African Lily, Blue Lily, Lily-of-the-Nile

Included in Viridarium: Fifty Plates of Green-house Plants, Drawn and Coloured from Nature. with Concise Descriptions, and Rules for their Culture (1806), this work found itself at the center of a scandal when the editor of Curtis's Botanical Magazine publicly accused Henrietta Maria Moriarty of copying multiple plant depictions from their publication. The accusation and the ensuing gossip was not entirely unfounded. Moriarty's version does indeed look very like a less detailed version of the blue lily illustrated in Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Her illustrations are associated with descriptions of how to take care of plants. For Agapanthus, or Blue Lily she advised, "Plant the roots in light earth from offsets, when the leaves and stalks decay." A widow and mother of four, it was unlikely that Moriarty was able to draw these plants from life. That would have required the funds to hire a gardener or at least to keep a greenhouse. Almost certainly, Moriarty copied plants she saw depicted in other published work and supported herself by selling her versions to a list of subscribers.