Köhler’s lemon plate is plate 3 in Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, a German book of medicinal plants. It appears in volume 1, completed in 1887. Most plates in that volume were drawn by Walther Müller, but this one is signed “E. Günther gez. u. lith.,” meaning E. Günther drew it and made the lithograph. It was printed in color as a chromolithograph.
What the plate shows
The main picture shows a lemon branch at natural size, with flowers, buds and a young green fruit. Köhler’s text notes that the lemon flowers almost all year. Numbered details show the flower and its parts, a whole lemon, a lemon cut in half, and the seeds. The last detail is a seed cut open to show 2 embryos.
The Latin name
The book calls the plant Citrus Limonum Risso. The last word credits Antoine Risso, a pharmacist and naturalist from Nice, who gave the lemon this name in 1813. Today botanists list it as Citrus × limon. The × marks a hybrid: the lemon is a cross between the citron and the bitter orange.
The lemon as medicine
Köhler’s text has a section headed Offizinell that lists the parts used as official medicines: the peel, the oil from the peel, and the fresh juice. Lemon peel appeared in the German, British, and American pharmacopoeias. The text adds that lemon juice works both to prevent and to cure scurvy, which is why ships in particular had to carry it. In 1795, the British Royal Navy began issuing lemon juice to its whole fleet. The text also notes that the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered citric acid in lemon juice in 1784.
The Lemon in our collection
The Lemon in our botanical art collection is a replica of this plate, finished by hand in our workshop.
