This hanging scroll, showing a bunch of flowers bound together with calamus, was painted by Xiang Shenmo 項聖謨 (1597-1658). Xiang was born into a distinguished scholar-official family in Jiaxing 嘉興, Zhejiang province 浙江, and his grandfather was the great art collector Xiang Yuanbian 項元汴 (1525-1590). He specialised in landscape and flowers, and over the years he developed a highly distinctive style. Typically he used 'boneless' ink washes to portrait flowers and plants in a descriptive manner, as demonstrated in this work. The painting is signed on the right, above one of the many seals Xiang used in his works. The same seal also appears in an album of flower paintings dated 1643, which might suggest that this scroll was produced around the same time, the year before the fall of the Ming dynasty. At the bottom left of the painting is the seal of an unidentified collector, reading: 'Calligraphy and Painting treasured in the collection of Mr Gao.'