Great Mullein and Moth Mullein, Antique Yellow Flower Print, Pratt, circa 1873

Printed in color in London for Frederick Warne and Co., this original antique plate from Anne Pratt's British flora shows six British mulleins together with the common mudwort and the Cornish moneywort. Large open yellow flowers fill the upper half of the sheet, the biggest of them the primrose leaved mullein, and a thick woolly stem rises through the middle with a gray green felted leaf beside it. Slender flowering spikes stand at either edge, the white mullein among them, and at the foot the tiny creeping moneywort spreads its round leaves.

This is one of the color plates of The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, Anne Pratt's six volume account of the wild plants of the British Isles, published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The plates were printed in color by the London printer William Dickes, who worked a color process licensed from George Baxter and produced the plates for Pratt's natural history books.

Anne Pratt, born at Strood in Kent in 1806 and self taught as a botanist, was among the best known botanical illustrators in Victorian England. Her books were accurate enough to be used and plain enough to be read, and this flora stayed a standard household reference for decades. Her drawings outlived her by a long way: the fern plates from this very work were still being reused, reduced and unattributed, in pocket guides well into the twentieth century.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the right and top edges. Slight wear at the bottom right corner.

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