Delicate star-shaped blooms of vivid periwinkle blue hover on slender reddish-brown stems against a soft cream ground — this is Scilla sibirica, the Siberian squill, one of spring's earliest and most beloved harbingers. Römmler & Jonas of Dresden have rendered the flowers with near-botanical-illustration precision through their proprietary natural-color photographic process, the strap-like green leaves providing bold contrast to those nodding blue bells. Cards of this type were enormously popular in Edwardian Europe; a collector named something like Marta or Klara might have saved this one pristine in a parlour album, never sending it, keeping the colors bright for over a century.