Köhler’s lavender plate is plate 60 in Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, a German book of medicinal plants. It appears in volume 1, completed in 1887. Walther Müller drew it, and it was printed in color as a chromolithograph.
What the plate shows
The plate shows the flowering plant at natural size, with its woody base, narrow leaves and purple flower spikes. Numbered details, all enlarged, show pieces of the flower stem, a single flower and the flower cut lengthwise, a stamen closed and opened, pollen, the pistil, and the seed, whole and cut open. Müller signed the plate in the bottom right corner: “W. Müller n. d. Nat.,” short for “nach der Natur,” German for “from nature.”
The names
Köhler calls the plant Lavandula vera D. C. The D. C. stands for the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, who gave lavender this name in 1815. Today botanists call it Lavandula angustifolia. Köhler also lists an older name, Lavandula officinalis. The word officinalis marks a plant used in medicine.
Köhler traces the word lavender to the Latin lavare, “to wash,” because lavender was used in baths. The real origin is less certain, and the name may come from the Latin lividus, “bluish,” instead. Either way, lavender was used to scent baths and washed cloth.
Lavender as medicine
Köhler’s text lists 2 official medicines: the dried flowers, and the oil distilled from them with water. He lists lavender oil in 11 pharmacopoeias, including the German, British and American ones. Köhler says lavender was used almost only on the outside of the body, in compresses and baths for rheumatism and paralysis. Its oil was also widely used in perfume.
The Lavender in our collection
The Lavender in our botanical art collection is a replica of this plate, finished by hand in our workshop.
