The Magnificent Flora Graeca: "How the Mediterranean came to the English Garden' by Stephen Harris
10 January 2008
‘…la più magnifica flora del mondo’ [the most magnificent flora in the world] Michele Tenore (1780-1861), Professor of Botany, University of Naples
‘The extraordinary story of one of the most and beautiful books is here vivdly brought to life in this ravishing publication.’ Sir Roy Strong
The Flora Graeca is one of the most extraordinary botanical works of all time. Everything from its conception, through the associated fieldwork, to its writing and publication, was done on a grand scale. It was, and remains, a publishing phenomenon. The size of the publication (10 double folio volumes), its cost (over £620 in 1830) and the lengths to which people went to see it all added to the Flora’s reputation.
This book relates the story of the two expeditions that John Sibthorp, a wealthy, single-minded Oxford professor of botany, made in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and the long aftermath of the making of his Flora Graeca. The romance of his journeys through the Greek islands and the little-known Ottoman Empire, his untimely death, the astounding costs, workmanship, and intellectual effort involved in its completion have all heightened its mystique.
It also looks at the horticultural legacy of Sibthorp’s voyages and the plants he brought back to England, such as Crocus flavus ssp. flavus collected in Turkey, one of the parents of a popular garden hybrid, ‘Golden Yellow’, and Cyclamen persicum collected in Cyprus, currently one of the most widely grown autumn-flowering species and the parent of many of the garden cyclamens.
Among those privileged enough to have seen the Flora, there is another reason for its lasting allure: the spectacular quality of the illustrations, nearly a thousand of them, by the celebrated botanical artist, Ferdinand Bauer. Filled with these exquisite hand-coloured engravings, watercolours and original specimens, this book makes the lavish craftsmanship of the Flora Graeca widely accessible for the first time.
Dr Shirley Sherwood was the guest speaker at the official launch of the Bodleian Library’s recent publication, The Magnificent Flora Graeca. The event took place at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford on 13 December 2007.
Stephen Harris is Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria, and University Research Lecturer at Green College.
- The Bodleian Library Publishing programme publishes books about or related to collections of books and manuscripts found in the Bodleian Library and other OULS libraries, with the aim of increasing knowledge of and access to these historic documents. All the Library’s titles can be viewed and ordered at www.bodleianbookshop.co.uk