(Photograph = Dictionnaire pittoresque d’histoire naturelle et des phénomènes de la nature, vol. 1: t. 12, fig. 1 [1833-1839])
Introduction
PlantIllustrations.org has multitudes of plant illustrations of all types. Each drawing is carefully annotated to explain who drew it and where/when it was published. Alternately, photographs clearly state the photographer and the location. The photographs are great, but the drawings/paintings are the real stars.
The Details
You can find orchids, trees, roses, bushes, grasses, and more at PlantIllustrations.org. But it is the cacti and succulents that are especially important–often there are very poor historical records of these plants, and these old drawings provided excellent documentation.
The one drawback is that the plants are named from the time the drawings were created. If there have been name changes in the past 100 or 150 years, it might be a bit tricky to match drawings up with modern names. No matter, the drawings are beautiful.
Additional Reading: Wonderland Botanical Illustration Guide
Hello,
I see you posted about plantillustrations.org. I’ve been using that site as a resource, but now it seems to be down. Everything I can find leads to an error message. Do you have any information about who owns/runs the site? I’d love to contact them to see if it’s just a temporary error and if the site will be back up. Thanks in advance for any help.
Yes I am trying to access the site and having issues as well
I too have been having trouble getting into the site. It was up briefly yesterday I think (I have motor neurone disease and it has affected my memory), but other than that I have not been able to access it for a week or so. There were a couple of names on a page on the site to contact to ask about using the images. Since the names were in the public domain on the site and on Google, I’ll reproduce them here in case anyone else has contact information for them. Unfortunately I did not think to write down the contact details, but picked up the names from the first hit of a Google search just now. “If you want to use photographs please ask Max Antheunisse or contact Jan Koeman.”