Passiflora quadrangularis, from Botanical Magnifica: Portraits of the World's Most Extraordinary Flowers and Plants, 2009.

The rich blues and reds of this granadilla, a vine native to the American tropics, loom out of the black background, emphasising the remarkable petals whose stripes resemble the spines of a tropical fish. The lustrous colours - achieved by photographing in low light on a H2D-39 Hasselbad digital camera - have been likened to those of Old Master painters, above all, the preeminent flower artist 'Velvet' Breughel, nicknamed for the lifelike texture of his petals. The image is one of hundreds taken by the American podiatrist-turned-photogapher Jonathan Singer after his early large-scale images impressed curators enough to gain him access to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. The result 'Botanica Magnifica', a collection of 250 photographs divided into five volumes (including one on gingers alone), published in 2009 in a limited edition of ten hand-bound copies.