{"product_id":"barla-iconographie-des-orchidees-1868","title":"Iconographie des Orchidées","description":"\u003cp\u003e1868 First Edition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn Folio. Pp. [1] f.e., [8], 83, [3], 63 plates\u003cbr\u003e\nNice\u003cbr\u003e\nImprimerie Caisson et Mignon\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary green cloth over marbled paper boards; spine lettered in gilt. General rubbing to marbled boards, especially at the corners. An ink presentation inscription on the half-title. Blind stamp at the bottom of the first three plates \"Colorié par M.me Lemaitre\". A beautiful copy in an unassuming binding. Fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first French-language monograph devoted specifically to the orchid family. Jean-Baptiste Barla, primarily known as a naturalist and mycologist, brought the same exhaustive rigor to this book: each of the sixty-three hand-colored lithographed plates comes with a full citation trail through Linnaeus, Tournefort, Reichenbach fil., Grenier and Godron, and Parlatore, and instead of a vague range map, gives the plant's exact local station and the month it flowers.\u003cbr\u003e\nBarla chose his subject for a reason: as his own preface explains, the Alpes-Maritimes compress an unusual cross-section of Europe's orchid flora into one stretch of coastline and mountains, and nearly every species found across France, Italy, and Germany turns up somewhere within it.\u003cbr\u003e\nVincent Fossat, Barla's regular collaborator for decades, rendered every species at natural size rather than reducing it to fit the page - not a decorative flourish but the science itself, since distinguishing closely related orchids by variety depended on exactly this kind of precision.\u003cbr\u003e\nThis copy carries an authorial presentation at the half-title: the inscription opens with \"Hommage\" and closes with what reads as Barla's own signature, evidence of a gift copy from the naturalist himself - but the one name that would identify who received it has been erased, leaving only the gesture of the author's gift and not its object.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe title page enumerates Barla's long list of appointments and nominations, testifying to his respectability - among them the directorship of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de la Ville de Nice. In hindsight, this note is particularly interesting: Barla's collections became foundational to the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Nice. He housed the museum of the Niçois naturalist Jean-Baptiste Vérany on his own premises beginning in 1863, and on his death bequeathed his own buildings, collections, and library to the city. Today's museum, with more than a million specimens, grew from the collections assembled by Barla and Vérany together.\u003cbr\u003e\nNice had become French only eight years before this book appeared, but Barla treats the Alpes-Maritimes as a botanical crossroads rather than a political boundary: Mediterranean and alpine orchids, French and Italian botany, local specimens and an international scientific network, all rendered at natural size across sixty-three hand-colored plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn his preface, Barla explains what drew him specifically to the Alpes-Maritimes: within an unusually narrow stretch of coast and mountains, the region brings together plant life otherwise scattered across much of Europe. Mediterranean orchids grow wild in its coastal hills and valleys, alpine species take over at higher elevations, and Barla remarks that nearly every orchid native to France, Italy, Germany, and the neighboring regions can be found somewhere within this single territory.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe work is a systematic account of the wild orchids of Nice and the Alpes-Maritimes, organized by tribe and genus according to the classification adopted by Lindley, Endlicher, and Reichenbach fil. Each species entry combines an extensive international synonymy with a French morphological description and records of the plant's local stations and flowering season.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe tribe Arétusées opens the systematic text with the genus Limodorum Tourn., whose generic characters are given in full: monandrous flowers, a free and operculate terminal anther, powdery or granular pollen masses, and a unilocular, three-valved capsule. The first species, Limodorum abortivum Swartz, is cited to Tournefort, Linnaeus, Swartz, Reichenbach fil., Grenier and Godron, Parlatore, Boissier, Koch, Gussone, Bertoloni, and Ardoino's own Flore analytique du département des Alpes-Maritimes, and is described as bearing four to twenty large, strikingly colored flowers, violet shaded with yellow. The volume proceeds in this manner through a further 62 species, with abundant detail and careful observation.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe beautiful plates completing the volume combine a colored study of the full habit of each plant with a numbered array of dissected floral and anatomical details; the finer analytical figures are left uncolored, and each species is rendered at natural size rather than reduced to fit the page. On many plates, traces of fine hand-finishing are visible over the colored lithographs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSurely Barla's fungi could have entered a beauty contest, but his orchids would have made the podium: sixty-three plates, drawn from life and delicately hand-retouched, with every petal and spur gorgeous enough to prove it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49385895362795,"sku":"187-1868--3500.00-1335.00-2026","price":3119.0,"currency_code":"CHF","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00187_IMG_0475.jpg?v=1788993975","url":"https:\/\/fenicebooks.com\/en-eux\/products\/barla-iconographie-des-orchidees-1868","provider":"La Fenice Antiquaria","version":"1.0","type":"link"}