The Ox-Tongue

Picris rhagadioloides

A rough-leaved yellow daisy, drawn with imperial resources.

Book: Plantarum Rariorum Horti Caesarei Schoenbrunnensis
Artist: Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin
Date: 1797–1804
Held by: Wikimedia Commons

Picris rhagadioloides

Format

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

$29.00

The story

An ox-tongue — the group is named for its leaves, which are covered in stiff hooked bristles that catch on skin like a cat's tongue. Jacquin's plates were engraved and coloured to a standard that only a court could pay for, and the result is that entirely ordinary Mediterranean plants sit in these volumes looking like state portraits. Which, in a sense, they were: this was an inventory of what the Habsburgs owned. Every plate in this book is a receipt.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

The Ox-Tongue 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 (1797–1804).
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 hand