ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Buddleja stachyoides Cham. & Schltdl.

· Collected 1897, det. Norman (2000)

Buddleja stachyoides Cham. & Schltdl.
This is a pressed herbarium specimen, not a cartoon or caricature, and cannot be described as one. The mounted plant — *Buddleja stachyoides*, collected by Dr. E. Hassler in Paraguay (Plantae Paraguarienses, no. 3421) — is a botanical document, not a work of satirical printmaking. No satirical scene, figures, or printmaking technique are present. Writing a fabricated wall label attributing caricature tradition to this object would misrepresent both the specimen and the history of print satire. A truthful label: this dried shrub specimen, pinned to archival board with hand-written determinations spanning over a century, represents the parallel documentary tradition of natural history illustration from which scientific publishing — not comic art — descends.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/