The Gymea Lily

Doryanthes excelsa

A flower spike that stands taller than a person.

Book: botanical plate
Artist: after the New South Wales collections
Date: 19th century
Held by: Wikimedia Commons

Doryanthes excelsa

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore, down to the stipple.

Size

$29.00

The story

The gymea lily of coastal New South Wales sends up a flower spike three to four metres tall, topped with a head of scarlet blooms the size of a dinner plate. It was among the first Australian plants that European gardeners genuinely coveted, and it broke every convention of the flower plate — no folio was tall enough for it, so the artists drew it in sections or drew it defeated. The plant that would not fit on the paper.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

The Gymea Lily printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (19th century).
Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years (inscribed pieces and atelier bouquets are set by hand and printed to order).
Colour-managed to the source scan: the hand-colour is the colourist’s, not ours. We correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the stipple that makes a petal look soft, the wash of the hand-colourist, the veins of the leaf — on stock made to outlive its owner. A poster reproduces the picture. This reproduces the plate.

From the same collection