©Işık Güner, 2017
This is a watercolour sketch by the award-winning Turkish botanical artist Işık Güner of the Iris sprengeri, a species native to the Anatolia region of Turkey. It grows in the foothills.
Horticulture was a passion for Henrietta Liston. During her travels around Constantinople (Istanbul) and the mountains, forests and plains of Marmara and Anatolia, Henrietta looked for wildflowers, took cuttings, and collected bulbs and hundreds of seeds.
She sent irises, violets, crocuses, hyacinths and foxgloves, among many other kinds of plant, from Turkey to William McNab (1780–1848), principle gardener of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
At the Embassy in Constantinople, working with her Armenian gardener Gabriel, Henrietta created an important garden filled with ornamental shrubs and trees.
Her plants, one visitor remarked, grew 'to such extraordinary size and beauty that they were described with admiration by foreign botanists.'
Read more about the Iris sprengeri and botanical illustration in our interview with Işık Güner on the Travels of Henrietta Liston resource.