Tag: daily drawing

Leaf of the Day: Little Plant City Strawberry, Punnets and Pottles.

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I spent quite a few hours out and about today, the weather has been glorious and Leu Gardens were setting up for their Plant Sale which will be taking place tomorrow and Sunday.

There has been little time for drawing and so I decided to look in the fridge and see what readily came to hand. I do like strawberries. We have eaten many, many, strawberries over the last few weeks and, despite the frosty cold snap about a month ago, there seems to be a never ending supply.


Chardin’s beautiful Basket of Strawberries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

The strawberries we have been enjoying come from the well named Plant City, known as the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World which, in early March, hosts a Strawberry Festival dating back to 1930. I was rather disappointed to see that the Festival Queen was not dressed as a giant strawberry, and also disappointed to find out that Plant City was not named after the many crops that are grown in the area but ” in commemoration of Henry B. Plant, and his railroad, which significantly boosted the commerce in this primarily agricultural community by incorporating it with the South Florida Railroad.”

I have 3 punnets of strawberries in the fridge from Wishnatzki Farms.

“Punnet” is a curious word, probably a diminutive of “pun”, a dialect word for “pound”. The use of the word for a container may have originated with an 18th century English farmer in Bromley who sent his strawberries to the London markets in “punnet” baskets. It is hard to find those nice little wooden containers now, which were woven from split willow or reeds. Strawberries used to be sold in “pottles” which were cone shaped woven baskets. Here, from the familiar “Cries of London” engravings, is the Strawberry Seller.

“Ripe Strawberries ripe, Ripe Strawberries ripe. Six-pence a pottle fine strawberries ripe strawberries…only six-pence a pottle… I have ripe Strawberries ripe, Ripe Strawberries ripe.”
The transportation of strawberries, while keeping the fruit from bruising, has always been a problem. If placed in large containers, damage to these delicate fruits was inevitable.
From “The Strawberry in North America” 1917 by Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher,
“In 1854 Robert Buist protested ;” the present mode is disgusting in the extreme; large tubfulls bruised and crushed, spooned into quart measure from vessels of very questionable character in both colour and appearance. The denizens, carrying home their quantum of mashed matter under the name of strawberries, can know little from such a mixture of the delicious aroma and rich flavour of the pure fruit. . “

“…In 1861 Thomas Meehan pleaded for ” cheap gift boxes which a buyer can destroy after emptying as does the London pleasure seeker the pottle of Strawberries he bought at London bridge before taking the excursion boat to Gravesend”

This was such a pressing need in America that in 1868 John Knox of Pittsburg offered a generous $100 prize for ” the best type of Gift box”. At the same time the “Burlington Free Fruit Box” was being developed “made of 2 pieces of wood veneer, put together without glue or nails, shipped in the flat, cost $10 per thousand quarts.”
Today we have the serviceable but very unlovely plastic containers

I am sure you are wondering exactly what a punnet should hold .. well that depends.
A pottle should hold about a pint and a half, and a punnet about an imperial pound, but different punnets were made specifically for different contents.

From The Book of the Garden, 1885 by Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher:

Punnets: Round shallow baskets made of deal shavings. Of these there are four-namely;

Mushroom punnets, 7 inches in diameter and 1 inch deep :
Seakale punnets, 8 inches in diameter at top 7 1/2 inches at bottom and 2 inches deep :
Salading punnets, 5 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep;
Radish punnets, 8 inches in diameter and 1 inch deep when intended to hold what is called in London markets six hands; those to contain twelve hands measure 9 inches in diameter and 1 inch deep.

My punnet of supermarket strawberries does not contain what I would call the “Rolls Royce” of strawberries, but what are these days? What I can’t understand is why, now, the little central cores don’t come away when you pull the green leafy bit off, officially called hulling. I remember when we picked them from the garden they hulled just perfectly, but that is some time ago. I presume they have bred them to be firmer for just those transport problems which gave the early growers such a headache. And, are they as sweet and delicious as they used to be? It seems not but that is probably just a fond childhood memory.

Mostly the strawberries from the supermarket are large but here and there a little one has crept into the punnet. This was one complete with stalk. Sensible Chardin (above) set his delicious pyramid of strawberries in the background so avoiding having to draw all those tiny seeds. Something I will consider if I have to draw a strawberry again.
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Little Plant City Strawberry

Leaf of the Day: Back to the Bixa

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How I wish I could share with you the feel of these light and delicate as a powder puff, little bixa pods. The Lipstick Tree, Bixa orellana, (achiote, annatto) is my last revisiting of previous plants this week. It was another early favourite of mine and is a really delightful tree, both pretty and very useful. These bright, softly prickly pods give us the dye annatto which is used as a food and cosmetic colouring, notably in Red Leicester Cheese. I first wrote about it back in April last year, in the post “The Lipstick Tree Pod and Fake Blood” here .
Bixa orellana is native to southwestern Amazonia, having developed from Bixa excelsa, a forest tree and probably “domesticated” during the Paleolithic era. Colonists then introduced bixa to Africa, Asia, and Polynesia, where it was cultivated, more as a decorative tree than a useful one.


Pretty pink flowers, photo September 2008.


The Softly Prickly Pods, March 2009 (they were redder when slightly younger) .

The dye stuff ( Bixin) is in the tiny seeds which, when crushed, give this intense creamy russet colour. Annatto dye is made by crushing the seeds and soaking them in water. This is then allowed to evaporate and can be powdered or used as a colouring paste.
Indigenous Rainforest tribes used annatto seeds as a preferred colouring for foods, for body decoration, and as a “paint” for artifacts, manuscripts, and murals dating back to the ancient Mayan Indians. I also read that the body paint may well have provided sun protection as well as healthy tan, (hmm.. another possible cottage industry for me). The entire plant was employed for various medicinal uses, including the inevitable aphrodisiac, as an astringent, to treat skin problems and for almost every other malady known to man. But I have been thinking what a curious thing it is in some ways to colour food? The ancient Mayans associated the red colouring with sacrificial blood and religious significance but the whole psychology behind present day food colouring is interesting .. and for another post..

The pods are lined with a fine papery membrane and the seeds are held in two groups of 15 to 20 seeds. A newly opened pod contained a small amount of water which perhaps keeps the seeds moist… curious. I am also not sure what function this red colouring has for the dispersal of the seeds. Questions …questions….

I had made a pencil drawing of the open pod before, but as colour is really the signature of this little tree, a colour study was also needed. I was planning to produce my very own genuine annatto ink with which to execute a small and perfectly appropriate drawing but so far the seeds of 2 pods don’t seem to be quite enough. However my hands now look as though I have a serious nicotine habit, so perhaps the tanning lotion is not such a good idea.
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Lipstick Tree Pods and Seeds


Watercolour on Fabriano HP, size 10″ x 6 “

Leaf of the day: 50 (ish) Yaupon Holly Leaves

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I am revisiting a few plants this week to fill in some gaps for the exhibition. Today the Yaupon Holly, another favourite tree of mine. It’s the tree of the nauseating Black Tea ritual which I wrote about here, in the post “Yaupon Holly, and a liquor that sorts the Men from the Boys”. Even if your Latin is rusty, the botanical name, Ilex vomitoria, gives the game away. The blog post will be printed for the exhibition and I felt this important Florida native needed some better representation than the one pencil drawing I had made. The trees at Leu differ slightly but I found a nice sprig of the weeping variety to paint on Saturday. These elegant trees still have some berries and are really so pretty, with tiny leathery leaves, the very longest on this sprig is only 1 inch long. There are also even tinier white flowers. I have painted two but they are difficult to spot.

This branch is from a particularly attractive weeping tree at Leu which grows in the Arid Garden, taken back in early December. Until recent pruning, the berry laden-branches cascaded right down to the ground, arching and criss-crossing so elegantly. The Arid Garden is undergoing some reconstruction at the moment, ousting some non arid species for some more desert loving plants. It will be very interesting to see how it develops. The frogs will have had a shock as their overgrown home near around the pond has now been razed to the ground, but I am sure they will have found some other accommodating damp spot nearby.

I would definitely plant a Yaupon Holly if I had a garden. Not only are they very attractive (and can be used as a substitute for box as a hedge), but when times are hard and coffee expensive, a chew on the leaves will give you that necessary caffeine hit, so valued by the Timucua Indians. I have read that as well as being brewed for “black tea”, the plant was used as an hallucinogen to “evoke ecstasies” but also, confusingly, the bark was used to treat nightmares?
That seems contradictory to me but in the mysterious and sometimes dangerous world of ethnobotany all is possible.
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Yaupon Holly Sprig


Watercolour on Fabriano HP. 15″x9″

Leaf of the Day: More Soapberry..

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I am filling in the gaps for the show and needed another small soapberry painting. I think I am now cornering the market in Soapberry drawings. But I love this little tree so much. At the moment it is quietly poised for new growth but around the base of the tree are many tiny pretty seedlings. For more information about the wonderful soapberry, with which you can make jewellery, poison fish and wash your clothes, see my earlier posts here.

Recently I made these drawings for my good friend John, who in return will be drilling, polishing and stringing me some soapberries in a really professional way. Bartering drawings for beads; excellent! I will post the results on the blog. I am so delighted, I know they will look wonderful. I have tried to drill them myself with limited success and much bad language. They are very hard. No wonder they are called black pearls.

A trio of the seeds..

A delicate little seedling, and a tiny watercolour which I had done some time ago in the summer.

John also keeps a blog with wonderful photographs and observations called “Nunketest” recording the flora fauna and history of the Lake Nippennicket area. “Nunketest”, from the Wampanoag Native American word meaning “Lake of the Red Waters”. I tune in often to learn about more northern wildlife and to remind myself what snow looks like. 🙂
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The Soapberry again..

The new drawing.

Framed up with its companions

Leaf of the day: False Aralia and Fake Lizard, Big Leaf Sketches

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I have spent today playing with one of the big leaf sketches.
I do now know that the leaf is from Dizygotheca elegantissima or Aralia elegantissima, commonly known as False Aralia. One description fits it well.
“The False Aralia leaf is divided into 10 or so slender jagged leaflets that are arranged like fingers of a hand. As the leaves mature, their colors turn into blackish green or dark grey-green, they become broader in size, and they become coarser in texture. “

Here are the first 3 stages

I sketched the lizard in but have now changed its colour so many times that it does not resemble a real lizard at all but that’s fine by me. This is not a lizard portrait.
I have not found anywhere in the house that I can take a good photograph of larger work. The light is terrible, so the colours are very dull here and the light is reflecting off the surface, but it shows a bit of progress. I am going to try for a better photograph tomorrow.


Acrylic on Canvas, 2ft x 3ft.

I have roughed in the drawings on the paper behind the leaf now, I may call it ” The Critic”
It may never reach “finished painting” stage but I plan to have 4 of these larger sketches/studies for the show. There will be a companion piece to this one as well as two (I hope) of the Live Oak branches developed from some earlier sketches…but time is getting a bit short.

Leaf of the day: Dogwood, Bracts not Petals.

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“Stepping delicately out of the dark wood the startling loveliness of the dogwood in bloom makes each tree seem a presence, calling forth an exclamation of praise. On the almost naked branches the blossoms shine forth in long flat sprays..turning their pure faces up towards the sky” David Culross Peattie

The dogwood today outside the Garden House at Leu Gardens.

These dogwood flowers are much more interesting than they first appear and I brought a couple back from the gardens, to take a closer look. The structure of the flower is fascinating . In 1933, Anna Botsford Comstok in ” A Handbook of Nature Study” felt the same,

“The artistic eye loves the little notch at the tip of the bracts even before it has read in it the story of winter protection of which it is an evidence.The flowering Dogwood forms its flower buds during the summer and of course it must have winter protection. They are wrapped in 4 close-clasping purplish brown scales, one pair inside and one pair outside, both thick and well fitted to protect the bunch of tiny flower buds at their centre. But when spring comes these buds change their duties and by rapid growth become four beautiful white pinkish bracts which we call the dogwood flowers.”

A bud with two of the protective bracts beginning to open.

A bud unfolding further, the bracts still joined at the tip.

The individual flowers have four slender curled petals. There may be as many as twenty which open one by one. The open white bracts have the characteristic notch at the tip which gives them the pretty gathered-in shape. The flowers grow at the tips of the branches with new leaves developing just below.

On a gardening note, many believe that the best time to plant tender species, such as tomatoes, is following the “Dogwood Winter”, a cold spell that often comes in late spring. Native Americans used the blossoming dogwood as a sign to begin planting crops, and the early settlers used every part of this pretty and useful tree except “the rustle of its leaves.”

I drew the flower grasped firmly in the teeth of my small clamp, which somehow seemed appropriate for a Dogwood.

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Dogwood Flower

Leaf of the Day: Dogwood

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Three lovely dogwoods, now in full bloom with dainty white flowers, greet you as you enter Leu Gardens. I missed the dogwoods last year, there was so much else to see, so I am determined to make some studies this year. It’s just so pretty and another white” flower” for my series. I did not realise that the white petals are not petals at all but bracts, the flowers are in fact tiny and yellow bunched together in the centre (similar to daisies).

There are some interesting possibilities about the origin of the name “Dogwood”. This is an excerpt from “Learn to Grow” Garden Guides here written by Dr. Gerald Klingaman

“The etymology of the word “dogwood,” used for our native C. florida, is not completely clear. One possibility is that it comes from the Middle English word “dag,” referring to a wooden spit made from a shrubby dogwood native to England. These spits were sold on the streets for cooking meat over an open flame.The word “dag” is itself an adaptation of “daggere,” or “dagger,” as we now know it. The Cornelian cherry was recognized for its hard, tough wood and was used for making pikes and maybe wooden daggers. Following this line of reasoning, dogwood is a corruption of the word “dag wood.”
The other explanation for the name is that leaves of the English Cornus were used to make a concoction to treat dog mange. A recipe is found in a 17th century herbal, so it’s possible that early English colonists saw the similarity between the plants and adapted the name.”

It seems that the Dog Rose’s name is also a misinterpretation from “Dag Rose” referring to the ferocious dagger like thorns.

Dogwood wood is very shockproof as well as very hard and at one time was useful for many small items such as chisel handles, golf club heads, rake teeth and machine bearings. When weaving was mechanised it was perfect for shuttles, which now had to withstand the high speed and constant wear of the big industrial looms.

From Philadelphia’s Workshop on the World site here H.Riehl & Son Textile Machinery, loom and shuttles.


Shuttles made of Dogwood and maple then impregnated with wax or clear shellac, these sold for $25-30 and were replaced “after having run round the clock for four years.”

I am going to the Gardens tomorrow and will find a flower to make a study of, and perhaps make a detailed drawing of the centre but for now a colour sketch from a pen and ink sketch I made the other day… so more dogwood tomorrow.
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Dogwood Sketches

Leaf of the Day: True Loveliness

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I now have 40 drawings and paintings almost ready, with their accompanying re-written texts (and rewritten and rewritten). When they are framed, even in the simple little display frames they look quite nice. I am not sure how many people will take the time to look at pencil drawing though. In this colour junkie society these may look very insignificant.
There will however, be some colour and, almost in contradiction, I have decided to paint some more white flowers, but they will have coloured backgrounds. White flowers really are my favourites and so, this time, it’s a quick sketch of the beautiful Eucharis grandiflora, the Amazon Lily. It has been blooming here at Leu since early December, tucked away in the tropical rainforest, neighbour to, and until recently, overwhelmed by the eerie Black Bat flower, Tacca chantrieri (which I wrote about back in July here). This is a really elegant flower, half lily, half daffodil in its looks.
The name Eucharis comes from the Greek eu- “good, true, original”, and charis “loveliness, grace, and favour”. Flattened filaments form a central trumpet which is decorated with six tiny anthers. Quite beautiful.

I think I may make a few more white flower sketches, there are so many very pretty ones about at the moment.

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The Amazon Lily


Watercolour on Kilimanjaro Not , 6 ” x 5″

Leaf of the Day: Why Winged, Elm?

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I picked this up on Sunday from a little tree which grows by a nearby lake. It’s the twig from a winged elm tree, Ulmus alata. I have walked by this tree many times but only now, without its leaves can you see its true character. The winged branches are really strange and it seems that it grows wings on its wings and they contort and twist in fantastic way. A fairytale tree from the dark side. It looks as though it should be prickly but isn’t. What I cannot find out is the answer to my question .. why? Why does it have these strange growths and what is their function?

The structure of the branches is really fabulous and if I were a flower arranger I would have to have some of them to hand. The trunk of the tree is equally knobbly and interesting.

There are a few buds beginning to form and one or two leaves venturing out. It is also known as the Cork elm and the Wahoo, which is the Creek Indian name for this little tree. It has a fibrous inner bark which was once made into rope for the binding covers of cotton bales.
I will be looking forward to these seeds….

Lovely photo from Clinton Nature Centre here

I went down to Gardens this morning and just walked and walked in the beautiful sunshine and wandered in and out of the citrus grove where the heavenly smell of lemon blossom lay heavy on the air, a nostalgic reminder of the orange groves of Andalucia. So many dainty things are in blossom just now, spring is such a pretty time isn’t it?
Then it was nice just to sit and draw … more framing and writing tomorrow.

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Winged Elm twig

Lizard of the Day: well, Three of Them Actually..

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I have resisted the almost irresistible urge to continue “improving” K2. I have put it out of sight and returned to thinking about the Leu exhibition. I now have 4 weeks.. Hmm. I want to do some more work on the big leaf painting and have been thinking about adding a lizard.
So today I trawled through my lizard photos. There are many, mostly blurry brown shapes on leaves but some good enough to make some prelim sketches. This is one reasonable photo and it is the lizard’s favourite spot at Leu Gardens, posing on the plant labels.

The lizards here are one of my constant joys. I love their attitude, their fearlessness and the mad communal dash they make across the pavement in front of you. What I can’t quite understand is why, when they are already safe in the grass on the road side of the pavement they rush across your path to the other side, instead of staying put…but they do. Cycling is sometimes like doing a lizard slalom course and sometimes they just stop in mid flight which is equally unnerving. By the pool they skitter around, constantly bobbing their heads up and down to check out what is occurring and challenging our presence. We have had to rescue the odd one or two from drowning.

Brown

Brown Anole, Leu Gardens

The ones I see most often, both here and at Leu, are the Brown Anoles, Anolis sagrei, who arrived in Florida in about 1880 from the Caribbean Islands and made themselves very much at home. A bit too much it seems as they have been busy displacing some of the natives. They are described as runners and jumpers and are easily identified by the dewlap of bright skin under their chins which they inflate and deflate in territorial and mating displays.
Todd Campbell’s web page The Brown Anole, from the Institute for Biological Invasions, “Invader of the Month”, tells us more.. here
“Less obvious to the casual observer is their expanded toe-pads which, like those of gecko lizards, help anoles cling to even the smoothest of surfaces, and the extent of which varies with their degree of arboreality.

Green

Also from the site is this photo and accompanying quote about the lovely elegant green Anoles, Anolis carolinensis which have become less common here. I do see them occasionally but they are far outnumbered by the brown.
I do have a photo of a green Anole but couldn’t resist number 47 here.

photo Todd Campbell
From Campbell, T. S. 2000. The brown anole, Anolis sagrei. Institute for Biological Invasions Invader of the Month.


“They are of a most glorious green, and very tame.They resort to the walls of houses in the summer season,and stand gazing on a man, without any concern or fear.”- J. Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709)”

These beautiful and endearing lizards are native to the south east USA and have the ability to change colour from this brilliant green to darker and duller shades of brown. This colour change occurs for camouflage reasons or when unwell.
“Stress in an anole can be identified by several symptoms. These symptoms include a constant shade of brown and a persistent black semi-circle behind their eyes and chronic lethargy.”
Wiki ( here)
(Oh dear.. I think there may be more lizard ancestry in me than I care to contemplate)

…and Striped.

Another really beautiful lizard I have seen (and for once took a reasonable photograph) is the Five-lined Skink, Eumeces fasciatus. That tail is the most gorgeous sky blue and indicates that this is a young lizard.


Skink, Leu Gardens

But why do they lose their tails? I see so many tail-less lizards, or lizards with little short, just regenerating tails. But then I have also seen some ferocious lizard brawls which, come the summer months, spill out onto the gentile suburban sidewalks of Winter Park regardless of passers by. It seems this has something to do with it and escaping from predators too.

Losing your tail is called “caudal autotomy”and is not something you would do lightly, not even as a lizard, as your tail is needed for balance and indicates your social status. But to escape being eaten, your tail is better than your life. There is a weak point in the tail bones which easily breaks, shedding the tail which, in a macabre way can go on twitching so diverting the predator.

To prevent catastrophic bleeding, the blood vessels constrict and the trauma stimulates the cells of the spinal cartilage to regenerate, so that a new “fake” tail is grown but only as cartilage, not bone. This new tail will never be as colourful, strong or as long as the old one, social status no doubt plummeting from young and desirable, and to seasoned warrior, but it is better than nothing.

The sketches are possibles for addition to the big leaf painting.. I have made sure they all have good long strong tails.
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Three Lizard Sketches


Pencil on Cartridge, 8 x10 “