Public Domain Botanical Illustrations: Where to Find Thousands, Free

Old botanical plates are some of the most beautiful free images there are. Hand-colored roses, ferns, seed pods, mushrooms, drawn 150 or 200 years ago for gardening magazines and science books. The copyright on most of them ran out a long time ago.

You’ll find lots of lists of “free vintage botanical prints” with 20 or 50 images each. That’s a nice start, but if you’re making a print shop, a pattern collection or a journal cover, you need hundreds to pick from, at full size, and you need to know each one really is public domain.

Wikimedia Commons has thousands of them, scanned by museums and libraries. I built a free Google Sheet that searches only the public domain and CC0 ones, shows the pictures as a gallery, and downloads the ones you pick.

TL;DR

Searching "botanical illustration" in quotes with License set to “Public domain & CC0” gave me 3,370 clean results.
Set Min width to 3000 for print-size scans; that left 369 for the exact phrase.
Without quotes, the same search returns over 100,000 files, including photos of botanical gardens.

Who this is for

Etsy print seller: wall art from plates with no copyright, at a size that prints.
Print-on-demand designer: patterns, mugs, tote bags and phone cases built on vintage plants.
Journal and stationery maker: covers, endpapers and stickers.
Wedding and event designer: florals for invitations and signage without paying per image.
Gardening blogger: the real old plate for the plant you’re writing about.

Why so many botanical illustrations are public domain

Most of these plates were printed in the 1700s and 1800s. In the United States, anything published before 1931 is in the public domain as of 2026, and the artists died long ago, so they’re free in most countries too.

Museums and libraries scanned them. Big sources on Commons include the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (published since 1787), and museum scans like the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Redouté roses.

How to find them in the sheet

Get Free Image Finder and make your copy.
Click 🖼️ Free Image Finder > Quick setup.
On the Search tab, set License to Public domain & CC0.
Leave Media type on Any, or set it to Photos to hide scanned PDFs. Scans of single plates are JPG, PNG or TIFF files, which count as photos here.
Type "botanical illustration" with the quotes in the yellow Search cell.
Check the Matches on Commons number, then scroll the gallery.

The quotes matter

This was the biggest thing I learned. These are counts with License set to Public domain & CC0 and Media type on Any, on 2026-10-26:

botanical illustration: Matches: 100,215
“botanical illustration”: Matches: 3,370
“botanical illustration” with Min width 3000: Matches: 369

The 100,215 isn’t 100,215 illustrations. Without quotes, Commons matches any file with both words anywhere, so you get photos of botanical gardens and buildings mixed in. The quoted search is the clean set.

Searches that work well

"Curtis's Botanical Magazine": 4,754 public domain or CC0 files. Single plates and some full volumes as PDFs.
Redouté rose: 1,483 files, a lot of them museum scans of the famous rose plates.
fern botanical, mushroom illustration, tulip botanical plate: swap in any plant.
Set Media type to PDFs & books and search seed catalog for whole scanned catalogs. The gallery picture is page 1.

Make it print size

Set Min width (px) to 3000. At 300 dpi, 3000 pixels is a 10 inch wide print. Go to 4000 or 5000 for bigger posters. The WIDTH and HEIGHT columns on the Results tab show the exact size of each file.

Want only the best scans? Set Quality to Quality images or Featured pictures. That’s a much smaller pool, but every file has been checked by Commons volunteers.

Save, check, download

Tick Save under the plates you like. They go to the Collection tab with a preview, size, license and author.
Open a few with Open on Commons and read the license box. It says why the file is public domain, like the date it was published.
On the Export tab, copy the DOWNLOAD SCRIPT column into a file called download.sh and run bash download.sh in Terminal on a Mac. Every file lands in a commons-downloads folder. On Windows, paste the FILE URLS column into a bulk downloader.

The bulk download guide has the step by step.

Is it OK to sell prints of these?

If the plate is public domain, yes. You can print it, edit it, recolor it and sell it, and no credit is required. That’s why so many Etsy shops sell vintage botanicals.

Two things to watch:

Check each file. The sheet shows what Commons lists. A modern drawing in an old style might be CC BY-SA, which needs a credit and has share alike rules. With the Public domain & CC0 filter on, those are left out.
You can’t own the original. Other sellers can use the same plate. Your value is the pick, the crop, the cleanup and the product.

For more on selling public domain art, see public domain art for commercial use.

Common pitfalls

Searching without quotes: you’ll get 100,000+ results full of garden photos. Use "botanical illustration" or a plant name plus “plate”.
Downloading thumbnails instead of full files: THUMBNAIL URLS on Export are about 330 px wide, only good for a mood board. Use FILE URLS or the download script for print.
Skipping Min width: a 600 px scan prints badly. Set Min width to 3000 or more.
Trusting a category blindly: Commons categories are built by volunteers. I found a photo of a building in São Paulo filed under Botanical illustrations.
Forgetting TIFF files: some museum scans are huge TIFFs. Great for print, but check MB first and convert to JPG or PNG for your shop listing.
Assuming “vintage style” means public domain: new drawings in an old style are often CC BY or CC BY-SA. Keep the license filter on.

Learn the Google Sheets formulas in this post

IMAGE formula: how the gallery shows each plate in a cell.
How To Sort A Filter: sort your Collection by width to put the biggest scans first.
COUNTIF formula: count how many saved plates are wide enough to print.

Better Sheets has hundreds more tutorials like these. If you want to get better at Google Sheets, join Better Sheets.

FAQ

Are vintage botanical illustrations public domain?

Most plates published before 1931 are public domain in the United States, and most from the 1700s and 1800s are public domain worldwide because the artists died long ago. Check each file’s page to be sure.

Do I need to credit public domain botanical illustrations?

No. Public domain and CC0 files need no credit. Crediting the museum or library that scanned it is a kind gesture, not a rule.

Can I sell prints of public domain botanical illustrations?

Yes. Public domain means anyone can copy, change and sell it. Other people can sell the same image too.

What resolution do I need to print?

At 300 dpi, divide the pixel width by 300 for inches. A 3000 pixel wide file prints about 10 inches wide.

How many can I download at once?

As many as you save. The Export tab’s download script saves every file in your Collection to one folder.

Is the sheet free?

Yes. Make a free Better Sheets account and copy it to your Google Drive.

Get the sheet

Free Image Finder is free. Type "botanical illustration", set License to Public domain & CC0, and pick your plates. Everything it does is on the tool page.