Great Water Dock and Curled Dock, Antique Riverside Plant Plate, circa 1873

This antique botanical plate is Plate 184 of Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain. It shows the great water dock with the curled dock and two more British docks. Tall branching panicles hung with papery winged fruits fill the sheet, the meadow dock at the left and the curled dock at the right turning a warm rust brown while the other two are still green. A broad leaf with a strongly waved margin stands at the center, the long blade of the great water dock rises at the right, and the thick cut stems are drawn at the foot.

Anne Pratt's survey of the British flora appeared in six volumes from Frederick Warne and Co. of Covent Garden, London, the five volumes of flowering plants issued first and the volume of grasses, sedges and ferns added in 1873 to complete the set. Volume IV, from which this plate comes, carries 249 species printed in color, and the title page also names the New York agents Scribner, Welford and Armstrong.

The work was one of the first thorough illustrated floras of Britain aimed at the ordinary reader rather than the specialist, and the price was only possible because the plates were printed in color instead of being colored by hand. That technical choice is part of what the sheet records, and it put a reliable colored figure of every British species within reach of a wide public for the first time.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom right and top left corners.

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