Botanical Art by Missouri Botanical Garden
Missouri Botanical Garden's board of 250 scientific plant illustrations, from German classroom wall charts to 19th-century watercolors.
What it is
Botanical Illustrations is a board run by the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the US and home to a serious research library. It holds 250 pins, and nearly all of them are botanical illustration in the classic sense: the whole plant, root to flower to fruit, drawn so you could identify it from the picture.
Captions are in English, often with the Latin species name, the artist and the year.
Why we picked it
It works as a well-curated showcase of the genre. German Haslinger wall charts once used to teach schoolchildren (including a wonderfully detailed dandelion) sit next to 1830s watercolors of honeysuckle and everlasting pea by Louise d'Orléans, Louis van Houtte's fuchsias from 1877 and lithographs from a Belgian pomology journal. Plenty of pins link to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, where the full books are scanned.
The board hasn't been updated in a while; the newest pins date from around 2015. That hardly matters when the flowers are two hundred years old. Every so often you'll hit a stray pin like someone's sketchbook, so just scroll past.
Where to start
- Find the dandelion from the Haslinger charts to see how plants were drawn for classrooms.
- Look up Louise d'Orléans' watercolors of honeysuckle and everlasting pea.
- Hunt down Louis van Houtte's fuchsias, bright lithographs from a 19th-century garden magazine.
- Open a pin that links to the Biodiversity Heritage Library and page through the whole book.
Who it's for
Illustrators and students learning to draw plants, gardeners, pattern designers and anyone who wants an old botanical print on the wall and is still deciding which one.
Quick answers
Who runs the board? The mobotgarden account, which belongs to the Missouri Botanical Garden.
What language are the captions in? English, with Latin plant names.
Is it still updated? No, treat it as an archive: the latest pins were added around 2015.
