Primula Sinensis Filicifolia Rubra

Hand-colored lithograph from *The Illustrated Bouquet*, a mid-Victorian horticultural publication. This plate depicts the Chinese primrose variety with deeply lobed foliage and clustered magenta flowers bearing yellow centers. The botanical illustration employs the precise descriptive method standard to 19th-century garden literature—a single specimen shown in full bloom with foliage articulated in careful detail. Published by E. G. Henderson and Son, London plant merchants, the series served both aesthetic and practical purposes, allowing gardeners to identify cultivars and nurserymen to document their stock. The soft hand-coloring over lithographic line represents the era's predominant method for color botanical reproduction before chromolithography became standard.