NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

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

4/7/2022

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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