Last year on my Civil War Quilts blog
one of the blocks was an autumn leaf.
The pattern is probably a sycamore leaf, drawn from a quilt in
the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Art.
Leaf tracings are a form of botanizing we see in mid-19th century samplers.
1841-1844 Mary Taylor
Smithsonian Collection
But there aren't many samplers of leaves alone.
Top by Mary Stayman of Leavenworth, Kansas, dated 1923,
in the collection of the Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.
On the back of each leaf Mary wrote the species name in pencil.
New England leaves (about 1870) from the Binney Collection at
the New England Quilt Museum.
And then there's Ernestine Zaumseil's extravaganza:
Branches & Vines by Ernestine Eberhardt Zaumseil (1828-1904).
She was born in Germany and lived in Ohio, St. Louis,
and Pekin, Illinois. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Now that is some attention to detail!