Printed model to printed image: Mimosa

The Italian botanist Giacomo Zanoni (1615-1682) was head of the botanic garden in Bologna. Zanoni’s Istoria Botanica (1675), a catalogue of the rare plants in the Bologna garden, included many plants that were new to Europe – including Mimosa quadrivalvis, one of the so-called sensitive plants whose leaves collapse when touched. Morison made liberal use of Zanoni’s work to illustrate Part 2 of his Historia.

For Morison, Michael Burghers engraved part of Zanoni’s plate to show the arrangement and details of the leaves, two fruits (open on the left; closed on the right) and separate details of seeds (right side). These two illustrations bear critical examination, as they show how copying introduces errors and misconceptions: visual Chinese whispers. Moreover, they suggest Morison was not paying critical attention to the plates as they were being prepared.

Burghers’ work is highly stylised compared to the original. Moreover, it has been modified in critical ways that makes the illustration in the Historia less authoritative than Morison perhaps would have desired. For example, on the right of the Historia plate part of a leaf with an unarmed stalk (left) is shown below the open fruit, on Zanoni’s plate this is shown to be armed. In the case of the leaf below the closed fruit (right), the Historia image shows the leaf stalk with small prickles that point upwards; in the Zanoni plate they point down. Such differences may appear trivial but if one wishes to use Morison’s image to identify plants or to determine whether you have found a new species, such detail is important. Many other inconsistencies between the two images are revealed through detailed comparison.