The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Herbal & the Kitchen Garden

The Dragon Arum

Dracunculus vulgaris

A metre-tall purple hood that smells, deliberately, of rotting meat.

Book
botanical watercolour
Artist
botanical watercolour, 19th century
Date
19th century
Held by
Wikimedia Commons
Dracunculus vulgaris

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 dragon arum sends up a dark purple hood nearly a metre tall with a near-black spadix standing in it, and for about one day it produces a smell of rotting meat strong enough to clear a garden. The smell is the mechanism: it draws carrion flies, which are trapped overnight in the base of the hood, dusted with pollen, and released. It is genuinely magnificent and nobody wants it near a window. Some flowers advertise to bees. This one advertises to flies.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

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

The Dragon Arum framed on the wall
The Dragon Arum framed on the wall
The Dragon Arum framed on the wall
The Dragon Arum framed on the wall

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.