Frogbit and Spiral Tape Grass Water Plants, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1818

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows two freshwater plants, the frogbit and the spiral tape grass Vallisneria. The heading reads Pflanzen CLVII and the Vienna mark XVIII.B.48 runs up the left margin; the sheet is printed in landscape format.

Figure 1 is frogbit, Hydrocharis morsus ranae, a small floating plant with round shining leaves, white three petalled flowers and trailing roots, with numbered details of the flower parts below. Figure 2 shows Vallisneria in two states: the female plant sends up its flower on a long corkscrew stalk that uncoils to reach the surface and then winds back after pollination, a habit that fascinated naturalists around 1800. The plate is a clear and attractive teaching image of how plants adapt to life in water.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition begun by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French; Pichler issued the first ten volumes, and the later volumes, including this one, are believed to have been issued by B. Ph. Bauer in Vienna. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here the mark XVIII.B.48. Vienna volume XVIII follows Weimar volume IX, which appeared in 1816, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand color, as the Vienna volumes were issued colored.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch traveled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small specks and a horizontal crease along the lower margin; the plants are clean and well colored.

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