Hart's Tongue Fern, Antique Botanical Chromolithograph, Cassell, circa 1885

This original antique fern chromolithograph shows the hart's tongue fern, Scolopendrium vulgare, and its Mediterranean cousin Scolopendrium hemionitis, growing from a rock face. The long, glossy, undivided strap shaped fronds, unlike those of any other European fern, are drawn from above and below, with the herringbone of brown spore lines on their undersides. It is a plate from James Britten's European Ferns, published in London by Cassell, circa 1885, after a drawing made from the living plant by David Blair.

The plate comes from European Ferns by James Britten, issued in London by Cassell in parts between 1879 and 1881 and bound up as one quarto volume with thirty colored plates. This copy carries the imprint Cassell and Company, Limited, London, Paris, New York and Melbourne, the style the firm adopted in 1883, so the sheet was printed for a later issue of the book, circa 1885. Britten, 1846 to 1924, worked in the Department of Botany at the British Museum and was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and his text covers the ferns of the whole of Europe rather than of Britain alone. The plates were printed in color by Vincent Brooks, Day and Son of London, one of the foremost chromolithographic printers of Victorian England, and the lithographers' credit appears at the lower right of the image. The color is printed throughout, built up from separate stones, not applied by hand.

Fern collecting was a national passion in Victorian Britain, a craze contemporaries called pteridomania, and books like this one supplied the accurate pictures that collectors used to name the plants in their ferneries and glass cases. The bold, strap shaped fronds give the hart's tongue sheet a graphic, almost modern look among the fern plates. It frames well on its own in a simple light mount, or as one of a group of fern plates along a hallway or stair.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the right edge. All four corners complete.

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