me, and a lot of it is available via the BHL. I also really like that you can download files and images to look at later.”

Many works accessed through BHL beyond Blackwell’s Herbal have informed sections of Sagal’s monograph. According to Sagal, perhaps the most influential title, used in multiple contexts within several chapters of her book, is The Botanical Magazine, or Flower-Garden Displayed, published from 1787-1800. First published by William Curtis, a botanist at Kew Gardens, the name of the publication was changed in his honour to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine following his death in 1799. Still published today by Kew Gardens, it is the world’s longest running botanical magazine illustrated in color, representing two centuries of botanical history and discovery. [3]

“Daphne collina”. The Botanical Magazine, or, Flower-Garden Displayed. v. 11-12 (1797-98). Contributed in BHL from the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The Magazine was also an incredibly important resource to women naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An affordable work with frequent rates of publication, it was often an excellent way to keep up-to-date with botanical developments, and to learn about the global world of plants from the comfort of home. Especially for women without access to prestigious physic gardens or botanical research centers like Kew, The Botanical Magazine could be a vital conduit to the enchanting world of botany.

“Indian Chrysanthemum”. Moriarty, Henrietta Maria. Fifty Plates of Green-House Plants, Drawn and Coloured from Nature. 1807. Contributed in BHL from the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The Botanical Magazine was also a crucial resource for Sagal’s research on another subject for her monograph project, Henrietta Maria Moriarty and her Fifty Plates of Green-House Plants, Drawn and Coloured from Nature.

Moriarty’s work was “intended for those who take delight in plants, but have not the advantage of a gardener who understands them”. Along with her fifty illustrations of plants selected for “their beauty, their odour, or some peculiarity in their economy”, Moriarty also included each plant’s Linnaean binomial and brief cultivation information. [2]  

Fifty Plates of Green-House Plants is central to Sagal’s research because of Moriarty’s unique artistic vision and her somewhat complicated legacy. Often accused of copying images from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, Moriarty has long been dismissed from the history of botanical illustration. However, with the help of the BHL, Sagal has been able to compare plates of Moriarty’s work with the contemporary runs of Curtis’s publication to find several plates which she clearly drew from nature or another source, rather than mimicking the composition of a plate from the Botanical Magazine. This allows modern audiences to revisit the question of Moriarty’s artistic originality and to appreciate her work as a hybrid of both unique and sourced images.

As Sagal completes her research on Botanical Entanglements: Women, Plants, Literature, and Artwork in the Eighteenth Century, we are thrilled to know that BHL has been such an important asset for the project. We look forward to learning more about the role of women in Enlightenment science thanks to Sagal’s work.

[1] The British Library. 2018. “A Curious Herbal.” Collection Items. Accessed on September 27, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-curious-herbal-dandelion.

[2] Oak Spring Garden Foundation. 2018. “Women Botanical Artists, Part 2.” Google Arts and Culture. Accessed on September 27, 2018. https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/oQIi52WKeTK5KA.

[3] Royal Botanic  Gardens, Kew. 2018. “Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.” Accessed on September 27, 2018. https://www.kew.org/science/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/publications/curtiss-botanical-magazine.

At first glance one notices the unusual oblong-shaped book at 9” x 7” x 3” in a deep brown leather binding.

Eicones plantarum… (1590) by Iacobus  Theodorus, in the collection of the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Image credit: Leora Siegel.

Peeking inside, there are pages and pages of botanical woodcuts – more than 1,020 – each with at least two woodcuts per leaf. For our purposes, a woodcut is an illustration engraved into a block of wood.

A look inside Eicones plantarum… (1590) by Iacobus  Theodorus, in the collection of the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Image credit: Leora Siegel.

What is this copiously-illustrated work?

Eicones plantarum seu stirpium, arborum nempe, fructicum, herbarum, fructuum, lignorum, radicum, omnis generis : tam inquilinorum, quàm exoticorum : quæ partim Germania sponte producit, partim ab exteris regionibus allata in Germania plantantur : in gratiam medicinæ reiâque herbariæ studiosorum, in tres partes digestæ : adiecto indice gemino locupletissimo [Francofurti ad Moenum: Nicolao Bassaeo, 1590], by Iacobus  Theodorus (1522 or 1525 – 1590).

Or, using an abridged, summarized, and modernized translated title, “Pictures of plants, trees, herbs, fruits, and roots that are native to Germany and foreign countries, which are used for medicinal purposes, for apothecary students, and divided into three parts with the addition of a double index”.

Title page from Eicones plantarum… (1590) by Iacobus  Theodorus. Contributed in BHL from the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Jacobus Theodorus (modern form of Iacobus), born in 1522 or 1525, was a German herbalist and physician. He is known by the name “Tabernaemontanus”, which comes from the Latin version of his hometown in Germany, Berg-Zabern or Tabernae Montanae.

Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus. Line engraving, 1688. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images.

Tabernaemontanus trained as an apothecary at first, and then changed careers and became a physician, focused on medicinal herbs as remedies. He studied under the great herbalists of his time, including Otto Brunfels and Hieronymus Bock. His seminal work, Neuw Kreuterbuch…, published in 1588, contained over 2,300 botanical woodcut illustrations with descriptions of the plants and their uses. He wrote this work to expand upon his herbalist predecessors and to enhance the knowledge of the time period. In all, he spent 36 years working on the project. Considered one of the fathers of German botany, he died in 1590, the same year Eicones plantarum was published.

Tabernaemontana densiflora (a synonym of Rauvolfia verticillata) was named for Tabernaemontanus. In describing the flower in Edward’s Botanical Register, volume 15, 1829, John Lindley stated that “Tabernaemontanus was a botanist of the 16th century, whose works have long sunk into oblivion.” Illustration of T. densiflora by M. Hart from Edward’s Botanical Register, v. 15 (1829), contributed in BHL from the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Our book, Eicones plantarum…, is an edition of only the botanical woodcuts from Neuw Kreuterbuch. Although it does not have the text, it does includes the names of the plants in Latin and German.

With its content and shape, it must have been published in this way to serve a different purpose that the more typical folios of the time that were larger and comprehensive. As its title indicates, it may have been used as a quick reference guide for botanists, physicians, herbalists, and students to easily flip through to identify unknown plants and their names, in this Pre-Linnean era.

As highlighted in General Biography; or, Lives, Critical and Historical, of the Most Eminent Persons of all ages, countries, conditions, and professions… by John Aikin and William Johnston (v. 9, 1814, pg. 310), as a physician, the herb Tabernaemontanus often prescribed as a remedy was mugwort. Mugwort (or wormwood) from Eicones plantarum… (1590), contributed in BHL from the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

For those familiar with John Gerard’s The Herball (1597), the woodcuts may look familiar. The well- known English language Renaissance botanical work re-used many of the woodcuts from the books by Tabernaemontanus. John Norton, publisher of The Herball, acquired them from Nicolas Bassaeus, publisher of Eicones plantarum.

Title page from John Gerard’s The Herball (1597), contributed in BHL from the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Digitizing this 428-year-old volume was a labor of love for us in the 21^st century. The book was imaged by a team of volunteers over a three-year period. Metadata for each woodcut (including transcriptions of German and Latin names, soon to uploaded to BHL) was assigned by Mary Roback. Mary came to the Lenhardt Library as a Library Science graduate student and stayed on as a volunteer after graduation. She took on the metadata project to keep involved with special collections while undergoing chemotherapy. While she has sadly passed away, her valuable contributions to this project have left a lasting legacy, ensuring that this volume is accessible to readers around the world today and into the future. We are truly grateful for her dedication to this project and are honored to have shared this experience with her.

References

Aikin, John, William Enfield, Nicholson, Thomas Morgan, and William Johnston. General Biography; Or, Lives, Critical and Historical, of the Most Eminent Persons of All Ages, Countries, Conditions, and Professions, Arranged According to Alphabetical Order. London: Printed for G.G. and J. Robinson, 1799.

Arber, Agnes. Herbals: their origin and evolution, a chapter in the history of botany, 1470-1670. 2nd edition. Cambridge: University Press, 1953.

Edwards, Sydenham, and John Lindley. Edwards’s Botanical Register, or, Ornamental Flower-Garden and Shrubbery. London: James Ridgway, 1829.

Johnston, Stanley H. The Cleveland Herbal, Botanical, and Horticultural Collections: A Descriptive Bibliography of Pre-1830 Works from the Libraries of the Holden Arboretum, the Cleveland Medical Library Association, and the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992.

Rohde, Eleanour Sinclair. The Old English Herbals with coloured frontispiece and 17 illustrations. London: Longmans & Co., 1922.

Stearn, William T. Stearn’s Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners: A Handbook on the Origin and Meaning of the Botanical Names of Some Cultivated Plants. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2002.