Old postcards Flowers

In the Flowers section each card is devoted to a single plant, and the caption names it, sometimes down to the cultivar. There are garden and wild flowers, an aquatic plant and even a cactus, and the dates span almost three decades, from Dahlia (1958) to Pansies (1986).

Dahlia is a genus in the daisy family, Asteraceae. Round-leaved bellflower (1971) is Campanula rotundifolia, known in English as the harebell and in Scotland as the bluebell, a wild species of the northern temperate zone. Water lilies (1983) shows plants of the genus Nymphaea, with large leaves and flowers floating on the water.

Two 1972 cards feature cannas, and each names its cultivar in the caption. Canna is the only genus in its family, and its wild species are native to the American tropics. The same year produced Cactus Lobivia famatimensis, a cactus from north-western Argentina. The garden pansy, for its part, was bred largely from the wild Viola tricolor, or heartsease.

If you are after vintage postcards of one particular flower, start here: the plant is named right in the caption.