Illustration: This beautiful collection of old botanical drawings will knock your socks off

I wish somebody had told me back when I was struggling ardently with biological diagrams in my year eight science classes that they could be as beautiful as these are. This selection of botanical illustrations is from a collection called The Families of Flowering Plants by L. Wattson and M.J. Dallwitz, and we stumbled across them on lovely Chinese blog Waterfall. They’re the epitome of “accidentally wonderful”; delicate down to the very last detail and perfectly coloured in a way that you just can’t replicate digitally, they’re the kind of image I’d like to fashion into a kind of wallpaper and cover the walls of my flat with.

The scientific descriptions, on the other hand, are Greek to me; all “axillary inflorescence” and “fascicled racemes,” so it’s a good thing I’m happy to leave the botany to the pros and sit back and admire the illustration instead.