Four British Dodders, Antique Botanical Curiosity Print, 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 four British dodders, leafless parasites that live on the stems of other plants. Fine pink and straw colored threads twist and loop across the whole sheet, climbing the green stems of the host plants and tying them together. Tight balls of small waxen flowers sit along the threads at intervals, some greenish white and some flushed with rose, and a dark seed head rises at the upper right. There is almost no leaf anywhere on the plate.

The plate comes from The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, and their allies the Club Mosses, Pepperworts and Horsetails, written and drawn by Anne Pratt and published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. of Bedford Street, Covent Garden. The work runs to six volumes and was issued under the direction of the Committee of General Literature and Education appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. This sheet belongs to Volume IV, whose title page records 249 species printed in color.

A plate from this flora carries its period in every line: the close observation, the crowded but orderly arrangement, the soft printed color laid over careful outline. It sits as comfortably in a modern interior as in a Victorian one, and it has the advantage over a single flower study of giving several related plants together, which makes it rewarding to look at more than once.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Slight wear at the bottom left, bottom right and top left corners. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the left.

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