Leaves of the Day: Sloe, Elder & Watercress

Yesterday I went to see an old friend, Eileen Elder. She has researched and written articles and books about Lincolnshire customs, language and food, two of which I illustrated many years ago. “Lincolnshire Country Food” was a delightful little book packed with information about the history of Lincolnshire country people and their food and recipes.

It has long been a real favourite of mine, but sold out and has been out of print for many years. I had decided it was long overdue for a reprint and Eileen has agreed, so this is now one of my new projects. It was so good to catch up on what must be 20 years ..we could have talked for days. It reminded me yet again how much I love Lincolnshire its history and its landscape.
So “Leaves of the Day” today is just this little margin drawing from the book from 1984.. soon to be back in print one way or another!

Talking to Eileen about my illustration course she reminded me of the connection between Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire and Sir Joseph Banks the great naturalist who accompanied Cook on his Australian expedition.
With them went two artists, Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, who both sadly died before seeing England again, but Parkinson made at least 1300 drawings on the voyage before contracting dysentery and dying at sea in 1771. What incredible lives these people had. My next trip to London will include a visit to the British museum to see his drawings.

Leaf of the Day: Snowdrop

No spring garden is complete without snowdrops. Here is a sketch of three from under one of the apple trees. As I am in Tennyson country I feel I should favour his snowdrop poem.. simple and optimistic. It was written late in his life in 1889.

The Snowdrop
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!

Alfred Lord Tenyson

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Snowdrop

Leaf of the Day: Aconite

An aconite from under the weeping ash tree. They are so pretty and dainty with their green fringe and glossy yellow petals. Locally they are known as “choirboys “, an innocent and charming image, but like the hellebore from yesterday they are poisonous. Their root is similar to Horseradish and that confusion had added a deadly zest to some roast beef in the past.
The Latin name is “Eranthis hyemalis” and together with the hellebore they are part of the ranunculus genus..buttercups.
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Winter Aconite.

Leaf of the Day: Lenten Rose

Here I am at home in Lincolnshire. Spring is just getting underway and the low sun is slanting across the garden through the bare trees. Delightful little snowdrops and aconites carpet the grass under the branches of the weeping ash and this beautiful purple Lenten Rose (helleboris orientalis) is in bloom under the old apple tree. I only had time for a quick sketch today which does not do it justice at all.

These are mysterious plants with dark purple flowers, called the Lenten Rose as they often bloom during the 40 days before Easter, later than their showier relative the Christmas Rose. The plant is extremely toxic, the word ‘hellebore derived from the Greek “elein” meaning to injure and “bora” meaning food. It has a deliciously bad history in medicine and since Greek times it has been employed as a poison, purgative and magic potion… even as a spell for becoming invisible. Hellebore is one of the classic poisons along with aconite, hemlock and nightshade. John Calvin, regarded it as “a good purgation for phrenticke heads.”

Mysterious, deadly and beautiful… to be handled with some caution I think.

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Lenten Rose

London Break

I arrived back home in Linconshire today after 3 days in icy but wonderful London, staying with my very good friends Dorothy and Jill. No leaves to show but I have to mention 3 excellent exhibitions.

The first one was the British Library’s “Breaking the Rules – The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937” which continues until March. It is a trip into the early part of last century where Europe was in creative ferment..well some of it anyway! Read a very good review here from Time Out. What a wonderful resource the British Library is. I wish I could go and spend a week there.

The second exhibition we saw was the controversial show “From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings” at the Royal Academy . There must have been much nail biting by the organisers as, at the last minute Russia threatened to stop the exhibition “after British media reported that a number of paintings could fail to return to Russia over fears their pre-Revolution owners would make legal claims for their return.”
This painting “the Bath of the Horse” by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin 1912 was particularly striking. It’s well worth battling the crowds to see, and understand, the vision of some of the great Russian art collectors.

Finally on a bitter day that forecast snow we returned to St Pancras but this time just along the road to the Wellcome Foundation. We were lucky enough to arrive at the time of the guided tour of the building. It’s fascinating. There are art exhibits and medical exhibits and a hypochondriac’s dream library of medicine.
One interesting little fact is that Wellcome was the first to develop the tablet as a reliable measured dose of medicine. Originally called a tabloid, its name was to be taken up by the “tabloid” (compressed) press.

Currently they have an exhibition on “Sleep and Dreaming”. One of the many things that I am unable to do well. Still suffering from jet lag I hoped to get some advice. I loved these sculptures by Laura Ford.
There is a good review of the exhibition appropriately from the Fortean Times (the World of Strange Phenomena!) here

The new St Pancras seems overly cluttered with shops spoiling the view of the spectacular roof. It does have a charming statue of John Betjeman and a really hideous statue of an embracing couple. I can’t bring myself to put such an awful thing on the blog.
However the beautiful facade will soon be back to its original glory with its Nottingham red brick and Ancaster stone dressings. It makes me feel happy to know that Ancaster, just 5 miles from my home in Linconshire, has a part in this stunning building.
The Guardian has a funny article about its opening here

Leaf of the Day:The Maple

This is my last post of January and I am glad I managed to keep up one drawing every day. I am now in England away from the internet so unable to post with an image for about 10 days but hopefully will be doing some drawing every day… English leaves this time. I will post the results when I return.

While doing my daily drawings I have been working, bit by bit, on a more detailed study. Like many other artists I chose a maple leaf to draw. My main reason was to have something that would not wilt immediately and which I could leave and come back to over a space of about a week.
This dried leaf is one of many that have been blowing around the apartment, they are not there for long as 3 men clad in combat gear with ferocious blowers come often to round up these offending untidy leaves. They are then put in the dumpster.. dustbin to us Brits. Just one of the many words which sometimes make my conversations here completely incomprehensible to both parties. Use of the ‘wrong’ words in America can land you in deep and embarrassing trouble… but then you know that!
It seems a shame in some ways to reduce the yellows and oranges of this pretty leaf to greys but it was interesting to try to work out the tonal values.
I had to photograph it this time and I find that many of the subtle tones are lost, but it’s not too bad.

I now have to move onto more complicated studies so posting a drawing every day will perhaps prove impossible but I am aiming for 5 a week in February… we will see !
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Maple Leaf

Leaf of the Day: Cabbage Palm Fern and Nature Printing

This little fern frond is from the Cabbage Palm Fern which grows in the ‘boots’ of the palm trees all over Orlando. The boots are where the leaves have joined the trunk, providing a cleft for the fern to take root in. It grows in crevices and cracks of walls, in nooks and crannies of oak trees and anywhere it can get a bit of nutrient, but is at its prettiest decorating the trunks of the palms. This is again from the border at the bottom of the steps here. There are many beautiful ferns in Florida and its is tempting to make February a Florida Fern month.. maybe I will, but some of them are very complicated to draw!

On Saturday I found a good shop nearby which sells all sort of antiquities from Egyptian shabtis to dinosaur eggs. I picked up this fossilised fern there, embedded and preserved in slate, 310-280 million years old. It¡s from Pennsylvania, an amazing little bit of history for just a few dollars.


Nature Printing
It reminded me of the beautiful fern illustrations in Thomas Moore’s “The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland” produced in London in 1855 by the difficult and laborious ‘nature printing’ process. Each engraving plate was made from an actual plant then hand coloured. Here is an example from the book and more examples in a article from the George Glazer Gallery here explaining the process. This would be fascinating to try.
I particularly like the way the stem has been just turned up in order to get the image to fit on the page. In a similar way Audubon had to arrange some of the larger birds like the flamingo in awkward poses to make them fit the ‘elephant ‘ format of the pages. Somehow there is a truthfulness here which is very engaging and has no artifice.

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Cabbage Palm Fern

Leaf of the Day: Aloe Rivierei

This is only the top section of this fearsome leaf, again from Mead Gardens.
I am assuming this is the Rivierei because it was growing very close to the water and has very long slender leaves, rather than the shorter leaves with the fatter bases that the Aloe Vera plants have. Aloe Vera grows everywhere here and of course is very well know for its medicinal properties. There is large and dangerous one lurking at the bottom of the steps which accosts the skirts and trousers of unwary visitors.
The aloes are another huge group of plants with many different variations. The name means ‘bitter’ and, interestingly, the aloes were one of the plants used by the Egyptians in the embalming process. Their employment in the history in medicine is extensive and is something I will return to when I have another aloe to draw…as I surely will!

This drawing is 9 inches high and this small piece took up all of the sketch book page, so I think the whole leaf from top to bottom would be 25 to 30 inches long.
It’s very very tough, has thorns like saw teeth and did some damage to the inside of my handbag. The thorns themselves are red tipped.

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Aloe Rivierei

Leaf of the Day: Powder Puff Tree and Hammocks

The weather has been miserable and cold but there was a glimpse of sun yesterday, so Chris and I called in at Mead Gardens to make the most of it. Mead Gardens is a small public park about a mile away and is mostly a wild, wetland sort of park, with boardwalks above the swampy parts. It’s lovely for its very wildness. There are the normal dire warnings about feeding the alligators but, apart from that, it is a little oasis of green in the city.
It was while reading some information about Mead Gardens that I came across the word ‘hammock’. Here in Florida it as a word derived from early inhabitants to mean ‘a cool and shady place’.
There is an interesting article about hammocks here written by Rhonda Brewer which contains this lovely quote.
‘Thomas Barbour, naturalist at large, describes hammocks this way, “I love hammocks … in the early spring, when the yellow jasmine festoons the forest trees and when the redbud and giant dogwoods and the maples are putting forth their vivid crimson foliage, I do not know of lovelier spots to sit listening to birds and resting in the heat of the day” (Barbour 1944:165).’

This leaf is from a very pretty tree we saw at Mead Gardens, called either the Powder Puff tree, or the Blood Red Tassel tree. Its Latin name is Calliandra haematocephala which ominously translates as ‘with a blood red head’. There is a very similar one called the Fairy Duster but it has quite different leaves. For once I will include a photograph I took, as the flowers are quite beautiful.
This leaf is definitely furry and soft to touch…maybe floccose? A very delicate and dainty little tree all round.

After Mead Gardens we called in at Fiddler’s Green where an Irish piper was skirling a few airs on the bagpipes for a cameraman.
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The Powder Puff Tree

Leaf of the day: The Rubber Plant and some Alien Sex!

This good leaf has been sitting quietly on the side of my desk for 2 days now, after I rescued it from a heap of thinnings. The gardener has been round the apartments cutting and pruning, ready for the new growth of spring which will no doubt gallop in apace once the weather warms up. It is showing some scars from the big ugly freeze with various cuts and bruises but I am glad to have immortalised this handsome sturdy leaf. It has quite a presence.
One of the most interesting aspects of living in a semi-tropical climate is that plants which you have only known in England as treasured and exotic house plants, carefully nurtured at some time, effort and anxiety, are here wantonly seeding themselves around and sometimes creating a bit of nuisance. Every bit of waste ground, every crack in the pavement and every neglected-for-a-second building will have some kind of exotic vegetation pushing up through it, scrambling over it and round it, insinuating itself into the basic fabric of the city. I saw a pretty little fan palm peeping out of an old lamppost base the other day. The ficus family is one of the main culprits.

My Ficus Elastica is a member of this interesting Fig family .. all of whom rely for pollination on a specific tiny fig wasp. Because it needs no other pollinators, the tree doesn’t bother much to produce big showy flowers. The tiny ‘flowers’ are clustered inside the fruit we call a fig, correctly called a ‘synconium’.
Normally these plants are propagated commercially by cuttings or air layering but I did find this alarming headline in the ‘New York Times’ by John Noble Wilsford, May 1988. If you want to read more go here
Its amazing what a little fig wasp can do!

‘ Aided by Alien Insects’
‘Alien fig wasps invading south Florida have perked up the sex life of the Ficus tree. They have what the trees had been missing: a knowing and generous way with pollen.

Naturally, this has led to a proliferation of little ficus trees, and they now threaten to overrun lawns, crowd out forest vegetation and send out implacable roots to undermine the concrete and brick foundations of society. ….

On the University of Miami campus at Coral Gables, more than 150 seedlings have been counted around nine large Ficus microcarpa trees,’Eternal Vigilance’ which had previously been infertile outside their native ground in the Asian tropics.
Doyle B. McKey, associate professor of biology at the University of Miami, said it would take ”eternal vigilance and constant maintenance” to contain the spread of Ficus, particularly in the suburbs, where it is already as familiar a part of the landscape as shrubs and trees. “

Friends, we live in dangerous times!

p.s. ‘Aliens’ and ‘Sex’!……I bet I am topping Google ratings today.
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The Rubber Plant