Life & fun · September 2, 2025
Making the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection Browsable
I built a website featuring the paintings at https://pomological.art and a [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mhoodlbpfiobhfbblii...](Chrome extension) that shows a random watercolor from the collection on each new tab. *The story*: In the 1880s the USDA commissioned 7,500+ botanical illustrations to document American fruit varieties in a time when we had over 14,000 types of apples. The collection got digitized after decades in government storage (thanks especially to Kent Whealy and then Parker Higgins), but it remains scattered across government sites,…
Making the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection Browsable launched on September 2, 2025 with 5 votes and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
What it does
Explore over 7,500 historical watercolor paintings of fruits and vegetables from the USDA Pomological Collection, featuring rare varieties from 1886-1942.
In the maker’s words, at launch
I built a website featuring the paintings at https://pomological.art and a [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mhoodlbpfiobhfbblii...](Chrome extension) that shows a random watercolor from the collection on each new tab. *The story*: In the 1880s the USDA commissioned 7,500+…
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