Tag: Leu Gardens

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 “

Leaf of the Day: A Bimbo comes between Eleanor and Franklin

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After that long post yesterday (somewhat excessive displacement behaviour to avoid the K confrontation), this is mercifully short. I have spent the morning framing a few pictures and decided I wanted a few more colour studies. So today to get away from the very tight botanical stuff I decided to paint some fun colourful crotons. I intend to do 3 more just to show the variety of colour and pattern. I now realise I will have quite a few crotons to show, which is ironic as I really didn’t much care for them initially but their relentlessly cheerful colours, tolerance of adverse conditions and general good nature win you over in the end, you just have to give in. There are people like that too. I have thought that Julie Andrews might be one of them.
The croton names are many and delightful but, confusingly, each variety may have as many as 7 names. For my next three I will be able to choose from Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Paintbrush, Sloppy Painter or Norman Rockwell. Unwittingly I put Bimbo in between the Roosevelt’s, just for the sake of design. But at Leu Gardens this is not the case, Eleanor and Franklin are planted side by side, which, knowing a little about their relationship, is not a position I am sure Eleanor would necessarily approve of.
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Franklin Roosevelt, Bimbo and Eleanor Roosevelt

Leaf of the Day: Strange Things from the Garden

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Yesterday I went to the gardens for a quick visit to look at the exhibition space again and for some more big leaf inspiration. I seemed to bump into everyone, all the gardeners and my friend John, a fellow habitual Leu Gardens wanderer. I think there are only two of us who have become partial fixtures. The gardens are looking rather shorn, clipped and tidied with much cutting back and pruning after the big freeze. The frost damage is everywhere, burnt tips of cacti , browned crisped leaves and leafless trees. It does look bare but I feel the garden is just holding its breath, regrouping and poised to burst into rampant growth again. The weather is warming up and there was definitely a feeling of spring.. even here in the land of perpetual green.

Being the relative newcomer, I am still fascinated by the wildlife and especially the snakes and alligators. I know for the native Floridians they are commonplace but I was delighted to see a young alligator down by the lake, perhaps only 4 ft long. They tell me the young ones of this size are still in danger of attack from hungry larger alligators, so I hope I see this one again.

Pedro, always true to form, had found some new and strange things for me to draw. From the depths of a plastic bag and with a magician’s flourish, he delightedly produced these odd furry things that look like some sort of strange rabbit’s feet or a furry beak with 2 eyes. And when I say furry I really mean furry. The covering is not like plant material at all, it’s thick, soft and woolly and even slightly wavy, like a lambs coat. They are the most peculiar things, but are definitely plants or rather parts of plants.

So what are they? I didn’t have time to go and see which plant exactly, but I think they are some of the scales from one of the Dioon Cycads, next time I go I will find the plant to see if I can get a drawing or a photo. Here is a Dioon cone from cycadinternational.com. here

and the “scales” I drew, but now with their backs to you.

The “Dioon” name of these particular cycads is from the Greek, meaning “two egg”, because the seeds come in pairs as you can see below. I have written about the wonderful ancient cycads and their bizarre pollination before here. They are amongst my very favourite plants at the Gardens and I really haven’t given them as much attention as I should, mainly because of their size. I hope I can get a sketch of this one later this week…. kohlrabi permitting.
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Furry Cycad Scales with Seeds


Both images, Pencil on cartridge paper, 8 x 8″

Leaf of the Day: Beginning Big Leaf #1

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I have only 6 weeks to go before I have to put up the exhibition at Leu and, as I habitually do, I make a chart of the time I have left, put it up on the wall and then forget about it. It’s just a little ritual which reassures me that, because I have made a chart, I have things under control. This is self delusion of the first order of course but is comforting. Deadline angst will kick in by about week 5.

I promised myself that I would try to get a few large pieces done for the show so today I have been planning those. I want to paint some more leaves from the garden and this is a chance to tackle some of the larger ones.
I have a beautiful big leaf in the fridge which has been there for a while. Unfortunately I am not quite sure what it is. It came from Leu but the tree has no label, which I am not going to worry about for now .

I haven’t recorded a piece of work from idea to finished piece before so it will be interesting for me to see where it goes and at what point I probably should have stopped.. .. but didn’t!
So first the some tiny quick design sketches, in a 4″x 6″ sketchbook, of some ideas I have been thinking about.

I do so wish I could keep exquisite sketchbooks. I have said before that I so admire the sketchbooks that some artists manage to keep. They are often beautifully laid out, carefully and methodically annotated, all the same size and colour, or in matching sets, becoming works of art in themselves.
Sadly I am not one of those artists, I have tried but just can’t do it. My sketch books are a mishmash of shopping lists, phone numbers, written notes, ideas, and scribbles and would not be valued by anyone except me. I write on anything to hand to work out an idea. I do try to keep all the bits and pieces though and sometimes find an idea that, at the time had nowhere to go but seems much more promising second time around.

I did manage to get the sketch book out for these prelim sketches…

I next started a pencil drawing which was supposed to be a detailed drawing but I abandoned it, because for some reason, I had decided to try the Bristol Board again .. Very Bad Decision. I really don’t like the surface at all, it’s slippery and any bit of grit from the pencils makes nasty scratchy marks. So I converted it into a sketch which is still useful and at least worked out the cast shadows that I like so much.
I also had to scale the drawing down to one third of the leaf’s size, that too was unsatisfactory, as it is partly the size of this leaf that makes it so impressive.

This small drawing made it seem nondescript, so that made me decide on a bigger canvas size too, a nice big 3ft x2ft
I bought a canvas and primed it a warm dark grey and sketched out the basic design and blocked in a bit. That’s it for the painting today.

However I needed to make a more detailed drawing of some parts of the leaf just to understand it better, especially the centre area.. so here is a drawing of a small section which will hopefully help with the painting.
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Big Leaf Detail

Leaf of the Day: Kohlrabi again…

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Just the pencil study today… no time for writing… A day full of those “other things” in life which have to be done.

I got started on this study today at 3 and finished at 7. It’s 10 inches high and pencil on Arches HP. I am trying to wean myself off the cheap sketchbook now and make better studies. The paper makes such a difference but I still am not 100% happy with this particular watercolour surface. It does have a slight tooth which causes the pencil to catch sometimes and then it needs more working over. Bristol Board I find too smooth but may try the vellum finish…the endless search for the magic art materials continues.

These more detailed pencil studies are useful for understanding how the things are put together. The more you understand, the easier things are to draw, well that’s the theory …

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Kohlrabi Pencil Study


Pencil on Arches HP. Size 12″x 8″

Leaf of the Day: Breathe Easy Ephedra

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Today a couple of stems of the rather nondescript ephedra Ephedra major, the Joint Fir, growing quietly and innocently in the Arid Garden at Leu. A medicinal plant extraordinaire which I had overlooked until I was prompted by Eric to consider its very ancient history. Who ever would have thought that was the original source of the very potent drug ephedrine, the airways expanding ingredient of old asthma inhalers that made your heart beat so very fast you thought your eyes would pop out of your head but mercifully stopped the gasping and let air rush down into your desperate lungs.. no wonder it is controlled now. My brief research seemed to indicate it is prohibited by law to sell ephedra here in the form of dietary supplements. Go to the FDA the US Food and Drugs Administration here to read more about its ban and hazards.

These curious plants are very ancient and odd. Dating back to the Triassic period (200 MYA) they were companions to the cycads, ginkgos and early conifers. They are one of the three members of the Gnetale order. The other two genera, Gnetum and Welwitschia, are even stranger and I hope to come across them one day.

Ephedras are drought-resistant shrubs growing to about 4 ft height with slim jointed stems and reduced scale-like leaves which grow in opposite pairs at each joint. Male and female “flowers” bloom in spring on separate plants in cone like structures which are followed by small brown to black seeds.


Image and info about plant evolution here from Maryland University’s succinct page.

Known as a significant medicinal plant by the Chinese for centuries, the Asian species of ephedra have much stronger concentrations of ephedrine than their New World relations. It was discovered that as long ago as 48,000BC Neanderthals had prepared a burial site inside a cave in Iraq where the bodies were found to be surrounded by eight medicinal plants, amongst them Ephedra viridis.

Here the native Indians made teas from ephedra for all manner of disorders, including stomach and bowel problems, colds, fevers and headaches and made poultices for burns and ointments.
With the arrival of the European settlers it became known as Mormon Tea, Brigham Tea, Cowboy Tea, Whorehouse Tea, or Squaw Tea.

“Early Mormon settlers, who abstained from regular tea and coffee, drank the beverage made from this plant. A handful of green or dry stems and leaves were placed in boiling water for each cup of tea desired. It was removed from the fire and allowed to steep for twenty minutes or more. To bring out the full flavor, a spoon of sugar or some strawberry jam was added depending on individual taste.
Other white settlers used a very strong tea of the plant for the treatment of syphilis and other venereal disease, and as a tonic. It was standard fare in the waiting rooms of whorehouses in early Nevada and California. It was said to have been introduced by a Jack Mormon who frequented Katie’s Place in Elko, Nevada during the mining rush of the last century.
from Wes Larson’s Mormon Tea web page here

In its strongest form, the dangerous má huáng tea made from Ephedra sinica is very potent. Used by the Chinese for more than 5000 years for asthma, upper respiratory infections, fever and congestion, one of its characteristics is the speeding up of the metabolism as well as heart rate, which has made it alluring to slimmers. However, a helpful site ( still trying to sell you the pills ) does state that “serious dangers such as death” are recorded side effects.. Hmm what else do you need to know.. perhaps just eat less.. ?

Also at Leu is an ephedra distacyia or sea grape, which Trade Winds Fruits here say has edible berries I will let you know. 🙂

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Ephedra Major, Joint Fir.

Leaf of the Day: Henna Seed Pods

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I am sorry about that rather abrupt break in transmission! I have been in hospital having temporarily lost the battle with my gall bladder, one of those recalcitrant organs like the appendix that seem to cause more trouble than they are worth. I now have the veins of a junkie and glow in the dark. The morphine has worn off so my dreams have returned to just strange as opposed to completely terrifying! ….but am back home …and even more behind with work, oh dear….

So to get back into the swing I decided to do something straightforward, a pencil drawing of this little sprig of Henna pods. It grows in the herb garden at Leu and after my recent experience I thought the herb garden was somewhere I needed to get more familiar with. While in hospital I was reading the excellent Audubon biography by Richard Rhodes and learned that in 1813 he and his wife suffered from the “summer fevers”, merely the possibility of typhoid or yellow fever, and would have been treated with powdered Peruvian cinchona bark, bleeding, aloes, jalap root, cupping and blistering. Rhodes remarks ” however the Audubons were dosed, they were hardy enough to recover from their illnesses as well as their treatment.” Luckily so did I…

Henna would not have been much use to me because although it does have medicinal properties they are more to do with the skin, having some antibacterial and anti fungal properties and apparently an ability to block ultraviolet radiation.


Henna Flowers by J M Garg from Wiki here

It’s a pretty and fragrant shrub but of course most famous for the beautiful dye used for the important symbolic decoration of hands and feet in Asia and in many other cultures. I am particularly fond of this elegant form of body decoration.
From Wiki: “Henna, Lawsonia inermis, produces a red-orange dye molecule, lawsone. This molecule has an affinity for bonding with protein, and thus has been used to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather, silk and wool.


Image from All Posters by Khalid Tanveer here

The dye is made from the crushed and powdered leaves and interestingly does not “fade” but is exfoliated by the regeneration of cells in the skin. The historical use of henna is fascinating both as body decoration and general dye stuff and there are many sites devoted to it. If you are interested there is a fantastic site which will tell you all you ever wanted to know, with many links too. http://www.hennapage.com/

I could not resist this photo, again from Wiki, taken by David Dennis here

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Henna Pods

Leaf of the Day: Eric, “the Man who knows” and the Kurrajong Pod

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I have now spent almost a year walking round the Garden on my own and finding things in a very ad hoc way, and that’s, generally, how I like it. That element of surprise has made it all the more enjoyable, if I had had a list to work through it could have become a chore. The gardeners, Susan, Pedro, Joel and Tony have pointed me in the direction of some very unusual and interesting things but sometimes there are missing labels or I have questions they cannot answer. On these occasions Pedro always says “you must ask Eric, he will know”.

So on Tuesday, just to see what I may have missed and to get some answers to particular questions I booked a quick tour with Eric Schmidt who looks after the botanical records at Leu Gardens. His knowledge is encyclopedic. I learned about many new things that I would have missed, a scented palm, the ancient and wonderful ephedras, the macaw palm, a rare yellow camellia, maples that look nothing like maples, a cactus with leaves and an acacia with leaves that are not leaves at all. I have discovered the name of the big fig tree near the house and found the Provisions tree and joy of joys, a fabulous pod of the Little Kurrajong, the Brachychiton which I wrote about here ..

It’s very big and very furry. Every bit of it is furry, as if made entirely of velvet. As I was drawing it, the little furry segments huddled together looked like rows of baby monkeys or perhaps little owls, very comical. I am going to investigate this a bit further. Eric tells me these seeds will germinate easily so I may try some.
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Little Kurrajong Pod