Halberd Leaved and Sea Oraches, Antique British Flora Print, circa 1873

Plate 179 of Anne Pratt's British flora, an original antique color plate printed for Frederick Warne and Co. of London, gives four more British oraches, from the halberd leaved orache of waste ground to the grass leaved orache of the shore. A dense green flowering spike rises at the center of the sheet above slender branching shoots hung with small star shaped flowers. Broad halberd shaped leaves spread at the lower right, where the spreading halberd leaved orache stands, and the slender grass leaved sea orache rises at the left, the whole sheet worked in greens with only a touch of rose on the stems.

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.

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. Slight wear at the bottom right and top left corners. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the right.

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