William Sharp’s Chromolithographs of The Great Water Lily (1854)

In 1854 amateur botanist John Fisk Allen documented his attempts to propagate the Amazon’s Victoria regia (now called Victoria amazonica) in the more northerly climes of his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. The six lithographs contained in Victoria Regia, or, The Great Water Lily of America: With a Brief Account of its Discovery and Introduction into Cultivation are very beautiful.

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