The night-blooming cereus flowers for a single night a year, opening after dusk and collapsing by dawn — a plant practically written for Robert John Thornton's Temple of Flora, which staged its flowers as Romantic set-pieces rather than bare botanical specimens. This plate sets the cereus's huge, star-white bloom against a moonlit clock tower and a darkening sky, a composition meant to be read at the same hour the real flower would have been open. What to notice: the moon and clock together turn the whole plate into a kind of timer, underscoring the flower's famous, fleeting rarity — Thornton's engravers rarely had a subject so naturally suited to the theatrical treatment he insisted every plate deserved.

Maker: after Philip Reinagle and Robert John Thornton
Date: 1800
Medium of the original: Plate
Original held by: Wikimedia Commons
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Rights: Public domain, verified
Catalogue number: PA-00250

As chosen: 8 x 12 in, art print, classic frame
Picture	8 x 12 in
Outside size	9.6 x 13.6 in
Depth	0.9 in (22 mm)
Weight	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: shipped weight per size and frame]]
Hanging	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: hanging hardware Prodigi fits to this frame]]
Material	Enhanced matte art paper, 200 gsm; acrylic glazing
Made in	Charlotte, North Carolina, by Prodigi

Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.

How the print check works

Sizes offered
Size	dpi	Grade	How it fits
8 x 10 in	203	Excellent	Trimmed 7.6%
8 x 12 in	183	Good	Trimmed 9.9%

Sizes withheld
Size	Why
11 x 14 in	147 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 16 in	135 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 18 in	122 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
16 x 20 in	101 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
16 x 24 in	91 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
18 x 24 in	90 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
20 x 30 in	73 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
24 x 30 in	67 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
24 x 36 in	61 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
30 x 40 in	54 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
36 x 48 in	45 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
40 x 60 in	36 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged