Printed model to printed image: Blechnum

The French botanist Charles Plumier (1646-1704), a friar in the mendicant order of Minims, collected and drew plants in the French Antilles between 1689 and 1692. In 1693, Description des plantes de l'Amérique was published, which made Plumier’s name internationally as a botanist. He became royal botanist to Louis XIV (1638-1715), and made two more journeys (1693, 1695) to the Caribbean, before publishing Nova plantarum Americanarum genera (1703-1704).

For this plate in Part 3 of the Historia, Frederick Hendrick van Hove (c.1628-1698) used the top part of Plumier’s figure of the leaf of the common Caribbean fern, Blechnum occidentale. The leaf was reduced in size and rotated left, so that it would fit into the bottom right-hand corner of the plate. This is the position frequently occupied by heraldry associated with plate sponsors, which implies that inclusion of this figure was a late addition to the composition - perhaps after sponsorship failed to emerge.