Pondweeds and Grass Wrack, Set of 3 Antique Botanical Plates, circa 1873

This is a set of three original antique botanical plates from Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, Plates 236, 237 and 238 of Volume V, published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. about 1873. They are three original sheets sold together as one lot. Plates 236 and 237 give the pondweeds, and Plate 238 adds the sea ruppia, the horned pondweed, the grass wracks, two cyperus sedges and the black bog rush. Plate 236 names Small Pondweed, Grassy Pondweed, Sharp Leaved Pondweed, Grass Wrack Like Pondweed, Curly Pondweed, Perfoliate Pondweed and Long Stalked Pondweed. Plate 237 names Long Leaved Pond Weed, Shining Pond Weed, Various Leaved Pond Weed, Lanceolate Pond Weed, Reddish Pond Weed, Plantain Leaved Pond Weed, Oblong Leaved Pond Weed and Sharp Fruited Broad Leaved Pond Weed. Plate 238 names Sea Ruppia, Common Horned Pond Weed, Broad Leaved Grass Wrack, Dwarf Grass Wrack, Sweet Cyperus, Brown Cyperus and Black Bog Rush.

The two pondweed sheets are crowded with broad and narrow leaves in green, many flushed with red brown or orange brown, and with short knobbed spikes of small green flowers; on Plate 236 the curly pondweed spreads its wavy edged leaves at the right. Plate 238 is finer and grassier, with long ribbon leaves and threadlike stems running through the center, branching heads of red brown spikelets for the cyperus sedges, and the dark brown flower head of the black bog rush at the upper right.

The plates belong to The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, the six volume flora that Anne Pratt, 1806 to 1893, wrote and illustrated herself. It was published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. of Bedford Street, Covent Garden, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, with Scribner, Welford and Armstrong as the New York house. The plates were printed in color by William Dickes of London, a licensee of George Baxter's color process. These sheets come from Volume V, whose title page records 237 species in color.

Even age toning throughout. Marked handling soiling along the edges of all three sheets. Light foxing in the margins of two of the three sheets. Slight wear at the corners of all three sheets.

These are original antique plates, not modern reproductions. This item is sold unframed.