Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16334

    Meadow tall rye grass, spiked hedge oat grass and vernal grass

    Date
    1689-1713
    Creator
    Richard Waller (1660 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p6
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 380mm
    width (page): 240mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Botany
    Content object
    nature
       > plant
    Description
    Botanical study of meadow tall rye grass (Gramen secalinum), spiked hedge oat grass (Gramen avenaceu dumatoru) and vernal grass with a loose spike (Gramen vernum spica brevi laxa). With flower details. Signed ‘R. Waller pinx[it]’ (Richard Waller painted this).

    Waller supplies the names for the plants he had depicted from John Ray’s Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum (London, 1690), which collates the names for the same plant across different authorities. ‘Ger:’ stands for John Gerard’s Herbal corrected by Thomas Johnson (1633), ‘Park’ for John Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum (1640), ‘C.B.’ for Caspar Bauhin’s Pinax (1623) and ‘I.B.’ for Johann Bauhin’s Historia plantarum universalis (1650-51). Ray placed a ‘?’ next to Caspar Bauhin’s plant names in all three cases (pp. 180, 181, 186), but Waller removes such doubts expressed by Ray. In the Synopsis, Ray gave the English name as ‘Vernal grass with a loose ‘yellowish’ spike’ (as described in the Latin by Caspar Bauhin), but Waller here drops the ‘yellowish’.
    Transcription
    5. \2 p. 180/
    Gramen secalinum Ger. l.1 c. 22 no 4
    Meadow tall Rye grasse
    *Gram[en] spicâ scalina C.B.

    6. \p. 181 Raij/
    Gramen Avenaceum Dumetorum Spicatum. *Festuca graminea nemor[ali] latif[olis] moll[is]. C.B.
    Spiked Hedge Oate=grasse.

    7. Gram[en] vernum spicâ brevi laxâ. Raij p. 183.
    spicatum pratense III, seu spica flavescente. C.B.
    Vernal grass with a loose spike.

    R. Waller pinx.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Richard Waller’s signed watercolour study of English grasses made between 1689 and 1713. For further details, see the description at MS/131/004.
    Related fellows
    Richard Waller (1660 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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