Bruxelles, Émile Tarlier, 1863. Large folio (55.6 x 40.8 cm). Title page, [ii] pp. (preface), dedication leaf; 41 chromolithographed plates, some finished by hand, with explanatory text leaves. Contemporary half calf over over burgundy linen boards. Spine blind-tooled with four low, wide bands, and dark brown morocco label with gilt title. Light, greyish green endpapers.

First edition - with the very rare 41st plate present - of this magnificent work on the fruits and flowers of Java by the Dutch educator, botanist, and painter Berthe (or Bartha, or Berte) Hendrica Philippina Hoola van Nooten née van Dolder (1817-1892). The descriptive text, by herself, is bilingual (English and French) in two columns. The author led an adventurous life and the publication of this work once saved her from bankruptcy. "Van Nooten was clearly a more than competent artist, for the splendid tropical plants, with their lush foliage, vividly coloured flowers and exotic fruit, have been depicted with great skill. She managed to accentuate the splendour of each species by adopting a style that combined great precision and clarity with a touch of neo-Baroque exuberance, revealing in the rich forms and colours of the tropics. The reader's eye is immediately captured by the dark leaves, shown furled or crumpled or partly nibbled away by insects, the delicately rendered details of the follicles and seeds, and the heavy clusters of flowers that cascade down the page. The excellent reproduction of the artist's drawings in the form of chromolithographs lends a tactile quality to these striking images." ( An Oak Spring Flora). The 41st plate shows beautiful, large, leaf insects, Phyllium pulcherrifolium. Perhaps this plate was suppressed later because it shows leaf-mimicking insects (Phasmatodea), rather than plants. Bubb Kuyper noted "practically all copies come with 40 plates". Neither the copy shown on the website of Teylers Museum nor the copy in the Biodiversity Heritage Library contain this plate. We found only one auction record: a copy sold at Christie's in Paris in 2011, wrongly stated to have 40 plates, contained plate 41, but lacked another text leaf, yet it fetched the second highest all-time auction price. Our copy is also superior in having almost no foxing or toning. The work is known to be prone to this. Copies that have been in the tropics are usually very badly affected. Nowadays, clean individual plates are still offered for € 300-600, even more, depending on the image. Therefore, a fine, clean copy with 40 plates has become very rare, and a fine, clean and truly complete copy with 41 plates, such as this one, is excessively rare. Landwehr, 79; Nissen BBI, 931; Sitwell, p. 103; Stafleu and Cowan, 3025; Tongiorgi Tomasi, An Oak Spring Flora, p. 330.