Thank you for an enjoyable and thought-provoking article. As another relative newcomer to the subject I have started with the view that both ‘illustrations’ and ‘art’ need to be scientifically accurate but that a botanical illustration shows the full range of features needed to identify a plant, whereas botanical art need not do so. However, that got me thinking about how you might describe a group of images which cover different features of a plant but which, when taken together as a series, cover the full range of features. Has botanical art become botanical illustration! On the topic of suitable subjects, although algae as far as I am aware, were not included in the early herbals, they have certainly received the attention of some eminent botanists including William Jackson Hooker and Robert Kaye Greville. I particularly like this quote from a review of some of Grevilles’ work on marine algae “by whose devotional attachment, close attention, and invaluable labours, much steady light has been thrown upon this abstruse part of Botany”. Marine algae probably remain an abstruse part of Botany so including them in the genre of botanical art and illustration is another great opportunity to make them less puzzling.
