bible-garden:

Rose-Shaped Map of Bohemia (1677)

“A map that shows Bohemia as a stylised Hapsburg rose. The stem firmly connects the flowering Bohemian rose to the fertile soil of Vienna, the Habsburg’s political centre. The Latin text at the bottom explains:

“’There grew a graceful Rose in the Bohemian woods, and an armoured lion standing guard next to her. That Rose had grown out of the blood of Mars, not of Venus. […] Do not fear, lovely Rose! There comes the Austrian. […] The Rose of Bohemia, bloody for all the centuries, where more than 80 battles were waged. She has been now drawn in this form for the first time.’”

The Great Eagle Map of the USA, 1880’s. 

(via artistjournals)

New and improved view of the Comparative Heights, of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers of the World. (1823) William Darton and W. R. Gardner

This was a ground-breaking convention, illustrating both mountains and rivers on the same chart, and defining cartographic chart styles throughout the 19th Century. 

Tree Distribution in the continental United States, 2011.

Map by Robert Simon for the NASA Earth Observatory, based on data compiled by Joseph Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center, in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Bonus Ogden Nash:

I think that I will never see / A billboard lovely as a tree. / Indeed, unless the billboards fall / I’ll never see a tree at all.

[From Song of the Open Road, 1941]

(via nybg)

Vienna Metropolis c. 1730, by Mattaeus Seutter (1647-1756).

Mouth to Source: From the Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River - Fisk, 1944