“Arctotis squarrosa”, from Plantarum rariorum horti caesarei Schoenbrunnensis descriptiones et icons, Vienna: Prostant Viennae Apud...

The arctotis squarrosa is a boldly-colored vascular flowering plant from what is commonly known as the aster, daisy or sunflower family, the genus of which is native to southern Africa. The specimen depicted here, however, was a naturalised European, identified on the Schönbrunn Palace grounds by botanist Baron Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, himself a transplant to Austria from the Netherlands. The expansive gardens at Schönbrunn – the imperial summer residence of the Habsburgs – provided global collection of plants for scientific study, so much so that von Jacquin was able to publish an entire volume of description and pictures of rare species found at the Viennese estate from 1797 to 1804.