Cat Mint, Ground Ivy and Calamint, Antique Herb Plate by Pratt, circa 1873

An original antique color plate from Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, this sheet shows the cat mint and ground ivy with the white horehound, the basil thyme and four calaminths. Rose pink and lilac flowers are carried in loose whorls up eight separate stems across the sheet, the wild basil at the right the deepest in color. Cat mint stands at the upper left in soft gray green, the white horehound carries its pale woolly whorls beside it, and the round scalloped leaves of ground ivy spread at the center.

The sheet is a plate from Volume IV of Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, published by Frederick Warne and Co. of London. Pratt wrote the text and drew the plants herself, and the plates were printed in color rather than painted by hand, which is what allowed a thorough illustrated flora to be sold at a price an ordinary reader could meet.

Anne Pratt, 1806 to 1893, wrote more than twenty books on plants and birds and received little critical attention in her own lifetime, which later writers have put down to the Victorian reluctance to take a self taught woman seriously as a scientist. Her books nonetheless sold in very large numbers, and her plates are now the most familiar images of the British wild flora produced in that century.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom and top edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom right corner. Several larger brown marks.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.