An attractive copy of the most famous English botanical plate book ever produced. The work was first issued in parts between 1799 and 1807. It was re-issued in 1807 and finally in 1811. This last edition was an attempt to recoup Thornton’s finances as it exhausted his entire fortune. This issue is a later one with watermarks where visible varying from 1804 to 1810. The work was intended as a pictorial celebration of the sexual system of Linnaeus, to be accompanied by prose and verse text. He employed noted artists of the day, including Peter Henderson and Philip Reinagle, to paint the plants each in an exotic and romantic setting. Abraham Pether contributed the ‘moon-light’ accompanying the plate of the night-blowing cereus. Sydenham Edwards painted the hyacinths and Thornton himself painted the Rose. The mezzotint engraving was done by Ward, Earlom and Dunkarton and the aquatint work by Stadler and Sutherland. ‘Great Flower Books’ p. 77; Dunthorne 301; Grigson and Buchanan ‘Thornton’s Temple of Flora’, 1951; ‘Oak Spring Flora’ pp. 354-8.