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.
Richard Evans Schultes was an American biologist, considered to be the father of modern ethnobotany. He is known for his studies of the uses of plants by indigenous peoples, especially the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He worked on entheogenic or hallucinogenic plants, particularly in Mexico and the Amazon, involving lifelong collaborations with chemists. He had charismatic influence as an educator at Harvard University; several of his students and colleagues went on to write popular books and assume influential positions in museums, botanical gardens, and popular culture.
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.
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.
Banks' Florilegium is a collection of copperplate engravings of plants collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander while they accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage around the world between 1768 and 1771. They collected plants in Madeira, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, the Society Islands, New Zealand, Australia and Java. During this voyage, Banks and Solander collected nearly 30,000 dried specimens, eventually leading to the description of 110 new genera and 1300 new species, which increased the known flora of the world by 25 per cent.
Cythna Lindenberg Letty, was a South African botanical artist and is regarded as a doyenne of South African botanical art by virtue of the quality and quantity of her meticulously executed paintings and pencil sketches, produced over a period of 40 years with the National Herbarium in Pretoria.
Gillian Condy, born 5 December 1952 Nairobi, is a South African botanical artist. She has illustrated more than 200 plates for Flowering Plants of Africa, contributed to various other South African National Botanical Institute publications and eight plates for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. She has illustrated two books by Charles Craib, Geophytic Pelargoniums (2001) and Grass Aloes in the South African Veld (2005). She also contributed to the biographic section in the book South African Botanical Art: Peeling back the Petals (2001).
Flora Londinensis is a folio sized book that described the flora found in the London region of the mid 18th century. The Flora was published by William Curtis in six large volumes. The descriptions of the plants included hand-coloured copperplate plates by botanical artists such as James Sowerby, Sydenham Edwards and William Kilburn.
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.
Edmund Evans was an English wood-engraver and colour printer during the Victorian era. He specialized in full-colour printing, a technique which, in part because of his work, became popular in the mid-19th century. He employed and collaborated with illustrators such as Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Richard Doyle to produce what are now considered to be classic children's books. Little is known about his life, although he wrote a short autobiography before his death in 1905 in which he described his life as a printer in Victorian London.
Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans CMG was a Welsh-born South African botanist. Sometimes his first name is spelled Iltyd.
Edwin Percy Phillips was a South African botanist and taxonomist, noted for his monumental work The Genera of South African Flowering Plants first published in 1926.
Eucomis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae, native to southern Africa. Most species of this genus are commonly referred to as pineapple flowers or pineapple lilies. They are bulbous perennials with basal rosettes of leaves and stout stems covered in star-shaped flowers with a tuft of green bracts at the top, superficially resembling a pineapple – hence the common names.
Benjamin Maund (1790–1863) was a British pharmacist, botanist, printer, bookseller, fellow of the Linnean Society (1827) and publisher of the Botanic Garden and The Botanist. He served on the committee of the Worcestershire Natural History Society where he started a monthly botanical publication.
The Highgrove Florilegium: Watercolours depicting plants grown in the garden at Highgrove is a two-volume book of botanical illustrations recording plants in the garden of Charles III, the then Prince of Wales, at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, England. The volumes, published in 2008 and 2009, contain 124 watercolours painted by invited leading botanical artists from around the world. The colour plates are reproduced in their original size from watercolour drawings. The publication is a limited edition of 175 sets, each signed by the Prince and all the royalties from the Highgrove Florilegium are donated to The Prince's Charities Foundation. The text is by Christopher Humphries and Frederick J. Rumsey and the preface is by the Prince of Wales. The publisher is Addison Publications. Each set is accompanied by a handmade green felt book cover with maroon ties.
Arabella Elizabeth Roupell was an English flower painter, noted for an anonymous set of flower paintings published in 1849 under the title 'Specimens of the flora of South Africa by a Lady.'
Kathleen Annie Lansdell, was a South African botanical artist.
Graham Dugald Duncan(born 1959) is a South African botanist and specialist bulb horticulturalist at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Cape Town, South Africa.
Mary Elizabeth Connell was an English-born South African botanical illustrator.
Dr. Esmé Frances Franklin Hennessy was a South African professor of Botany, botanical illustrator, and author. She specialized in taxonomic botany. She wrote and illustrated South African Erythrinas (1972), Orchids of Africa (1961) with Joyce Stewart, The Slipper Orchids (1989) with Tessa Hedge, and created many of the descriptions and plates in Flowering Plants of Africa as well as numerous private collections.
