Walter Hood Fitch apprenticed as a pattern maker but is best known for his uncanny ability to memorize the structure of a plant and transfer it to paper. For forty years Fitch made engravings for The Botanical Magazine, under the editorship of Samuel Curtis and others. A prolific illustrator, his lithographs are found in a score of mid-nineteenth century botanical texts. His orchiid studies captured both the basic species plants and the new hybrids. His finest achievements, however, were in association with Sir Joseph Hooker for who he redrew and lithographed the splendid series of plates for The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya and Illustrations of Himatciyan Plants.
