Cat’s Claw, with a Swallowtail

Mark Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731–1743) was the first published survey of North American plants and animals, based on Catesby's own decade of fieldwork in the American colonies — and one of his signature habits was pairing each animal with a plant from the same habitat, a compositional convention that doubled as an early argument for ecology before the word existed. Here a flowering cat's-claw branch, its curling seed pods and puffball blossoms rendered with real botanical care, shares the plate with an Eastern tiger swallowtail, wings spread flat in the period's standard specimen pose. What to notice: Catesby etched his own plates rather than handing his field drawings to a professional engraver, a rarity for the period that gives his work a slightly rougher, more direct quality than the polished botanical illustration of decades later.

Maker

Mark Catesby

Date

1731–1743

Medium of the original

Plate

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00257