Mint

The third plate in this collection from Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal (1737–1739), recording garden mint with the same clean, uncolored precision as her parsley and rosemary — root, flowering spike, and separated seed each labeled for an apothecary's quick reference. Blackwell completed all 500 plates in roughly two years, drawing and engraving through the night at a rented room near the Chelsea Physic Garden while raising her children alone; contemporary botanists praised the book's accuracy even as they noted, with some surprise, that a woman had produced it single-handedly. What to notice: mint's square stem — a telltale feature of the entire mint family — is rendered with enough clarity that the plate still functions as a usable identification aid nearly three centuries later, exactly as Blackwell intended it to.

Maker

Elizabeth Blackwell

Date

1737–1739

Medium of the original

Plate

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00256