A watercolour of several flowers including spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana L.) with a snail on one leaf, a spiderwort of Savoy, Nigella or 'love-in-a-mist', and three roses. Inscribed in pen and ink at the upper right corner of the sheet, 77. Folio 77 of Alexander Marshal's florilegium, begun in about 1650 and added to until his death. The 159 sheets show plants and flowers of English gardens over the course of a year. Manuscript florilegia were common in continental Europe in the seventeenth century, but this flower book is apparently unique in English art of the period. Marshal had an important association with the father and son John Tradescant, a plant collector and a gardener who introduced new plants to England from the Low Countries, Russia, Africa and North America. Marshal painted a florilegium for the Tradescants sometime before 1650. This page from his own flower book includes several specimens of spiderwort from Virginia, first grown in England by Tradescant the Elder. Another recent introduction, Spanish love-in-a-mist was first described at Droxford in Hampshire by the botanist John Goodyer in 1621.