Treasures of the Bodleian

This is one of many superb watercolours of Eastern Mediterranean flora by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Bauer. Bauer made initial sketches in pencil, using a colour code system of his own invention, while accompanying his employer, the Oxford naturalist John Sibthorp, on a  field trip to the Mediterranean. He later worked them up into watercolours in Oxford. The watercolours formed the basis of engravings eventually published in Flora Graeca, an immensely ambitious, multi-volume project which Sibthorp never lived to see.

An introduction to the stunning Flora Graeca by Dr Stephen Harris, Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria