The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Grand Flower

The Asoka Tree

Saraca declinata

A sacred tree of India and Java, in orange going to red.

Book
Fleurs, Fruits et Feuillages Choisis de l’Île de Java
Artist
Berthe Hoola van Nooten
Date
1863–1864
Held by
Wellcome Collection · via Wikimedia Commons
Saraca declinata

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

A relative of the sacred asoka, whose flowers open orange and darken toward red as they age, so a single cluster shows the whole progression at once. Van Nooten's plates were drawn in Batavia and lithographed in Brussels, and their particular quality is that they were made by someone who lived where the plants lived — she was not working from a dried specimen in a northern museum, but from a tree in the heat. She drew from the tree, in the weather the tree grew in.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

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

The Asoka Tree framed on the wall
The Asoka Tree framed on the wall
The Asoka Tree framed on the wall
The Asoka Tree framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wellcome Collection · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1863–1864).
  • 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

The Pride of Burma — Fleurs, Fruits et Feuillages Choisis de l’Île de Java, Berthe Hoola van Nooten, 1863–1864

1863–1864

The Pride of Burma

Called the most beautiful flowering tree in the world, and drawn in Java by a widow with four children.

Amherstia nobilis
The Croton — Fleurs, Fruits et Feuillages Choisis de l’Île de Java, Berthe Hoola van Nooten, 1863–1864

1863–1864

The Croton

A leaf that behaves like a flower — yellow, orange, red and green on one plant.

Codiaeum variegatum
A Wild Cardamom — Fleurs, Fruits et Feuillages Choisis de l’Île de Java, Berthe Hoola van Nooten, 1863–1864

1863–1864

A Wild Cardamom

The spice trade’s own plant, drawn where it grew.

Elettaria speciosa