The Biodiversity Heritage Library

I love botanical drawings, giving the time I would spend all day happily drawing plants, flowers and trees. Now the Biodiversity Heritage Library has been launched online, a way to share the world’s animal drawings, historical diagrams, botanical sketches and scientific research.

This amazing library has more than 55 million pages of literature, some from as far back as the 15th century, and 150,000 illustrations. All free download (check copyright here) and all available to peruse at your leisure, these are just a few of my favourites.

Originally found at This is Colossal. The different collections these images are from are, Appendix to the first 23 volumes of Edwards’s botanical register, Revue horticole: journal d’horticulture practique (1877),  Trees and shrubs of the British Isles; native and acclimatised v.1, La plants et sesames applications ornementales, Belgique horticole. v.3,  British trees v.2.