Joseph Dalton Hooker | Illustrations of Himalayan plants, London, 1855, original boards

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Illustrations of Himalayan plants chiefly selected from drawings made by the late J.F. Cathcart Esq.re of the Bengal Civil Service. The descriptions and analyses by J.D. Hooker... the plates executed by W.H. Fitch. London: Lowell Reeve, 1855

Folio (507 x 369mm.), half-title, hand-coloured lithographed title, 24 coloured lithographed plates, original printed boards reproducing the lithographed title, rebacked with black morocco, boards rubbed and scraped

Hooker was the renowned director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, as well as a seasoned traveller and plant hunter. He travelled to India and the Himalayas in 1848-1851, becoming the first European to collect plants in the Himalayas. Some of the plants he named after people he met in India; Magnolia Campbellii was named for Archibald Campbell of the East India Company, and both Hodgsonia heteroclita and Talauma Hodgsoni for Brian Houghton Hodgson, a naturalist and linguist living in India. John Ferguson Cathcart, whose illustrations commissioned from local artists were the basis for Fitch's plates, was recognised by Michela Cathcarti. Hooker's account of his travels was published as Himalayan Journals, dedicated to his friend Charles Darwin.

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books, p. 60; Nissen BBI 910