Custard apple tree and cecropia moth
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
Study of a semi-evergreen, custard apple treeAnnona reticulata, referred to here as Anona maxima, showing leaves, fruit and a single seed [above], alongside a cecropia moth, Hyalophora cecropia.
Written in the associated description: 'These Shrubs grow sometimes with a single Trunk, but more commonly they rise with several small Stems to the Height of about ten Feet, the Leaves are shaped like those of the Bay, set alternately on stiff slender Stalks, from which also hang single Flowers [...] The Fruit when ripe is of a roundish conic Form, covered with angular Protuberances, within which is a sweet insipid Pulp, with several shining black Seeds lodged therein.'
Plate 86 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 Shrubs grow sometimes with a single Trunk, but more commonly they rise with several small Stems to the Height of about ten Feet, the Leaves are shaped like those of the Bay, set alternately on stiff slender Stalks, from which also hang single Flowers [...] The Fruit when ripe is of a roundish conic Form, covered with angular Protuberances, within which is a sweet insipid Pulp, with several shining black Seeds lodged therein.'
Plate 86 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