botantical illustration from chelsea physic garden

If I had to give a brief account, I’d say something like this:that she worked in a north-facing studio, and that she hadextraordinary patience. Some of her most detailed picturesmust have taken four or more months each, working longhours. She always worked from life, and always insisted thatshe drew only what she saw. She worked either sitting downor standing – standing for large pictures – with the papertaped to a wooden board. At the start of each drawing,especially if it involved complicated subject matter, shewould make very light pencil marks on the paper. I assumethat these were later rubbed out after she had begun to workin ink. The pen that she used was a Rotring rapidograph,with a 0.10 mm nib – the thinnest possible. She usedproportional dividers. She had a magnifying glass to hand,but she used it only to look more closely at the plant subject;

she never drew through the magnifying glass. She had verygood eyes, and also a very steady hand, which enabled herto achieve a great lightness of touch. This lightness of touchis what admirers of her work often mention. I think – and it’snot unconnected - that she also had a strong core of innerbelief in what she was doing. She sometimes found thatcertain plants presented particular challenges, but she wasin the end immensely confident in her art. This is notparticularly evident in the three fern pictures owned by theChelsea Physic Garden, but all her later work, especiallyafter she fell ill, was informed by a vision of nature in relationto time and space. For her the work was akin to spiritualmeditation, which is why she was happy for it to take as longas it did. She never hurried. If something went wrong with adrawing, she would abandon it.

Ferns first evolved in the Carboniferous period

(beginning about 360 million years ago). They were

the first land plants to possess transport tissue (xylem)

and fibres strengthened with lignin and so could grow

to great size unlike the earlier land plants, the mosses

and their allies. However, although like all other land

plants the fern life cycle has two distinct phases, one

sexual involving fusion of male and female cells, and

one asexual involving the production of spores, the

fern sexual phase or prothallus consists of an

independently-living flat sheet of green tissue only few

millimetres wide and involves the active swimming of

male ‘sperm’ cells through a film of water. This

requirement limits the habitat of most ferns to places

where water is abundant during at least part of the

year or often enough in dry areas. In Europe we are

used to seeing ferns growing in damp woodlands, on

damp rock faces and clefts in rocks and old walls.

Fern specialist Thomas Moore (1821-1887), author of

Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland (1855), was Curator at

Chelsea from 1848 until his death. In 1862/3 he built a

lean-to greenhouse against the southwest wall of the

Garden which was replaced in 1907 and has since been

fully restored. This is now called the Thomas Moore

Cool Fernery and inside are grown tender ferns while in

the shaded area outside the hardy ferns are to be found.

I asked Christopher Nicholson, Catharine’s widower,

to tell us something of the way she worked to produce

her remarkable images, always accurate but never

laboured. He writes:

Plate 1

Cyrtomium fortunei J.Sm.Family – Dryopteridaceae

Catharine Nicholson

If I had to give a brief account, I’d say something like this:that she worked in a north-facing studio, and that she hadextraordinary patience. Some of her most detailed picturesmust have taken four or more months each, working longhours. She always worked from life, and always insisted thatshe drew only what she saw. She worked either sitting downor standing – standing for large pictures – with the papertaped to a wooden board. At the start of each drawing,especially if it involved complicated subject matter, shewould make very light pencil marks on the paper. I assumethat these were later rubbed out after she had begun to workin ink. The pen that she used was a Rotring rapidograph,with a 0.10 mm nib – the thinnest possible. She usedproportional dividers. She had a magnifying glass to hand,but she used it only to look more closely at the plant subject;

she never drew through the magnifying glass. She had verygood eyes, and also a very steady hand, which enabled herto achieve a great lightness of touch. This lightness of touchis what admirers of her work often mention. I think – and it’snot unconnected - that she also had a strong core of innerbelief in what she was doing. She sometimes found thatcertain plants presented particular challenges, but she wasin the end immensely confident in her art. This is notparticularly evident in the three fern pictures owned by theChelsea Physic Garden, but all her later work, especiallyafter she fell ill, was informed by a vision of nature in relationto time and space. For her the work was akin to spiritualmeditation, which is why she was happy for it to take as longas it did. She never hurried. If something went wrong with adrawing, she would abandon it.

Ferns first evolved in the Carboniferous period

(beginning about 360 million years ago). They were

the first land plants to possess transport tissue (xylem)

and fibres strengthened with lignin and so could grow

to great size unlike the earlier land plants, the mosses

and their allies. However, although like all other land

plants the fern life cycle has two distinct phases, one

sexual involving fusion of male and female cells, and

one asexual involving the production of spores, the

fern sexual phase or prothallus consists of an

independently-living flat sheet of green tissue only few

millimetres wide and involves the active swimming of

male ‘sperm’ cells through a film of water. This

requirement limits the habitat of most ferns to places

where water is abundant during at least part of the

year or often enough in dry areas. In Europe we are

used to seeing ferns growing in damp woodlands, on

damp rock faces and clefts in rocks and old walls.

Fern specialist Thomas Moore (1821-1887), author of

Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland (1855), was Curator at

Chelsea from 1848 until his death. In 1862/3 he built a

lean-to greenhouse against the southwest wall of the

Garden which was replaced in 1907 and has since been

fully restored. This is now called the Thomas Moore

Cool Fernery and inside are grown tender ferns while in

the shaded area outside the hardy ferns are to be found.

I asked Christopher Nicholson, Catharine’s widower,

to tell us something of the way she worked to produce

her remarkable images, always accurate but never

laboured. He writes:

Plate 1

Cyrtomium fortunei J.Sm.Family – Dryopteridaceae

Catharine Nicholson

Plate 3

Ginkgo biloba L.Family – Ginkgoaceae

Alister Mathews

This plant and those shown plate 4, Taxus baccata

and plate 5, Ephedra distachya, produce seeds

(unlike the ferns figured in the first two plates)

however they do not produce flowers nor are their

seeds are enclosed in fruits, unlike the flowering

plants in the remainder of this book.

The maidenhair tree has no close living relatives but is

very similar to fossils dating back 270 million years.

Its origin is in eastern China and it has long been

grown in temple enclosures there and in Japan, first

being noticed in a Japanese temple in 1690 by the

botanist Engelbert Kaempfer. Linnaeus named the

species in 1771 based on Kaempfer’s specimens and

text which had included a slightly faulty transliteration

of the Japanese name giving us ‘ginkgo.’ Kaempfer’s

illustration is partly incorrect and is also incomplete so

that Linnaeus was not certain of the ginkgo’s

relationships to the plants he knew. Kaempfer’s

specimen material still exists in the Hans Sloane

herbarium at the Natural History Museum. Some

cultivated specimens in China are estimated to be

one thousand years old, whilst groups of trees in

some apparently truly wild populations may be as old

as three thousand years. Ginkgo is widely planted in

the west as an amenity tree. It exists as separate

male and female plants whose sex is controlled, as in

mammals, by sex chromosomes in the cell nuclei.

Reproduction involves sperm cells actively swimming

down a pollen tube formed after the pollen lands on

the female ovules. This primitive mechanism was not

discovered until the late nineteenth century by a

Japanese botanist. The females produce seeds with a

fleshy outer coat rich in butyric acid which, when they

drop, rots to a slimy rancid mass with the nauseating

odour of vomit. So it is only the males which are used

for street planting although there are well documented

cases of older males developing female branches.

Male trees are created for the trade by grafting male

twigs onto seedling root stock. The Physic Garden

has a tree of each sex. In autumn the males tend to

drop their leaves, which by then have turned a rich

buttery yellow, earlier than the females.

The centres of the seeds are eaten in the Far East,

sometimes after being roasted and removal of the hard

inner wall, sometimes cooked in soups and desserts,

but they may be toxic if consumed in too great

quantity. The flesh of the part eaten has a distinct

umami (‘savoury’) flavour which is quite persistent and

not pleasant to all western tastes. The fatty outer layer

can cause contact dermatitis in some people so care

is necessary in preparing the seeds for food.

Ginkgo leaf extracts contain a mix of potentially useful

pharmacological agents. There is well-documented

evidence that ginkgo extracts slow the progress of

dementia in patients who already have it, but do not

prevent dementia in healthy patients. In addition, fairly

large doses of extract seem to improve attention in

healthy patients almost immediately after administra tion.

However, some analyses contradict these findings.

photoshop these details upto here to enable top pic tobe bigger

Plate 3

Ginkgo biloba L.Family – Ginkgoaceae

Alister Mathews

This plant and those shown plate 4, Taxus baccata

and plate 5, Ephedra distachya, produce seeds

(unlike the ferns figured in the first two plates)

however they do not produce flowers nor are their

seeds are enclosed in fruits, unlike the flowering

plants in the remainder of this book.

The maidenhair tree has no close living relatives but is

very similar to fossils dating back 270 million years.

Its origin is in eastern China and it has long been

grown in temple enclosures there and in Japan, first

being noticed in a Japanese temple in 1690 by the

botanist Engelbert Kaempfer. Linnaeus named the

species in 1771 based on Kaempfer’s specimens and

text which had included a slightly faulty transliteration

of the Japanese name giving us ‘ginkgo.’ Kaempfer’s

illustration is partly incorrect and is also incomplete so

that Linnaeus was not certain of the ginkgo’s

relationships to the plants he knew. Kaempfer’s

specimen material still exists in the Hans Sloane

herbarium at the Natural History Museum. Some

cultivated specimens in China are estimated to be

one thousand years old, whilst groups of trees in

some apparently truly wild populations may be as old

as three thousand years. Ginkgo is widely planted in

the west as an amenity tree. It exists as separate

male and female plants whose sex is controlled, as in

mammals, by sex chromosomes in the cell nuclei.

Reproduction involves sperm cells actively swimming

down a pollen tube formed after the pollen lands on

the female ovules. This primitive mechanism was not

discovered until the late nineteenth century by a

Japanese botanist. The females produce seeds with a

fleshy outer coat rich in butyric acid which, when they

drop, rots to a slimy rancid mass with the nauseating

odour of vomit. So it is only the males which are used

for street planting although there are well documented

cases of older males developing female branches.

Male trees are created for the trade by grafting male

twigs onto seedling root stock. The Physic Garden

has a tree of each sex. In autumn the males tend to

drop their leaves, which by then have turned a rich

buttery yellow, earlier than the females.

The centres of the seeds are eaten in the Far East,

sometimes after being roasted and removal of the hard

inner wall, sometimes cooked in soups and desserts,

but they may be toxic if consumed in too great

quantity. The flesh of the part eaten has a distinct

umami (‘savoury’) flavour which is quite persistent and

not pleasant to all western tastes. The fatty outer layer

can cause contact dermatitis in some people so care

is necessary in preparing the seeds for food.

Ginkgo leaf extracts contain a mix of potentially useful

pharmacological agents. There is well-documented

evidence that ginkgo extracts slow the progress of

dementia in patients who already have it, but do not

prevent dementia in healthy patients. In addition, fairly

large doses of extract seem to improve attention in

healthy patients almost immediately after administra tion.

However, some analyses contradict these findings.

photoshop these details upto here to enable top pic tobe bigger

This strange plant, the joint-pine, has its sexes on

separate plants. It is found from Portugal to the

Balkans and grows to an altitude of 1100 metres. Its

form is a low shrub looking a little like broom (Cytisus)

though it will climb over other vegetation in the right

conditions. The painting shows a male plant. The

female produces seeds covered by a juicy, dull

pinkish-red coat and is very attractive as a result.

Four species of Ephedra are found in Europe and the

genus is found as far east as China where it has been

used medicinally for the past 5000 years. E.

gerardiana is used in Nepal to treat asthma and

bronchial diseases.

In the west its pharmacological value was

appreciated with the discovery of the alkaloids

ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (which are not

present in all species). Today Ephedra species are

cultivated commercially in China for the extraction of

these compounds which appear most commonly in

over-the-counter decongestants (for instance the

brand ‘Sudafed’) and with other components in

remedies for relieving symptoms of the common cold.

Because they increase blood pressure and open

bronchial pathways these alkaloids have been used in

attempts to boost athletic performance but without

scientific evidence of any beneficial effects. Their use

in a sporting context is banned.

It has been thought that preparations of Ephedra were

at least one component of the Vedic and Zoroastrian

drink soma, used in a religious context to induce

alertness and awareness. Some consider other

components to have included psycho-active fungi,

but in the absence of appropriate evidence it is

impossible comment further.

Plate 5

Ephedra distachya L.Family – Ephedraceae

Barbara McLean

This strange plant, the joint-pine, has its sexes on

separate plants. It is found from Portugal to the

Balkans and grows to an altitude of 1100 metres. Its

form is a low shrub looking a little like broom (Cytisus)

though it will climb over other vegetation in the right

conditions. The painting shows a male plant. The

female produces seeds covered by a juicy, dull

pinkish-red coat and is very attractive as a result.

Four species of Ephedra are found in Europe and the

genus is found as far east as China where it has been

used medicinally for the past 5000 years. E.

gerardiana is used in Nepal to treat asthma and

bronchial diseases.

In the west its pharmacological value was

appreciated with the discovery of the alkaloids

ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (which are not

present in all species). Today Ephedra species are

cultivated commercially in China for the extraction of

these compounds which appear most commonly in

over-the-counter decongestants (for instance the

brand ‘Sudafed’) and with other components in

remedies for relieving symptoms of the common cold.

Because they increase blood pressure and open

bronchial pathways these alkaloids have been used in

attempts to boost athletic performance but without

scientific evidence of any beneficial effects. Their use

in a sporting context is banned.

It has been thought that preparations of Ephedra were

at least one component of the Vedic and Zoroastrian

drink soma, used in a religious context to induce

alertness and awareness. Some consider other

components to have included psycho-active fungi,

but in the absence of appropriate evidence it is

impossible comment further.

Plate 5

Ephedra distachya L.Family – Ephedraceae

Barbara McLean

Plate 34

Rhododendron fortunei Lindl.Family – Ericaceae

Maggy Fitzpatrick

The genus Rhododendron in the Ericaceae or heather

family has about 1000 species of which 650 grow in

China where it is the largest genus. New Guinea has

155 endemic species.

The rhododendron in this painting grows in Chinese

forests at altitudes of 600 – 2000 metres. It was

described by John Lindley (Praefectus Horti of

Chelsea Physic Garden 1836 - 1853) in the

Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1859. He named it for Robert

Fortune (Curator of the Garden 1846 - 1848). Fortune

(born 1812) was sent to China in 1843 by his

employer the Royal Horticultural Society. He

discovered this species on a later visit in 1855 and

sent seed back to Glendinning’s nursery in Turnham

Green, near Chiswick. Plants raised from these seeds

were auctioned in 1859 and proved to be the first

hardy rhododendron to be introduced from China.

This species has very fragrant flowers and has been

used as a parent in breeding of many hybrids. Two

produced about 1880 by John Luscombe of Lower

Coombe Royal in Devon were named ‘Mrs

W.T.Thiselton-Dyer’ and ‘Frances Thiselton-Dyer’ for

the wife and daughter of the Deputy Director of Kew,

William Thiselton-Dyer. He had been appointed by

Kew’s Director Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1875 and had

married Hooker’s daughter Harriet.

The rhododendron introduced to Britain that has

escaped and is familiar in many acid soil areas is R. x

superponticum. This is a complex hybrid swarm of

several species including R. ponticum. The latter is

widely distributed, including in the Pontic mountains of

northern Turkey, where it has found use in traditional

medicine for relief of toothache, rheumatic pain and in

the treatment of inflammatory conditions. Well

designed laboratory trials have shown extracts of this

species to have real effects in reducing markers of

inflammation and pain, possibly by the mediation of

flavones in the tissues. However, R. x superponticum is

toxic and ingestion of its leaves by horses can lead to

their death. The pollen and nectar of both R. x

superponticum and R. luteum, a species found in the

Caucasus, N.E.Turkey and Eastern Europe, contain

grayantoxins, a group of four poisonous molecules

which can accumulate in honey. Cases of poisoning of

humans by this ‘mad’ honey have been documented

from classical times through to the present.