Cross vine
Date
1731
Creator
Mark Catesby (1683 - 1749, British) , Naturalist
Object type
Library reference
18894
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 355mm
width (print): 265mm
width (print): 265mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Botanical study of a cross vine specimen, Bignonia capreolata, referred to here as Bignonia Americana, showing the stem, leaves and flowers, and a detail view of the seed case [left as viewed].
Written in the associated description: ‘These Plants usually grow on the shady Banks of Rivers, rising with many slender pliant Stems to the Height of twenty, and sometimes thirty Feet, being supported by Trees and Shrubs, growing near them, on which they climb and clasp their Tendrils.’
Plate 82 from volume II of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).
Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733.
Written in the associated description: ‘These Plants usually grow on the shady Banks of Rivers, rising with many slender pliant Stems to the Height of twenty, and sometimes thirty Feet, being supported by Trees and Shrubs, growing near them, on which they climb and clasp their Tendrils.’
Plate 82 from volume II of Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731).
Mark Catesby (1683-1749), British naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1733.
Object history
The Natural History was originally published in 10 parts, intended to be bound in 2 volumes. It was the earliest western scientific description of the flora and fauna of North America, and its copper plates were etched and hand-coloured by Catesby himself.
Catesby’s trips to North America were funded by a group of sponsors, many of whom were colonial governors, charged with managing the British Empire’s territories, and their support of Catesby’s research can be read as an exercise in colonial control. As The Natural History’s parts were issued it also became important as a reference text to naturalists attempting to order the natural world according to the ambitious taxonomic systems that characterized the mid-18th century.
Catesby’s trips to North America were funded by a group of sponsors, many of whom were colonial governors, charged with managing the British Empire’s territories, and their support of Catesby’s research can be read as an exercise in colonial control. As The Natural History’s parts were issued it also became important as a reference text to naturalists attempting to order the natural world according to the ambitious taxonomic systems that characterized the mid-18th century.
Associated place