Plant and Place | Ecogeographer

Catmint’s glandular hairs

20-10-2011

A peltate glandular trichome

A forest of glandular and non-glandular hairs (trichomes) cover the catmint leaves that I am painting. I am painting the glandular hairs in detail for the Eden Project Florilegium archive so that in the future the work can be used to educate children about why cats love this plant and why it is of ethnobotanical importance to humans.

The hair that is important to cats and humans is the peltate glandular trichome – the small mushroom shaped object. It looks like a satellite station under the microscope – it is quite yellow compared to the long horn like hairs. This is because the trichome is turgid – there is content, it has its cellular contents intact (slime, water, and protein)… When cats rub against the plant, terpene, a chemical mixture gets released and sends them into heaven. (More details about this later.)

These glandular trichomes are microscopic and so I needed the botanist Dr Alistair Griffiths to help me find them. The above image he took summarizes our findings. The non-glandular hairs are rather easier to find and I’ve been looking at these at various different magnification levels whilst drawing, painting and taking snapshots of them.

Non-glandular hairs of catmint
Snapshot of non-glandular catmint trichomes

As I enter into the winter, I will get into the intricacies of painting this whole plant. I will be working with dusty green and purple mixes of paint (my specimen has purple flowers). I will post some water colour details in the future.

Notes:
Alistair Griffiths is Horticultural Science Curator at the Eden Project

We used the below as our main reference:
Catnip, Nepeta cataria, a Morphological Comparison of Mutant and Wild Type Specimens to Gain an Ethnobotanical Perspective
Scott Herron
Department of Biological Sciences, Ferris State University, 820 Campus Dr. ASC 2012, Big Rapids, MI 49307-2225; herrons@ferris.edu

White, Goose, Storm (observing)

By: dom

09-03-2011

audits, colour, Plant and Place

Valentine Gilbert and George Pete Postlethwaite is sending an arrow through my heart. Romeo and Juliet, The Age of Stupid and Brassed off, in that order, keep running round my head. Not the New Year I had expected. To me it feels a slow year to get started. It’s been a cold white winter with some snow and an ever present frost that’s been drilling down to my herbs. My New Year plan was to set in some kind of ‘freeze’, my own personal green audit framework. I’ve been languishing instead. Not only because of the loss of Pete Postlethwaite on our theatre and TV platforms, but I’ve also been mourning the loss of our new gander on the garden stage. Only three, he was found dead one morning by my mum. A heart attack, maybe a weak heart because he was a runt. He was our first all white gander and had a high pitch gorgeous chime of a call (he was called Sarah!) I recorded the loss of the grey gander here.

I’ve been observing a white and pink plant this winter. The white of plants is a chalky white says Derek Jarmen*, and chalky white is great as it’s a warm white and so plants even if white, warm you… My granny Whisker (yes, that’s her real name) died of leukaemia, and Colchicum autumnale, Autumn Crocus is linked to some treatment associated with this disease, and so I choose to observe and paint it. It’s dedicated to her; she fired my imagination with poetry, gardens she themed for each one of my family, and unseen fairies that left presents on each of the Irish east coast sea shelled mornings.

On January 18, 2008, the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (representing botanic gardens in 120 countries) stated that “400 medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, from over-collection and deforestation, threatening the discovery of future cures for disease”. These included yew trees (the bark is used for cancer drugs, paclitaxel); Hoodia (from Namibia, source of weight loss drugs); half of Magnolia species (used as Chinese medicine for 5,000 years to fight cancer, dementia and heart disease); and Autumn Crocus (for gout).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, March 2001

Leukaemia has been successfully treated with Autumn Crocus, and the plant has also been used with some success to treat Bechet’s syndrome, a chronic disease marked by recurring ulcers and leukaemia.
From Plants For a Future

Colchicum autumnale observational work (and further above, Gilbert & George Gorse Hearts by Dominica Williamson)

As I came into February, I started studying the leaves of this plant. Appropriately, they have a sheen and stand strong. Valentine’s day approached at this time, and so Romeo and Juliet came back, swimming through my head, Baz Luhrmann’s fast flying cuts swirling round, Pete’s wisdom was in front of me again. Arr, the Age of Stupid, yes, he would want me to stop languishing and get an audit framework started and to keep observing more and more. And my boyfriend must have felt that too, cos here’s a washed up badger brush from the tideline, which saved him £40 and answered my prayers about not buying badger but wanting quality and a girl’s version. And so the audit starts with a cold white winter behind me, but a warm white soul and a new green way to shave.

Badger shaving brush
My boyfriend found, painted and photographed the brush

*Nearly all white flowers are yellowish white and the comparatively few that are bluish white such examples as Omphalodes linifolia are of a texture so different from snow that one cannot compare them at all – I should say that most white flowers are near the colour of chalk; for although the words chalky white have been used in a rather contemptuous way, the colour is really a beautiful warm white, but by no means an intense white.

Derek Jarman, Chroma, p16

Yellow, Sun, Winter (painting)

By: dom

14-01-2010

colour, Plant and Place

Detail of European Gorse Dissection It’s winter.
I am currently painting in a land that is winter yellow; Cornwall. It is surrounded by harsh explosive yellow gorse, then shades of yellow daffodils, prissy pale primroses, followed by powdery yellow willow.
I’m finishing a willow dissection, which harbours a gorgeous squat yellowy glistening nectary.
But first showing here is European Gorse dissected. The Gorse gave me beautiful objects to paint. I know Derek Jarman would appreciate them, especially the above detail.
The mechanical hinge of the keel is illustrated below.

…its five petals form the keel, wings and standard – the wings and keel interlocking. If we carefully dissect a flower we can see at the base of each half of the keel a great tooth, and a similar one at the base of each wing, by which the interlocking is effected. We further discover that all the stamens are here joined into a tube round a minute pod; they are monodelphous – “in one brotherhood” – say the botanists.*

European Gorse Dissection
Plant family: Fabaceae
Plant genus: Ulex
Plant species: U. europaeus
Plant cultivar: NA
Held: Eden Project Florilegium
Artist: Dominica Williamson

A friend and colleague, Matt Groshek, remarked, ‘Your work is reminding me of Jarman’. The last year I had periodically clutched his Garden book. It must have seeped in. I hadn’t realised.
Jarman would look at this not only for its form, he would wonder at the colour. It would take him to Prospect Cottage. It’s yellow window frames and the very way he framed the house with Gorse.

‘The milk-white sap bleeds, the yellow flowers turn brown in death.’
‘Daffodil yellow. Primrose yellow. The Yellow Rose of Texas. Canary bird.’
‘Spring comes with celandine and daffodil. The yellow rape sends the bees dizzy. Yellow is a difficult colour, fugitive as mimosa that sheds its dusty pollen as the sun sets.’
Yellow Lines the Kerbside. Yellow earth-moving equipment with flashing yellow lights, cutting a wound in the landscape.
excerpts from Jarman’s Chroma 1994

And it’s Matt who indirectly, through Leslie, took me to the Yellow Wallpaper. What a book. I think it’s because it shows the two extremities of the colour in huge depth – the two polar opposites of what the colour can do. Life and joy versus death and despair – summer versus winter. And now I am thinking of Jarman again.

Yellow has long been my favourite colour, and I am sure always will. (I believe it is Leslies too.)

* Quote taken from Knolik

European Gorse – coconut heaven

By: dom

06-08-2009

Plant and Place

When I last blogged it was Winter and I was surrounded by the coconut scent of European Gorse. Now it’s Summer (in blog land, that’s oh dear where have I been). I am about to embark on painting Western Gorse’s summer yellow haze, and very soon, more words (and probably images) on Winter, Summer and Gorse will follow and you’ll see why I’ve been gone so long.

European Gorse by Dominica Williamson

LABEL

Plant family: Fabaceae
Plant genus: Ulex
Plant species: U. europaeus
Plant cultivar: NA

Accession Number: NA
Location: Saint Ewe hedge, Heligan, Cornwall
Lat & Long: 50.29002 -4.81941
Personal Reference: SUB1/1-09

Held: Eden Project Florilegium Archive
Artist: Dominica Williamson

In my herb garden this year: Part two

By: dom

31-10-2008

Plant and Place

Carry on imagining the ellipse walked in part one, you got half way round, the chamomile bench was your rest point… you landed on the south side of the curve…

Leading from the Chamomile bench: dry sunny bed
Thymus Magic Carpet Magic Carpet Thyme, French Tarragon Artemisia dracunculus, Lemon Grass Cymbopogon citratus, Hyssop (white flowered) Hyssopus officinalis, Betony (white flowered) Stachys officinalis, Tree Spinach Chenopodium giganteum, Chicory Cichorium intybus, Anise Hyssop Agastache foeniculum, Red Chicory Cichorium intybus, Lavender Kew Red Lavandula stoechas, Garlic Chives Allium tuberosum, Clary Sage Salvia sclarea, Cat Mint Nepeta cataria (I think), Garlic Chives Allium tuberosum, Borage Borago officinalis, Camphor Plant Balsamita major tomentosum, Bergamot Monarda, Evening Primrose Oenothera biennis L., Feverfew (Golden?) Chrysanthemum parthenium, Lemon Balm Melissa officinalis, Majoram Gold Tipped Origanum vulgare, Common Thyme Thymus vulgaris, St. Johns Wort Hypericum perforatum, Salad Burnet Sanguisorba minor

Arching from the Mint seat: wet to dry bed
Goats Rue (white flowered) Galega officinale, Eau de Cologne Mentha x piperata f. citrata, Wild Rocket Eruca vesicaria, Corsican Mint Mentha requienii, Black Horehound Ballota nigra, Tree Onion Allium cepa proliferum group, Jacobs Ladder (white flowered) Polemonium caeruleum, Land Cress Barbarea verna, Wild Rocket Eruca vesicaria, Lemon Mint Mentha sp, Marsh Mallow Althea officinalis, Vietnamese Coriander Persicaria odorata, Celery Leaf Apium graveolens, Black Horehound Ballota nigra (potted), Fennel Foeniculum vulgar, Flat Leaved Parsley Petroselinum crispum, Evening Primrose (need to track the name of this type)

The north curve again, at the black buttress: dry hot bed
Wood Sage Teucrium scorodonia, Golden Marjoram Origanum vulgare, Tea Tree Melaleuca (I think), Golden Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium aureum, Welsh Onion Allium fistulosum, Thyme Russetings Thymus serpyllum ‘Russettings’ (potted), White Horehound Marrubium vulgare, Sage Salvia officinalis (need to move this), Mace Myristica fragrans, Lemon Verbena Aloysia triphylla, Pot Marigold Calendula officinalis (potted)

You’re back at the beginning, at the bottom of the steps, Tea Plant Camellia Sinensis (potted)

What I lost this year (and what the geese ate)
White Borage Borago officinalis ‘Alba’, Chocolate Mint Mentha x piperita f. citrata, (think I’ve just got a Peppermint of this) Sweet Rocket Hesperis matronalis, Sweet marjoram Za’atar Origanum, Lovage Levisticum officianle, Bush Basil Ocimum basilicum ‘Marseillais’, Dark Opal Basil Ocimum basilicum ‘Purpurascens’, Cinnamon Basil Ocimum basilicum

The Chamomile bench

By: dom

30-09-2008

Plant and Place

In my herb garden you can lie down on a carpet of Chamomile

Double Chamomile Chamaemelum nobile ‘Flore Pleno’, Lawn Chamomile Chamaemelum nobile ‘Treneague’, Roman Chamomile Chamaemelum nobile, Dyers Chamomile Anthemis tinctoria.

And Nasturtium Tropaeolum majus and more Chamomile trails above you.

In my herb garden this year: Part one

By: dom

31-08-2008

Plant and Place

Imagine an ellipse, and walk (and smell) roughly clockwise

On the steps and windowsills: pots
Creeping Penny Royal Mentha pulegium, Thyme Thymus serpyllum v ar albus, Lavender Old English Lavandula angustifolia, Orange Scented Thyme Thymus fragrantissimus, Wormwood Artemisia absinthium

Around and under the Globe Artichoke: dry bed
Sweet Woodruff Galium odoratum, Chives Allium schoenoprasum, Garlic chives Allium nutans, Bergamot Monarda didyma (potted), Yarrow Achillea millefolium (potted), Compact Marjoram Origanum vulgare ‘Compactum’ (potted), Creeping Rosemary Rosmarinus officinalis, Purple Sage Salvia officinalis, Winter Savoury Satureia montana, Tangerine Sage Salvia elegans, Curry Plant Helichrysum italicum, Cotton Lavender Santolina chamaecyparissus (potted), Thyme Thymus serpyllum, Broad Leaved Sage Salvia officinalis, Hyssop Hyssopus officinalis (potted), Blackcurrant Sage Salvia microphylla, Marjoram Origanum majorana, Pineapple Sage Salvia elegans, Lavender ‘Purple Emperor’ Lavandula pedunculata ‘Sampaiana’, Thyme ‘Foxley’ Thymus pulegioides ‘Foxley’, Blue Jacobs Ladder Polemonium caeruleum

By the Hollyhock and Passion Fruit arch: leafy bed
Flat leaved Parsely Petroselinum crispum, Ginger Mint Mentha x gracilis ‘Variegata’, Curled Parsely Petroselinum crispum, Spearmint Mentha spicata (potted), Good King Henry Chenopodium bonus-henricus, Coriander Coriandrum sativum, Bergamot Monarda panorama mixed

What’s next to pot up
Sweet Cicely Myrrhis odorata, Musk Mallow Malva moschata, Heartsease Viola tricolor, Pot Marigold Calendula officinalis

Botanical assessment criteria

By: dom

30-06-2008

Plant and Place

This is how I have to start assessing my botanical illustration – Anne-Marie Evans style – she just gave us (The Eden Project Florilegium Society) a masterclass

Botanical veracity
Includes structure of plant, correct scale, story of plant…

Technical skill
Includes perspective, colour, tonal value, light and shade, translucency, clarity…

Aesthetic judgement
Includes composition, balance, colour relations …

Impact
Includes the ‘wow factor’

The plan: Floral diagrams

By: dom

31-05-2008

Plant and Place

I’ve been looking at how I can develop some botanical knowledge outside my botanical illustration classes. Sally Corbet (a biologist and printmaker with a special interest in flowers and pollination) has suggested that I find a really good weeklong field trip to help build up my confidence and knowledge in this area. These courses are expensive and the right one hard to find. “What if you organised it so that a course came to you, to the place you are currently mapping?” Um, what a good idea of hers, how can I work this? I am scheming.

In the meantime, Dr. Barbara McLean has come to my rescue, thanks to the energetic Mally Francis. I have recently been accepted as a painter for the Eden Project Florilegium Society and so now I can access day courses that Mally has booked. Barbara took us through the best practice principles of dissection and introduced us to the floral diagram. This aerial view of the plant is now my plan. I make myself draw an aerial view of every plant I have to paint and dissect, and I keep drawing the dissections so when I find the field study course of my dreams, I will be adept at something.

This approach will force me to travel, walk with my fingers and pencil around the plant in different directions and in varying dimensions – something of a psychogeographical approach to drawing. Mr. Will Self would be pleased.

The grey goose has gone

By: dom

30-04-2008

book and films, Plant and Place

May’s about to arrive. I’m looking forward to it. April’s been fun but I’ve been left with sadness. Three of my favourite people died in March and I’ve been coming to terms with this loss.

On March 18th Anthony Minghella died. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was eagerly awaiting the screening of his latest film (set in Botswana) so he was already on my mind. Africa was also on my mind. I’ve hitch-hiked through Botswana and so I wanted to see the film and how the land and people were portrayed. Also, the English Patient is one of my favourite book/film duets. Okay, so you can criticise the film, and perhaps the book’s sweeping romanticism, but wow, what rich multi-layered mapping, and what a base map to operate with – desert Africa.

The desert could not be claimed or owned – it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East. Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember (Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient 1993: 150).

When I went to sleep on this news, I was thinking about embers and sand, the early death of Minghella and what might have been. What amazing film/book duets I dreamt of. When I awoke on March 19th, I was orbited into star dust. Arthur C. Clarke had died. How I would have liked to dive with him. Whereas Ondaatje and Minghella took me on a temporary visit to Africa, and let me explore it through literacy, love and landscape, Arthur C. Clarke, it felt, was taking me on this never-ending journey – an outer, inner and world space safari. His 90th birthday wishes say it all: ‘for ET to call, for man to kick his oil habit and for peace in Sri Lanka’ ( Lech Mintowt-Czyz and Steve Bird Times Online: March 18, 2008).

A critical – the adjective is important here – reading of science fiction is essential for anyone wishing to look more than ten years ahead. The facts of the future can hardly be imagined abinito by those who are unfamiliar with the fantasies of the past (Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the Future 1973: p15).

Reading science fiction is important to my work, for sustainability is also futurology. You have to read it, you have to project when you set about designing. Looking through my home window on a daily basis is also important. March 22nd saw the death of my grey goose. He was 22, not old for a goose. How I miss him in the garden. He shaped the garden. He had different parts of the garden for different parts of the day and to handle the different weathers. His mapping is one of the home. He shaped where I put the herbs. I had to leave a place for him beneath the window so he could listen to the radio. Watching him and his habits, inspired me as much as the worldly work of Clarke and Minghella.

— Ecogeographer

Catmint’s glandular hairs

White, Goose, Storm (observing)

Yellow, Sun, Winter (painting)

European Gorse – coconut heaven

In my herb garden this year: Part two

The Chamomile bench

In my herb garden this year: Part one

Botanical assessment criteria

The plan: Floral diagrams

The grey goose has gone

Mapping plastic, plants and pathways – projects and threads

People chatting