NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Book Review: "Plants of the Qur’ān: History and Culture"

11/6/2023

"Plants of the Qur’ān, History and Culture" is a unique book. It's the first serious illustrated botanical, historical and cultural study of plants of the Middle East named in the Qur’ān.

The outer cover of the book

I've got an extremely extensive library of books about botanical art across a range of topics. Some are scientific, some focus on plants relating to a particular place, some relate to notable past masters of botanical illustration.

However, I don't think I've ever seen one before which is

rooted in an ethnobotanical survey looking at how the plants have been used in daily lives in different places for different purposes over time
grounded in scientific, taxonomic and etymological research by a leading botanist - Dr Shahina Ghazanfar, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, (Linnean Medal (Botany) 2021)
beautifully illustrated by a notable contemporary botanical illustrator working from life. Sue Wickison is an award-winning botanical illustrator who recently received the Linnean Society's Jill Smythies Award for Botanical Illustration in 2023.

Read more about their project and partnership below.

The main section of the book highlights thirty of the plants most prominent in the Qur’ān, with details on where the plant is mentioned in the Qur’ān text, detailed etymology, cultural history, and botanical description.

The Qur’an is a religious text that influences the lives of some 1.8 billion people who adhere to the Islamic faith. The main section of the book highlights thirty of the plants most prominent in the Qur’ān, with details on where the plant is mentioned in the Qur’ān text, detailed etymology, cultural history, and botanical description.

While the contents of this new book are extremely well researched and very learned ( with a very impressive reference section and bibliography) it is worth noting that it is also extremely accessible to a wider audience and in particular those interested in

the botany of plants of the Middle East - notably in relation to familiar food plants including ginger, garlic, dates, pomegranate, olives, grapes, onions, lentils etc.
the history and role of plants in Islamic culture and the Qur’ān
their use in relation to food, medicine, beauty, fragrance and shade.
the development of a record of native plants

As such it's going to have a very wide audience - way beyond the scientists and botanical art fans.

This is currently reflected in the popularity of the associated exhibition at The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew. Since it opened at the beginning of April, there have been lots and lots of visitors to see Sue Wickison's botanical paintings, in part driven by the wide coverage the exhibition has received in the press and on social media.

The comments book at the front desk is also very complementary and conveys how impressed people are by the paintings - and the context in terms of culture, history and place.

"I was in heaven as I walked through Sue Wickison's Plants of the Qur'an. Outstanding!"

"Absolutely beautiful paintings with lots of information. Thoroughly enjoyable."

visitors to the exhibition

A collaborative enterprise in art and science

Two women are responsible for this project and this book. Special mention must also be made of Dr Gwilym Lewis of Kew Gardens who was the 'matchmaker' for this very productive partnership.

Their collaboration over the last six years has resulted in a very impressive exhibition and a very impressive book.

This stunning book brings the plants of the Qur’ān to life. Combining art and science, the plants are beautifully portrayed by artist Sue Wickison, and their fascinating stories revealed by botanist Shahina Ghazanfar.
Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE

Dr Shahina A. Ghazanfar (Linnean Medal (Botany) 2021) and Sue Wickison (Linnean Society Jill Smythies Award fir Botanical Illustration 2023)

The book has been written by an accomplished botanist, natural historian and field naturalist with a distinguished publication record. Dr Shahina A. Ghazanfar (Linnean Medal (Botany) 2021) is a Senior Botanist and an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and a Gibbs Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

She undertook in-depth research for this book which has led to new findings in relation to:

knowledge about the historical and cultural significance of these plants, and their traditional and present uses,
unpicking the taxonomy and etymology and hence the development of local as well as scientific names in relation to specific plants.

She has also provided

a detailed exploration of the context in which they are mentioned in the Qur’ān and other religious texts
scientific descriptions of what the plants look like - in terms of flora, fruit, leaves and morphological structures and forms

The plants and the book have been beautifully illustrated and brought to life by Sue Wickison who lives in New Zealand. She is a former scientific illustrator at Kew who has contributed to various scientific publications and has been awarded an RHS Gold Medal and, in 2023, the Jill Smythies Award for botanical illustration by the Linnean Society. (See Sue Wickison to receive The Jill Smythies Award 2023).

Sue's paintings have been drawn from living specimens in the wild and cultivation - mainly from the United Arab Emirates and Oman - and at home in New Zealand where she was able to grow some of the plants from seed collected on her various travels.

One notable feature of her paintings is how much larger they are than conventional botanical paintings for scientific publications. You can appreciate the scale in my photograph below.

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Video Tour of "Plants of the Qur’ān"

11/6/2023

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Below you can find a 25 minute Video Tour which I filmed with Sue Wickison in the exhibition of "Plants of the Qur’ān", her collection of 30 botanical paintings currently on display at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

The Video I've made of that tour has now been uploaded to YouTube (and can be viewed below the page break below). In it Sue Wickison introduces a number of the larger paintings in the exhibition. It's particularly relevant to:

all those botanical art fans who cannot get to Kew to see the exhibition
all those interested in this significant ethnobotanical project who would like to hear more about
- her 30 large botanical illustrations covering the 25 plants highlighted in the Qur’ān;
- how they were developed as part of a project over a period of years
- features of individual paintings
- interesting stories about finding the plants - and why it's always best to work from botanical specimens collected in the field.

HOW WE DID THE TOUR

When the exhibition of botanical illustrations by Sue Wickison opened at Kew I visited it on three consecutive days - for two previews and then this video!

The third day was the morning before the exhibition opened to the public. The people who run the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art had very kindly agreed to open the gallery to Sue and me so we could make a video tour of the exhibition while Sue was in England.

Our plan was essentially that it should be a tour of the exhibition -pure and simple. However there is no script she and I are having a conversation which I'm filming on my iPhone as we move around Galleries 1 and 2.

You can

EITHER view the video via the link below
OR visit the YouTube website where you can then opt to view it at different (larger) sizes

The better the device you watch it on, the more you will appreciate the nature of this project and the work involved. As Sue says in the video, some of the paintings took hundreds of hours to research, develop and paint.

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The Coronation Invitation - by Andrew Jamieson

8/4/2023

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It was a wonderful surprise to see that King Charles's interests in plants and natural history are reflected in the official invitation to the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on 6th May 2022.

The Official Invitation to the Coronation on 6 May 2023

About the Invitation

The Invitation has been sent to the 2,000 guests at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey. The Guests are a mix of what used to be called "the great and the good" but might more accurately described on this occasion as:

members of the Royal Family
important politicians and other people who represent offices of state - within the UK and other countries
some 850 valued members of society: community volunteers who have been awarded a British Empire Medal and key workers - particularly those identified as heroes of the Pandemic You can read about some of them on this page

Design of the Invitation

The original artwork for the invitation was hand-painted in watercolour and gouache. The design has then been reproduced and printed on recycled card, with gold foil detailing. â€‹

The British wildflower meadow bordering the invitation features lily of the valley, cornflowers, wild strawberries, dog roses, bluebells, and a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, together with wildlife including a bee, a butterfly, a ladybird, a wren and a robin. Flowers appear in groupings of three, signifying The King becoming the third monarch of his name.
The Coronation Invitation

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A NEW Giant Water Lily - discovered and illustrated by Lucy Smith

4/7/2022

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The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have today announced the publication of a paper about the discovery of Victoria boliviana a brand NEW Giant Water Lily. Moreover it is now officially recognised to be the LARGEST in the world.

Oddly, the newly-named Victoria boliviana has actually been sitting in Kew’s Herbarium for 177 years - alongside Victoria amazonica and Victoria cruziania..

A multi-disciplinary team of Kew experts - spearheaded by botanical illustrator Lucy T. Smith and Kew's tropical horticulturist Carlos Magdalena - have now revealed the plant to be new to science – the first giant water lily "discovery" in more than a century..

Lucy and Carlos with Victoria boliviana in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens

The paper’s authors decided to name the species in honour of Bolivian partners and the South American home of the waterlily where it grows in the aquatic ecosystems of Llanos de Moxos.
With flowers that turn from white to pink and bearing spiny petioles, V. boliviana is now the largest waterlily in the world, with leaves growing as wide as 3 metres in the wild.
The current record for the largest species is held by La Rinconada Gardens in Bolivia where leaves reached 3.2 metres.

The announcement is of particular interest to botanical illustrators for two reasons:

the discovery was stimulated by Lucy Smith's major personal project to illustrate the giant water lilies at Kew - after she had illustrated the smallest waterlily in the world.
Lucy provided the initial important evidence to prompt a major scientific investigation by a team of people after she demonstrated that one of the waterlilies she was investigating, documenting and recording was actually different to the two known giant waterlilies, as illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch in the 19th century.

You can read Lucy's account of the project in her new blog post on the topic - which she has been writing for the last four years - and provides the botanical illustrator's perspective on this amazing story of plant discovery - see Victoria boliviana - a new species of Giant Waterlily | Lucy Smith Blog (4th July 2022)

Delimitation of the Giant Water Lily Victoria:
the Scientific Project and Article

The title and authors of the original research article "Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation"

So it came to pass that, this morning at 5am, a new scientific paper Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation was published in the journal "Frontiers in Plant Science".

This paper lays out the evidence for:

the discovery of the first giant waterlily of the Victoria species in over a century - to be called Victoria boliviana
the declaration of a NEW largest waterlily in the world.

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The bonus of buying second-hand botanical art books

26/4/2017

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Three catalogues from solo exhibitions by Mary Grierson

I have a serious botanical art book addiction. There's nothing nicer than getting stuck into an hour or more of browsing through what's on offer from vintage booksellers with a good collection of botanical art books.

Well nothing nicer than the book you bought turning up and being so much better than you were expecting! There's something about books produced in the past which yells "quality" and if you've got a "very good" or "as new" version then I'm in heaven.

However what's better still is the fact that botanical art book owners tend to be very nice people - and they pass on extras in their books that they don't tell you about until you get them.

Which is how I come to be the owner of some seriously archival class documents about Mary Grierson (1912-2012) (who I currently have listed on the 20th Century Botanical Artists page on the website) when I purchased a copy of her book An English Florilegium

The image at the top of the page is of the exhibition catalogues for three solo exhibitions - which probably each deserve a blog post in their own right!

They are- from left to right:

Hedgerows of England - an exhibition of watercolour drawings by Mary Grierson at Spink (20th November - 7h December 1979)
Mary Grierson - An English Florilegium - Botanical Watercolour Drawings of the Tradescant Legacy at Spink (4th - 27th November 1987) - this one is annotated with prices in pencil and relates to the book I bought.
Mary Grierson - Plants of the Hawaiian Islands and other Recent Watercolours at Spink (22nd May - 1 st June 1990) this one is also annotated with prices in pencil

They came in a copy of An English Florilegium which I will be doing a book review of shortly alongside developing a brand new page on the website devoted to Mary Grierson.

Of late I've become seriously appreciative of catalogues from exhibitions of botanical art. They tell you so much about the scope and nature of the art but also details of the artist which often never reaches formal publication in a book. For the serious student of botanical art, I'd very much recommend paying serious attention to exhibition catalogues.

You might also like to think about you and your work are recorded in solo exhibitions - for posterity and future collectors!

About Mary Grierson (1912-2012)

Mary Grierson in brief:

born of Scottish parents in Bangor in North Wales
painted plants from a young age
worked in the WAAF as an interpreter for the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
took up botanical art 'properly' at age 48!
Studied botanical illustration under John Nash RA
Botanical artist / illustrator working for Kew Gardens 1960-1972.
She won five RHS Gold Medals
plus the Veitch Memorial Medal of the RHS, and later their Victoria Medal of Honour.
She continued to work after she retired, producing illustrations for "Hedgerows of England" and "Coastal Plants of England" and published a Florilegium of the Flora of Hawaii

When she died I wrote this blog post In praise of the older artist - Mary Anderson Grierson. in a celebration of her achievements in botanical art most of which came after the age of 60!

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About Spink

Note: Spink is Spink & Son Ltd who at the time were located at 5 King Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6QS. They are now located at 69 Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 4ET. However, the gallery which sold botanical art closed just after the turn of the millennium.

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Recording Heritage Plants #1: The Fortingall Yew

14/12/2015

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One very important aspect of botanical illustration is making a record of important heritage plants and trees.

This is the first in a series of posts I intend to write about important botanical paintings - or opportunities to paint plants to record an important event or a transformation.

Last month it became apparent that an important opportunity may exist in Scotland for those who might like to record an ancient tree that is apparently changing gender - from male to female. This October it grew three red berries!

The Fortingall Yew

The Fortingall Yew is an ancient heritage tree (Taxus baccata) of international importance. It's believed to be one of the oldest trees in Europe and is almost certainly the oldest tree in the UK.

It's estimated to be around 2,000 years old but could be as old as 5,000 years. It can't be aged on the basis of tree rings as the trunk has changed over time. The trunk was measured as being 56 feet by Thomas Pennent in 1769. However the centre has rotted and it has now split into several separate stems or offshoots.

The markers in the ground mark the original girth of the trunk. The divided upright trunk is what remains after the bulk of it has rotted away. Via Wikimedia Commons | By Mogens Engelund (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The tree is rooted in Fortingall churchyard between Killin and Aberfeldy in Perthshire.

A tree that is changing sex

The reason the tree has been getting a lot of coverage across the world of late is that it's apparently changing sex!

An article Oldest Yew changes sex (23 October 2015) in the Botanic Stories blog of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh triggered the interest. As it indicates

....the Fortingall Yew is a male tree. Yews are normally either male or female and in autumn and winter sexing yews is generally easy. Males have small spherical structures that release clouds of pollen when they mature. Females hold bright red berries from autumn into winter. It was, therefore, quite a surprise to me to find a group of three ripe red berries on the Fortingal yew this October when the rest of the tree was clearly male.
Oldest Yew changes sex

Apparently gender morphing by yews and other conifers is not unheard of but tends to be associated with the crown - although there are a few species which routinely grow both male and female parts.

In this species gender change is rare. In this particular instance just one branch has decided to be female - and grow three bright red berries in October - while the rest of the tree continues to be a traditional male!

It'll be interesting to see what happens next Autumn and whether the berries appear again.

I suggest botanical artists form an orderly queue next October to paint it!

Links:
BBC | Berries show ancient Fortingall yew tree is 'changing sex' (2 November 2015)
Visit Scotland: How to get there

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