Botanical Plate 18
1809
Meet Rhexia conferta, a shrub with tiny leaves and distinctive brownish, urn-shaped flowers, captured here in a scientific illustration from Alexander von Humboldt's legendary travels. See those little diagrams at the bottom? That's the 19th-century version of an exploded view diagram, showing the flower's anatomy so scientists could classify it properly. Humboldt was the celebrity scientist of his day—basically the David Attenborough of the 1800s—and his massive publications introduced Europe to the wild, romantic beauty of the Americas' flora.
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