William Curtis's Flora Londinensis was a field guide to the wild flowers growing within ten miles of London. It was a serial publication that came out between 1777 and 1798. For the engraved, hand-coloured illustrations Curtis employed some of the most prominent botanical artists. Curtis was a botanist who worked at the Chelsea Physic Garden and then established the London Botanic Garden at Lambeth. He later found commercial success with the Botanical Magazine from 1787, for which Francis Sansom became the principle engraver.

In almost every case, the plants in the Flora Londinensis were shown life-size on folio pages large enough not to restrict their subjects. Like the early herbals and especially the manuscript herbals, Curtis’s artists show the whole plant, complete with roots. The plant is an intact entity, not fragmented as was common in scientific illustration of the period.