Botanical Art Gallery

Adansonia digitata, Willd. (Baobab or Upside-down tree)

Watercolour on paper, no date (late 18th early 19th century). Hand painted copy of an illustration commissioned by William Roxburgh (1751-1815). In his Flora indica Roxburgh describes this plant as a tree which is very scarce in India, and probably not a native of Asia'. Roxburgh tells that in the Botanic Garden of Calcutta, where this tree blossoms in May and June, and ripens its seed in the cool season, there is a 25 years old plant of Adansonia digitata, with an irregular, short and sub-conical trunk, which is 18 feet in circumference. In a letter sent to Roxburgh the 2nd of July 1802, from Mantolle, in Sri Lanka, General Hay Macdowell notes: In my walk last night on the ruins of this once rich and extensive city, called by the natives Mande or Maddoo-ooltum, I chanced to observe a tree whose prodigious magnitude induced me to measure it...fifty feet in circumference, above six feet from the ground, the natives call it Peerig, and from what I have been able to collect, it is not indigenous here

© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Gladiolus italicus, 1804

Illustration of Gladiolus italicus, commonly known as Italian gladiolus, field gladiolus or common sword lily. Hand-coloured lithograph on paper by Sydenham Edwards, 1804. Artwork from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, volume 19, plate 719. Curtis's Botanical Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants and has been published continuously since 1787

© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Vanilla planifolia

Epidendrum vanille, Vanilla planifolia, vanilla. REGNAULT Nicolas Francois (1746-c.1810) and Genevive de Nangis REGNAULT (b.1746). La Botanique mise a la portee de tout le Monde: ou collection des Plantes d'usage dans la Medecine, dans les Alimens et dans les Arts. Vol. 3, 1774, Tab.156 t. 156

© RBG KEW

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