Tag: Leu Gardens

Leaf of the Day: Oaks, more Oaks and Herbaria

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I have to admit I am a bit of a cataloguer. I love arranging things, labelling things, sorting things, and putting things in boxes. I was an inveterate cotton reel arranger and button box sorter for my mother. The button box sorting was just that, sorting and arranging of things into categories, shape, size, design, material, colour etc which took some time as we were a thrifty family and all buttons were saved. But, having carefully laid them out, examined them, admired their variety and colours and patterns, I would just tip them all back into the box again. What exactly was the point? I have never delved into the deep psychological meaning of this delightful pastime but I know many others have done it too. It was the perfect rainy day occupation.

So, while the weather has been bad, I have been indulging in some equivalent leaf sorting. Same thing, all the leaves out of their boxes, sorted, admired and put back again. This included many oak leaves now mostly dried up or under the mattress .. yes I press them as well… I do like pressed leaves. There are, unbeknownst to Chris, many many leaves and even the odd flower under the mattress. :). He is obviously not very finely bred as I haven’t had any “princess and the pea” complaints. They are there because I was hoping to get round to making a book, “a herbarium” to be correct.

A herbarium (Lat herba, “herb,” formerly any medicinal plant) is a collection of dried specimens of plants mounted on sheets of heavy paper and stored in cabinets or bound in book form, as well as the building that houses such a collection. The term replaced (Lat) Hortus siccus, “dried garden”, which was used until the late 1700s.

Below , some oak leaves and a general view of Kew’s massive herbarium which since April 2008 has been open to the public.


images from the Guardian here

I started drying and preserving the leaves from Leu from early last year but only when time allowed, so it is not really a good record and it’s very time consuming.

“The first person to consider mounting dried specimens onto paper is thought to have been Luca Ghini (c1490–1556) of Bologna. His pupil, Gherardo Cibo, in about 1532, prepared a collection which was perhaps a means of instructing students in the use of herbal treatments. Most of these early collections were bound into books and many are still beautifully preserved. The oldest herbarium is in Germany, established in 1570, and the largest is in Paris, containing nearly 9 million specimens. “
from the Royal Horticultural Society here

This little specimen of Quercus pendunculata may not look very special until you realise it is from the great Linnean herbarium, held at the Department of Phanerogamic Botany, Swedish Museum of Natural History here

To say I am a cataloguer might infer that I am tidy and have a system but unfortunately that is not true and my oak leaf collecting was particularly haphazard. I would return from the Gardens with ten leaves from different oaks and not a clue which was which, so I started taking labels to the gardens and attaching them to the leaves as I picked them.
So far I have:
Quercus laeta, which seems to be a Mexican Oak
Quercus polymorpha, the Monterrey Oak
Quercus laevis, Turkey Oak
Quercus sillae, Saddle, Mountain Oak
Quercus glaucoides, Lacey oak
Quercus pungens, Sandpaper Oak
Quercus pagodifolia, Cherry Bark Oak,
Quercus shumardii, Shumard Oak
Quercus austrina, Bluff oak
Quercus michauxii, Swamp chestnut oak
Quercus myrtifolia, Myrtle Oak
Quercus laurifolia, Laurel Oak
Quercus durandii, Durand oak
Quercus virginiana, Southern Live oak
Quercus glauca, Ring-cup oak
Quercus phellos, Willow Oak
Quercus nigra, Water Oak
Quercus myrsinaefolia, Asian evergreen oak

This below is the preserved Quercus laeta collected by Bacon, J. 1751, Durango,Mexico: from Chicago’s Field Museum here

I have drawn some, but not all as I was really waiting for acorns, but very few of them have had acorns. Maybe this is because some of the trees are only young.
This sketch of the Quercus Laeta is a little bit different as it is done on tinted pastel paper. I had put these two dried and curled up leaves on the desk, complete with label and liked their faded pale colours, so drew them just as they were. I will return to the various and fascinating ways of preserving plants and their history tomorrow.

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Quercus Laeta

Leaf of the Day: Crepe or Crape, Myrtles and Murder

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Probably the most interesting thing I have found out about the crape/crepe myrtle is the seemingly never ending controversy about its name. I had thought it was “crepe”rather than “crape”, because the name refers to the crinkled edges of the petals…in my mind like “crepe” paper, however …..see this and more of the discussion here at Garden Web here

” ‘Crape’ myrtle is the overwhelming choice both in botanical sources and in other dictionary sources,” said Michael Agnes, executive editor of Webster’s New World Dictionary.
The word expert explains that crape myrtle is a compound, two elements referring to one thing. “When that happens, a variant spelling is almost always associated with the compound,” Agnes said. But which vowel came first?
The first reference to crape, without the myrtle, came in 1685. Crepe first showed up in 1797, Agnes said.
“By the time someone decided to call this plant crape myrtle, crape was by far preferred,” he said. The first reference to crape myrtle showed up in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1850.

The trees are everywhere here, in every Mall, on every street corner and scattered around our apartments. While pretty enough in flower I thought the shape of the bare winter stems was more attractive, especially with their little seed pods which are still hanging on. The pale or mottled bark is also a welcome reminder of the seasons in amongst the lush but sometimes relentless green of Florida. I had intended writing about them before, as in November I had found some much bigger pods at Leu Gardens. Sadly they had mostly disintegrated but they belonged to the Lagerstroemia calyculata, which, according to the label is a relatively rare crape from Thailand.


The big and beautiful flowers of the Lagerstroemia calyculata, photo Nirmal Roberts from TrekNature here

But the controversy about the name of the crepes/crapes is as nothing when it comes to the pruning problems and “The Crape Myrtle Murder”, sounding more like an Agatha Christie mystery with Hercule Poirot at last running amok with secateurs, than a horticultural issue.

“Stop the Crape Murder”
Hideous crimes are being committed all ever Texas, some in our own front yards and many right in front of our local businesses. Unfortunately, many have turned a blind eye to the ongoing massacre. Not me! I can take it no more.”…
Such is the impassioned cry from Greg Grant’s article, more here

The terrible crime of “crape murder” occurs when the plant is ruthlessly chopped without regard to the natural branching habit It results in weakly attached new branches which cannot take the weight of flowers and reduces flower bud formation. Better it seems to underprune than overprune and never take its top off!
This is an example of an “underpruned” crape/crepe myrtle which does allows the tree to arch very gracefully.


from Houston Chronicle Gardening here

Go here to Wilson Brothers Nursery for this rather attractive printable diagram with instructions on the correct way to prune .. or is it?..it looks a bit severe to me!

This is the nearest crepe/crape myrtle to us. I took this photo today. It is a couple of yards away from the steps to the apartment and has been tidied up by the garden gang who come round periodically but, even after looking at the diagrams and reading the advice, I am still not sure if murder has been committed or not.

At Leu there are quite a few different ones including the Lagerstroemia calyculata whose pod I have drawn and another Lagerstroemia macrocarpa.
The drawings of the pods compare the size of the ordinary little street crape myrtles and the much bigger pod of the Lagerstroemia calyculata. I also made a quick sketch at Leu a couple of weeks ago because there are two crepe/crape myrtles which stand by a path nicely silhouetted against the dark green oaks. Some people I know think they are ugly in this state but I like to see their structure and tracery. Another reason not to be so quick to prune is for the sake of the birds who love the seeds..and for artists who like to draw them.

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Crepe/Crape Myrtle

Leaf of the Day: Cold cold, very cold …frosted strawberries and smudge pots.

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Yesterday was the very best excuse not to do any drawing at all. I unashamedly spent the whole day glued to the TV, watching the inauguration. It was all very uplifting and inspiring, and cheered up this freezing January week. I have not sensed such a feeling of hope since those heady days of the 1960’s.
But it’s very very cold today, so cold that we fear for Chris’ carambola, too cold to cycle far, so I am suffering somewhat from cabin fever. Reading back through the blog, last year was similar, with “The Big Ugly Freeze” in early January.
Having been brought up in rural Lincolnshire I do feel for the farmers. To be at the mercy of the weather dictates that you must develop a philosophical view of life but, after days and days of tending and nurturing, and months and months of waiting, to lose a crop is devastating. So I am always interested in how growers try to protect their crops. Here, in the aptly named Plant City they are spraying the strawberries with water which forms a protective coat on the fruit, and I was fascinated to learn about the “smudge pots” which were once used in Florida and California.


Nice old image of 1930’s smudge pots from University of California contributed by Anaheim Public Library here

They are called “choofas” in Australia by the “choo choo” noise the “pots” make while burning the fuel. Like a big version of our old horribly smoky paraffin heaters in the UK, the “smudge pots” created a thick, oily smoke and it was the smoke rather than the heat that protected the fruit.
“The smudge pots do not put out enough heat to heat the orchard, however the thick smoke cloud acts to reflect infrared radiation (heat radiation) from the orchard, thus “trapping” heat between the cloud and the ground. By reducing the amount of heat lost by radiation to the night sky, the orchard cools more slowly, hopefully keeping it above the freezing point through the night.”


Fabulous image here from Life Magazine, here. The caption reads,
“Farmers sitting up all night with kerosene cans, filling lines of smudge pots.
Location: CA, US , Date taken: 1949 Photographer: Ross Madden “

These types of heaters burned oil and when the temperatures dropped to near 26 degrees, crews with torches went through the orchards lighting the heaters. It as a dirty job and hard work, the smoke would seep into nearby homes, blacken the curtains and the washing and get into your nostrils.
Another equally dirty way to protect the orchards was to burn old tyres.

Report from 1950 from the The South Coast Air Quality Management District here
“You’d blow your nose, and it would be black,” said Edward Camarena, a former chemist with the Orange County Air Pollution Control District, the first air quality agency to regulate orchard heaters, popularly known as smudge pots. “I can remember getting up and going to work and seeing this ugly black haze where they had smudged most of the night,” said Jack Adame, a retired University of California, Riverside employee. “

You can also read an account of the use of smudge pots in 1910 with some nice old photos, from Marty Mincers Orchard in Iowa here .
But this more recently is “Friday, Jan. 12, 2007, setting up smudge pots in Camarillo, California to protect young avocado trees” by Gus Ruelas, AP Photos here

The design of the pots seemed to vary quite a bit and there are some excellent photos to be found by looking on the web. I have spent a very happy couple of hours browsing, there are some wonderful shapes and colours .
It seems it is now “illegal” to use them in great number and perhaps the type of fuel is regulated. These days they try to combat the freezing air with wind fans and water sprinklers but I am sure some old smudge pots come out too.

Today I have been back to scribbling, reading and notemaking. I am thinking of making some larger watercolours, much looser than the botanical ones and keep coming back to the beautiful Cotton Bol, I picked two more the other day from the tree at Leu.
But I put off the evil hour of tackling the full sheet of white pristine paper which is now sitting ready on the desk, by making a small sketch of a shoebox lid into which I had dumped some bits from the nature table. It looked attractive in the sun with the long cast shadows that I like so much so I drew it just as it was…while the big white full sheet watercolour paper still sits there, still pristine.
In the shoebox lid are a couple of big turkey oak leaves, some eucalyptus leaves, some red berries from a palm of some sort, various twigs and some seed heads. There is one seed head from the crepe myrtle which I might (will probably) draw tomorrow, if I am still intimidated by the big white paper.
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Shoebox Lid with Assorted Things

Leaf of the Day: Thinking Time and Two Tiny Wasp Galls..

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Today was one of those days where the long twisting path of good intentions takes the whole day to navigate, with little to show.. well on paper anyway. I have finished the essay, the 4th rewrite after finding yet more fascinating information about Catesby, stretched some big paper, cleared a space for the even bigger drawing board that has the paper on it, which involved rearranging the nature table yet again, and thought about what to put on its gleaming, white, pristine and untouchable surface.
I am at the ideas stage of a few projects which all seem to need “thinking about”. Thinking time is a great part of being a designer or artist or writer etc. Sometimes it is a good excuse for going for a coffee or not doing anything at all, but usually it is just a necessary part of the process. Staring into the middle distance is not so much a state of catatonia, as a state of contemplation.(maybe sometimes it is hard to tell the difference). I often just sit down with a sketchbook and scribble and have done quite a lot of scribbles over the last few days. If any of them develop legs I will post the development process but without an end result they would be incomprehensible.
The only problem I have with ideas is having too many. They circle round and round my head like swarms of annoying flies and sometimes are just as difficult to catch. If I don’t sketch them immediately, they are gone. Then there is the agonising, decision-making process; which ones to pursue?.. and then I am plagued by the possibility/ probability that I have made the wrong choice.

So I was pleased to leave all that and simply draw this little piece of wood with the two tiny wasp galls. I have found even more photos from Berkeley University’s Calphotos, which has a staggering 290 photos of wasp galls, most by Joyce Gross who took some of yesterdays wonderful photos. See this great resource here . These I am sure are what I found, created by Live Oak gall wasp.

I also neglected the architect of these wonderful creations yesterday. These tiny Gall Wasps differ from species to species but here is the Live Oak gall wasp by Edward S. Ross from Enature.com field guides,

here

Tomorrow some thing very important is happening here in America and I doubt I will get any drawing done !

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Two Tiny Wasp Galls

Leaf of the day: Galls and more Galls

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I have spent a large part of today sorting out my nature table which is now overrun with twigs and bits of leaves, many seed pods, cones and dried leaves. The pods from the milkweeds have burst open and errant fairy seeds waft around the room with every breath of air. It’s truly a jumble, but in amongst it all was this small leaf I had picked up one day, with two wasp galls firmly attached to the underneath. It’s such a pleasing object. Not quite a exquisite as the potter wasp’s beautifully made pot which I still have here, and not as comical as the gouty galls I drew some time ago (both here). But the simple arrangement of two perfect little spheres on this leaf make this wasp a bit of an artist.

Galls and other insect built homes are fascinating but these are particularly creative. They are the designs of the Gall Wasps, Family Cynipidae, who, although wasps, are tiny, often no bigger than a fruit fly. The galls are formed by abnormal growth of the plant cells stimulated by chemical secretions produced by the wasps either feeding or laying eggs. The plant tissue grows up around the eggs to protect the larvae, but why they are such extraordinary shapes and colours is a mystery. I can see that some imitate twigs but something red and spotted is not really very well camouflaged.
There are saucer galls, beaked twig galls, dunce cap galls, red cone galls, and spined Turk’s cap galls and everywhere I looked I found more. But this site, BugGuide. net here will give you wonderful identification photos by a variety of photographers. Here are some of the examples.

Starburst Gall

Spined Turbaned Gall

Disk Gall

Saucer gall

Horned gall

Hairstalk Gall

Beaked Twig Gall

Spiny Leaf Gall

More photos and a informative article from Hawk Conservancy Trust .org here

Robin’s Pincushion Gall

Ramshorn Gall

There is an excellent and informative poster “Wasp Galls on Californian Oaks” by Ron Russo here . His comment rings true, “the behaviours and structures that have evolved for the successful survival of Gall Wasps are among the most intriguing stories of nature” It’s a great poster.. Hmm.. decisions? .. If I just move the Nine Inch Nails poster over a bit, there will be room for the Oak Galls.. :).

But they are fabulous aren’t they? I realise now I have a couple more which I thought were tiny fungi growing on a twig. I may draw those tomorrow.
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Oak Galls

Leaf of the Day:Acanthus Montanus.. Some Prickles.

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The very prickly thing I have drawn today is a piece of the Acanthus montanus or Mountain Thistle. It’s in bloom now at the Gardens and I took this photo a week ago. I have to say that even though this may be handsome, it is an extremely unfriendly plant. Every bit of it is covered with sharp spines.

This is not the acanthus leaf of the classical Corinthian capitals which were more likely to have been inspired by the Acanthus mollis, also charmingly named Bears Breeches, which I will come back to. I would like to draw a real, Corinthian column type, acanthus leaf.

A quick sketch of the leaf itself and a detail of the leathery spiny surface, and then a small watercolor for some texture practice. The veins are deep, the sections well defined and the surface shiny and it has prickles ..a bit of a nightmare to paint really and these small pieces take a ridiculous amount of time for what you get ..hence very short post.. but it is good practice.

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Mountain Thistle Leaf

Leaf of the Day: The Cotton Rose of China

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I was pleased not to have to spend hours on the computer today..but couldn’t quite tear myself away from Catesby entirely. I think I have now looked at every one of those 220 plates.

However I did get one drawing done of a seed pod that has been sitting on the table for a couple of weeks. It’s from the Cotton Rose or Confederate Rose, not a rose at all of course but Hibiscus mutabilis originally from southern China where it is also known as the Fairyland flower. At Leu Gardens there is a huge and showy bush which was covered with these lovely big flowers and admired by every person who walked by. The photo was taken in October. Mutabilis because the flowers open pure white and change colour as they fade from pale to deep pink. It is very intriguing to see this beautiful mixture of colours. There are huge buds and then these slightly fuzzy seed pods, which are equally attractive.

It arrived in the USA in Colonial times via southern European gardens. It had reached Rome in 1632 and was one of the earliest flowers to be brought out of China, which given its beauty is no surprise. The 10th Century Emperor, Meng Chang of Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan, ordered cotton roses to be planted on top of the entire city walls, earning it the name the “Cotton Rose City”. It is said that when the flowers were in full bloom, the city from a distance, looked like rippling pink silk. What a stunning and evocative image. It must have appeared like a strange and wonderful mirage to the average 10th century traveller.

This ” Golden Pheasant and Cotton Rose” was painted by the famous Emperor Huizong of the song dynasty.


This was a time of great culture in China and Huizong was a painter poet, calligrapher and musician with interests in architecture, garden design and philosophy. He wrote a treatise on tea and filled his court with painters but as Wiki puts it, “A true artist, Huizong neglected the army” which led to the eventual overthrow of the Song dynasty.

I, however, will be attending my armies today, ensuring they are warmly wrapped up in my sleevies ..it’s very cold today. Cold armies lead to cold handies which can’t draw…:)
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Cotton Rose Seed Pod

Leaf of the Day: The Identification of Ant and his Probable Home

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Ant has been very busy today, running about the drawing board and up and down the two desk lamps and while looking through the Myakka photographs yesterday I was reminded that I have now discovered his identity. Pinned to the canopy walkway tower at Myakka are information boards about the wildlife including this..

I recognised my little drawing companion at once who, it seems, rejoices in a name that is several times longer than himself. He is definitely one of the Skinny Dark Elongate Twig Ants, the Pseudomyrmex.
He might be P. ferruginea because they are some of the ants who live in the Bull’s Horn Acacia and I am now even more sure that he arrived with the Bull’s Horn Acacia thorns. He could be P. gracilis or even P.mexicanus Roger :)… The descriptions fit in every way, particularly the colouring. Reading more about these delicate little arboreal ants it seems they are often solitary and live on tiny insects and ( ignorance was bliss) they have quite a bite, but only when provoked or defending their tree. They inhabit twigs and thorns and hollow stems and make only small colonies.


I don’t yet have a good photo of my ant but this is P. gracilis from the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center here

The role of caretaker ants for various trees is fascinating. I wrote about this before here in relation to the Bull’s Horn Acacia and the wonderful Thomas Belt who observed the ant’s behaviour in 1868. They will attack any threat to their chosen tree ferociously and even clear the ground of vegetation to allow their favourite tree the best possible growing conditions, in return they get food and lodgings.
Perhaps Ant’s loyalties have now been transferred to me, although he doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of clearing the room of mosquitoes. He seems remarkably fit, healthy and happy with lots of small insects to feed on and the occasion drop of honey and an endless supply of new and exciting bits of twig, flowers, fruit and seedpods to play with. However I feel I should to take him back to Leu to his tree as he evaded the earlier repatriation. But there are moral complications. What if he would now be regarded as an outsider and attacked and killed.. How would I feel? But does he enjoy his solitary existence? Maybe are there really two of them and they are perfectly happy here. I shall have to attend to this dilemma soon.

The drawing is of one of the major thorns of the acacia in which Ant and his friends and relations would keep house. The entrance to this particular thorny residence is through the black hole in the part which looks like a bird’s head. The thorns are all hollow and this one is big, some 4 inches across. It’s shape is fabulous, looking like some modernist piece of sculpture, nature’s architecture at its Frank Gehry best and very fitting for my little skinny ant friend.
Oh, that I could have such an inspiring home.

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Ant’s Home, The Bull’s Horn Acacia Thorn.

Leaf of the Day: More Practice, More Bamboo..some definitions..

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I spent far too long with the bamboos today, but that is easy to do. ..in amongst the towering stands of Giant Timber Bamboo and Weavers Bamboo there is a quiet hidden world. If you wanted to stow away at Leu (something I have often considered) that would be the place to go. You would be quickly lulled to sleep by those quiet hollow tappings and the gentle rustlings and sighing, (one of my favourite beautifully descriptive words “sussuration” A faint, indistinct, or background sound resembling whispering applies here). It is no wonder that bamboo forests were the chosen refuge of Chinese hermits or that these beautiful plants have been the inspiration for so much poetry or art.

Wang Wei, 8th Century Tang Dynesty poet:

Alone I sit in the shade of the bamboo trees,
My strings I pluck, then long and loud I sing.
Deep in the forest, none knows I exist,
None but the moon, to me she comes, shining.

Lee Kan from the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368) was considered one the finest painters of bamboo. The painting of bamboo was a great art and required a lifetime’s study and practise and, as I have said before about many other art forms, it was a process of constant observation and refinement of technique until the simple beauty of line, shape and form were achieved. Their aim, to express the very essence of the plant, bird or rock they are depicting rather than botanical accuracy.

Bamboo was very special to the Chinese and became associated with the best moral characteristics, uprightness, modesty, openness and steadfastness.
Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) wrote :

“I can eat without meat, but I can’t live without bamboo. No meat makes people slim, no bamboo makes people meretricious. Slim people can put on weight again, but meretriciousness cannot be rooted out.”

I particularly liked this translation just for the use of the word “meretricious” which is a wonderfully descriptive word, as one definition puts it:
Resembling the arts of a harlot; alluring by false show; gaudily and deceitfully ornamental; tawdry; as, meretricious dress or ornaments.
A perfect word for the poem, being the complete antithesis of everything bamboo.

I did get a couple of sketches done and then my small practice piece,(for tight botanical paintings, the very antithesis of beautiful Chinese brushwork…sigh.. ) is part of a small philodendron of some kind. This is a particularly delicate split leafed variety which twines affectionately round various trees at the Gardens.
“philódendros” ..from the Greek, meaning “fond of trees”.. as I am.

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Bamboo sketches and Monstera Leaf

Leaf of the day: Some Texture Practice, Snakewood Leaf and Bamboo

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Today I opened two doors, which led me to worlds I could have stayed in for a very long time. One led to the world of Darwin and the other to the world of Bamboo. I have been transfixed all morning listening to the BBC’s programmes about Darwin on the radio and was then overwhelmed by the amount of information about Bamboo I saw on the Internet.

Of the many many things I have yet to explore at the Gardens, Bamboo is just one. Amongst the others are the palms, the pines, the cacti, the roses and camellias, not to mention the lilies the vines, the mulberry trees and on and on .. and generally anything with leaves too big to fit in my back pack, or dangle from the bike handlebars. The Elephant’s Ears are all bigger than I am, so precariously wobbling along with one one of these through the urban wastelands of Winter Park would be bound to excite the interest of the local sheriff, or at best incite ridicule, both of which I generally try to avoid. And then what would I do with it? It would take up 90% of my work room and I would have to flatten myself against the wall to be able to see any of it in perspective and I imagine it would quickly become the “elephant in the room” as I tried to ignore the problem of drawing it. So for these big subjects I either have to draw in situ or use photos. I will probably do a bit of both.

Yesterday and today I decided I needed some practise in painting texture in detail. (The next unit for the course is vegetables and texture must come into it). Two contrasting textures that I had to hand were the Snakewood leaf and these wonderful Bamboo sheaths. I have had them for some time. I know nothing about bamboo except that it has many and various uses, it is exceptionally beautiful and there are hundreds of different varieties. We used to have an unruly clump in the garden when I was young but nothing that ever grew to the towering heights of the ones here. I also did not know that bamboo stems were called “culms”. What I have sketched are the sheaths that protect the shoots and stems which are shrugged off as the stems grow.

I was captivated by these strange and beautiful things that littered the ground around the bamboos and brought 5 home, that was in September. They have some nasty prickly hairs on the outside which can be a skin irritant but the shapes are wonderful, simple and sculptural. I just put these 5 on the floor and sketched them as they were. The painted detail is from the edge of one. I have taken a few casual photographs of the bamboos at Leu but tomorrow I am going back to take a closer look.

I chose to do small sections just for the practice, but I have to admit I was reluctant to start them because this is slow, slow work. These are very small, only 3.5 inches by 4, too small and fiddly for my natural way of working. I am thinking they would be better and less time consuming 5 times the size or more. But this is supposed to be practice for botanical painting..so I just have to resign myself to the number 2 sables and knuckle down. The Snakewood leaf was particularly slow but I liked this section, it reminded me so much of the classic Corinthian capitals which were based on the acanthus leaves. There are a couple of acanthus plants in flower at Leu whose leaves I have been considering drawing but tomorrow my job is to find some more textures to try to paint. I am daunted by the 9,988 hours I still have left to become proficient.

By the way, thank you very much, both Phillip and Richard for letting me know that the pretty little orchid from the other day is the lawn orchid “Zeuxine strateumatica”, and yes Phillip, gorgeous name, I think I would like to be called Zeuxine, fame and fortune would inevitably throw themselves at my feet..
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Bamboo Sheaths and Some Texture Practice