Stephen Sinon is the William B. O’Connor Curator of Special Collections, Research and Archives in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

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A recent discovery in the backlog of the Mertz Library’s botanical artwork collection has proven to be an interesting addition to our holdings of original artwork created for the Flora Brasiliensis. An unidentified folder of pencil drawings first thought to be moss illustrations turned out to be details of grasses. The 20 drawings were accompanied by a note written in a barely legible German but with a date of 1871 and the location St. Polten, Oesterreich. Furthermore, each highly detailed drawing was identified with a plate number and botanical name.

As it turns out, St. Polten, Austria was the home of grass specialist Eduard Hackel (1850–1926), who became the world’s leading agrostologist (a botanist or taxonomist who studies grasses) in the late 19th century. The genus Hackelochloa (Poaceae) was named in his honor by fellow Austrian botanist Otto Kuntze (1843–1907) in 1891.

The botanical names and plate numbers given on each drawing are an exact match to the plate numbers found in Volume 2 Part 3 of the multi-volume Flora Brasiliensis, which was published in 1883. The graphite drawings, however, only depict small details found on the plates and not the entire plant specimens. In several cases the details found in the drawings are not in the same order as seen on the published plates.

We can surmise that these drawings were in a printing workshop at one point, as several are covered with footprint marks. Scientific artwork was not widely collected prior to the late 20th century and was often discarded after being published. In 1914, Ignatz Urban, Director of the Berlin Botanical Garden, traded 311 original drawings made for Flora Brasiliensis to NYBG for duplicate herbarium specimens. The remaining illustrations were lost in Berlin during WWII. Or were they?…