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ACQUISITIONS
RELATED HOLDINGS
Bois Ayac, ou bois puant
(Ayac tree, or sinking wood tree) by Antoine-Simon Le Pagedu Pratz engraving from vol. 2 of Histoire de la Louisiane....
Paris: De Bure, I’aTne, 1758
bequest of General L. Kemper Williams,
73-16-L
Flore pittoresque et medicale des Antilles....
by M. E. and J. T. Descourtilz Paris: Chez I’editeur, 1833 2074.0252
A?*.
Manuel de botanique, a I’usage des amateurs et des voyageurs....
by F. Lebreton
Paris: Chez Waree, et Denisot, an VI [1798] gift of Cilles-Antoine Langlois, 2013.0235
The Botanical Register, vols. 13-19
London: J. Ridgway, 1827-34 gift of Mark P. Dauer, 2009.0369
ACQUISITION SPOTLIGHT
Firewheels of Watercolor
Gaillardia pulchella Watercolor
2015.0383
Eighteenth-century Louisiana was part of a global network in which French botanists, colonists, and other correspondents around the world exchanged seeds, cuttings, grafts, transplants, and native recipes. These plants were grown in French and Louisiana gardens to develop food sources and other cash crops, garden ornamentals, and medicine, as well as to promote scientific research. Medicinal plants, for instance, were grown in the royal gardens in France,
as well as in the Royal Hospital’s kitchen garden in New Orleans. During this time of teeming scientific activity in the later years of the Enlightenment, a new species of flowering plant was discovered in Louisiana.
The Collection recently acquired a 1789 watercolor of Gaillardia pulchella, a member of the aster family commonly known as firewheel because of the orange, red, and yellow hues of its round blossoms. Still found in Louisiana, it is sometimes called Indian blanket because its vibrant flowers seem to carpet fields for miles during its peak flowering season. The illustration was
Spring 2016	21