Red-fruited raspberry plant

Rubus Idaeus, Red-fruited Raspberry

Contrary to what its Latin name suggests, the raspberry is not confined to Mount Ida of antiquity. According to the scholar Suidas, all places offering a vast perspective bore the name of Ida, whether discovered from afar or revealing beautiful views to travelers.

The raspberry, for its part, spontaneously colonizes clearings and forest edges that have been freshly cut, whether at altitude or in the plains, a faithful companion of rediscovered light.

Cultivated since antiquity, the raspberry has given rise to several varieties with fruits more generous than their wild ancestors.

This plate represents one of these perfected varieties. Its creeping roots produce numerous herbaceous stems each spring, straight, four to five feet high, armed with prickles and tinged with red in the sun. These stems die after fruiting only once, in the second winter, making the raspberry a perennial rather than a true shrub.

The alternate leaves are composed of five leaflets at the base, three at the top, oval and acuminate, green above, whitish below. In spring, the upper buds develop into small branches bearing discreet white flowers, arranged in panicles. The fruit, this aggregation of small monospermous berries, ripens in June, detaching from its central receptacle when perfectly ripe.

The raspberry then exhales a delicate fragrance, provided it is picked at the right time: too ripe, it becomes insipid and vulnerable to worms.

This plate is taken from the Traité des Arbres Fruitiers by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin, a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration.

It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensibility, characteristic of the great plates of the golden age of illustrated botany.

As an anecdote, this plate was used by Salvador Dali for his lithograph series 'Flordali, les Fruits' in 1969.