Elizabeth Wirt

There are also a list of the flowers associated with Catholic saints (organized calendrically, by month and day of the year) and an index of symbolic meanings, from absence (zinnia) to youthful love (red catch fly).

Early editions had no illustrations apart from black-and-white wood-engraved borders around the text, but starting in 1837 a few had varying numbers of colored plates that are implicitly attributed to a Miss Ann Smith.

[6] The most lavish of these is an 1855 edition with 56 hand-colored, uncaptioned lithographic plates showing informal mixed bouquets that were said by the publisher to illustrate all of the flowers in the book.

Some editions also included interleaved pages of blank paper stock in different colors, ranging from cream and yellow to pink and blue, which one historian takes to be an implicit invitation to readers to make their own contributions to the dictionary, either in the form of written emendations or by pressing plant specimens.

[1] Wirt distinguished herself from her competitors by a much greater concern for the scientific aspects of her subject, as indicated by her wide-ranging prefatory and end notes on botany.