But even this ancient book doesn't hold all the answers. One panel in particular proved stubbornly cryptic. I couldn't find it in Wallich and I looked in other books, and then one day when I was visiting Kew Gardens I saw this plant, and I thought, "That's it." And it's a Chilean plant in the family the invasive garden oxalis is from, so you never can anticipate when you're gonna find something out. Just recently I found one of the last ones. There's still a couple we are not quite sure what they are, but we'll figure them out eventually. Probably my favourite of the archaic panels is one that's a copy of a plate from Wallich, the pepper which, where we get black pepper from, and the place has little hanging elongate clusters of grapes, that's what pepper fruits look like, but the artist who did the panel on the ceiling added a curlicuey bit at the top and put some flowers on, but the flowers are completely wrong, and I like the thought of someone turning a botanic illustration, which is beautiful in and of itself into a design which is also beautiful, but getting it botanically wrong. I think that's nice.


然而这本古书也不能解答所有的疑问，有一块镶板尤为神秘。瓦立池的书里没有这幅图，我也查阅过其他的书。Kew Gardens 英国皇家植物园，后来我在邱园看到一株植物，当即灵光一闪 "就是它"。这株植物来自智利，和花园侵略者酢浆草是同一科，所以你永远猜不到自己什么时候会发现些什么。不久前我又找到了最后几株之一，还有一些我们不是很确定，但总会找到的。要说我最喜欢的古镶板，是那株黑胡椒板，那图案参考了瓦立池的书。那一串串小葡萄一样的东西，就是胡椒果实了。不过画家在画这块嵌板的时候，在顶上添了点卷曲的小触手。另有几朵花作点缀，但这些花完全画错了。 我很喜欢这点，把植物插图经过处理转换为艺术设计，结果仍然很美，只不过完全脱离现实了，这点真的很可爱。