Spiranthes romanzoffiana Cham. (Hooded Lady's-tresses)

This is not a cartoon or caricature but a pressed-plant herbarium specimen — five dried flowering stalks of Spiranthes romanzoffiana, the hooded lady's-tresses orchid, mounted on archival sheet. Collected by E. Hall and J.P. Harbour during their 1862 Rocky Mountain survey between latitudes 39° and 41°, the specimen bears two printed locality labels and a Paris herbarium stamp. Its visual language — careful arrangement, comparative scale, annotation — belongs to natural-history illustration. This object is scientific documentation: a primary botanical record from mid-19th-century American fieldwork, now preserved as a type or reference specimen.