Pair of Antique Botanical Prints of Marsh and Buckler Ferns, circa 1885

A set of two original antique chromolithographs of marsh, lemon scented and buckler ferns from James Britten's European Ferns, published in London by Cassell, circa 1885, and sold together as one set of two sheets. Plate 21 shows the marsh fern, Aspidium thelypteris, rising in slender fronds from a creeping black rhizome at the left, and the lemon scented mountain fern, Aspidium oreopteris, whose fronds smell of lemon when crushed, as a broad shuttlecock at the right. Nine numbered pinnae, fertile and barren, are drawn at natural and enlarged size. Plate 26 shows the hay scented buckler fern, Aspidium foenisecii, named for the scent of new mown hay given off by its drying fronds, as a spreading clump at the left, and the upright crested buckler fern of the fens, Aspidium cristatum, with its rhizome at the right. Two fertile pinnae are set at the top.

Published in London by Cassell, European Ferns was the work of the botanist James Britten, 1846 to 1924, of the British Museum, with thirty plates drawn from living plants by David Blair. The parts first came out between 1879 and 1881; this copy bears the Cassell and Company, Limited imprint used from 1883 onward, so it is a later issue of circa 1885. Unlike most fern books of the period, which kept to the British flora, Britten's covers species from Madeira to Scandinavia and the Caucasus. 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.

Both sheets show buckler and marsh ferns of the genus Aspidium, each pairing two species with their creeping rhizomes. 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. For a collector of botanical prints they are an easy way to add a whole group from one named Victorian book.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the edges of both sheets. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. All corners complete on every sheet.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. They are two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split. This item is sold unframed.