A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them. A herbal may also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, and sometimes include mineral and animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants. Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification.
James Sowerby was an English naturalist, illustrator and mineralogist. Contributions to published works, such as A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland or English Botany, include his detailed and appealing plates. The use of vivid colour and accessible texts was intended to reach a widening audience in works of natural history. The standard author abbreviation Sowerby is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
John Lindley FRS was an English botanist, gardener and orchidologist.
Walter Hood Fitch was a botanical illustrator, born in Glasgow, Scotland, who executed some 10,000 drawings for various publications. His work in colour lithograph, including 2700 illustrations for Curtis's Botanical Magazine, produced up to 200 plates per year.
George Valentine Nash was an American botanist. He was the Head Gardener and Curator of the Plantations at the New York Botanical Garden, for whom he did field work in the Bahamas, South Florida and Haiti.
The Plant Review, published quarterly by the Royal Horticultural Society, is a 68-page magazine containing "fascinating in-depth articles for everyone who loves plants". Its authoritative articles are written by acknowledged experts on plant-related subjects, and include plant profiles, horticulture, botany and the development of garden plants, focusing on ornamental plants grown in temperate gardens. It also reflects the scientific work of the RHS, as well as research conducted by other horticultural and botanical institutions and individuals. First published in 1979 as The Plantsman, it was renamed The Plant Review from September 2019.
The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed, is an illustrated publication which began in 1787. The longest running botanical magazine, it is widely referred to by the subsequent name Curtis's Botanical Magazine.
Alice Lounsberry was an American botanist and author active in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She worked closely with the Australian botanical artist Ellis Rowan, publishing three books with her as illustrator.
Celia Elizabeth Rosser is an Australian botanical illustrator, best known for having published The Banksias, a three-volume series of monographs containing watercolour paintings of every Banksia species.
Elizabeth Twining (1805–1889) was an English painter, author, and botanical illustrator. She is best known for her detailed botanical illustrations, especially the two-volume Illustrations of the Natural Order of Plants, which was published between 1849 and 1855. She was an heiress of the Twinings family of tea merchants and was a philanthropist.
Anne Pratt was a botanical and ornithological illustrator and author from Strood, Kent.
Franz Andreas Bauer was an Austrian microscopist and botanical artist. The standard author abbreviation F.A.Bauer is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in books, magazines, and other media. Some are sold as artworks. Often composed by a botanical illustrator in consultation with a scientific author, their creation requires an understanding of plant morphology and access to specimens and references.
Flora Graeca is a publication of the plants of Greece in the late 18th century, resulting from a survey by John Sibthorp and Ferdinand Bauer. The botanical descriptions and illustrations became highly valued by the English audience; the finely crafted and illustrated work was of both scientific and horticultural interest.
Matilda Smith was a botanical artist whose work appeared in Curtis's Botanical Magazine for over forty years. She became the first artist to depict New Zealand's flora in depth, the first official artist of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and the second woman to become an associate of the Linnaean Society. The standard author abbreviation M.Sm. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Elizabeth Blackwell was a botanical illustrator best known as drawer and engraver of the plates for A Curious Herbal, published between 1737 and 1739. It illustrated medicinal plants in a reference work for the use of physicians and apothecaries.
Mary Emily Eaton was an English botanical artist best known for illustrating Britton & Rose's The Cactaceae, published between 1919 and 1923.
Lewis Roberts, OAM, is a distinguished naturalist and botanical illustrator. Lewis and his brother, Charlie Roberts, are probably the leading experts on the flora and fauna of south-eastern part Cape York Peninsula and the northern Wet Tropics area. For three generations his family has lived at Shipton's Flat, about 45 km south of Cooktown, where he and Charlie were home-schooled. His father, Jack Lewis, was a tin miner and self-taught naturalist.
Worthington George Smith was an English cartoonist and illustrator, archaeologist, plant pathologist, and mycologist.
The Flora Antarctica, or formally and correctly The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, is a description of the many plants discovered on the Ross expedition, which visited islands off the coast of the Antarctic continent, with a summary of the expedition itself, written by the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker and published in parts between 1844 and 1859 by Reeve Brothers in London. Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon.
