1828 S. Curtis Engraved Hand Colored Chestnut-Leaved Croton Print

Framed Chestnut-Leaved Croton colored print by Samuel Curtis. Published in 1828, as part of Curtis' 'Botanical Magazine'. This fantastic, Scottish-made print is almost 200 years old and meticulously depicts every detail in a Croton Casteneifolium via an intricate copper engraving with original hand coloring detail work. Title: 'Croton Casteneifolium, Chesnut-Leaved Croton' (Plate 2794).  Displayed in a lovely and theme-fitting, custom Copper frame.

Original Description by William Jackson Hooker, L.L.D. (F.R.A & I.S & Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow): Class & Order: Monaecia Monadelphia.

"An annual erect, branching plant, two feet or more in height, with a thick, succulent, roundish, hispid stem; hairs softish and spreading. Leaves remote, 4-6 inches long, alternate, laceolate, broadest at the base, glabrous, serrated, with many oblique, parallel, strong, generally simple nerves, which give them a licated appearance. Petioles two inches long, succulent, hispid, with a small, setaceous, generally bifid stipule in each side, at the base. Spikes or racemes axillary, about as long at the petioles; Peduncle slender, hispid, with a few bracteated, almost sessile flowers at the extremity. of which one or two of the lower are female, and the rest male. Male flowers with a calyx of live, deep, ovate segments or leaflets, green. Corolla of five, oblong, waved petals. Stamens 10, five upper and five lower, all united with the base of a columnar, abortive, subtrigious pistil. Filaments spreading, nearly horizontally: Anthers roundish, pale yellow with a reddish glad of union between the lobes. Female flower with five, upright, oblong, and acute leaflets, and three outer and smaller ones. Corolla of give, small, erect petals. Pistil oblongo-rotundar, with a sessile, white, many-rayed stigma, clothed with numerous soft bristles. Fruit three-lobed, hispid.
Seeds of this croton were sent to Mr. Lockhart from Trinidad to the Glasgow Botanic Garden, where they produced flowering plants in August 1827. Plumier's figure above referred to is so ill executed, I cannot quote it as a certain synonym of this plant; but the descriptions of other authors sufficiently accord with it. Probably the C palustre of LINNAEUS is scarcely specifically distinct.
It has nothing to recommend it as a plant worthy of cultivation, except indeed, in the gardens of the curious."

Dimensions: 8.50" x 5.25"

Weight: 6.5 oz.