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.

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"

Andrew Brown developed his skill in botanical illustration through his doctoral work on palynological vegetation history and during a career as an educator in the independent school sector. After retirement, he devoted himself to illustration fulltime. His detailed paintings of Alaskan wildflowers based on drawings done from life, have been exhibited at the Society and elsewhere. Other paintings have been selected for inclusion in limited edition botanical works, such as the Highgrove Florilegium. The black and white illustrations accompanying new species descriptions and floristic treatments demonstrate his skill in depicting detail, as well as the overall aspect of a plant, ensuring they are both faithful to the specimen from which they are drawn and aid in identification. He also contributes to the promotion of excellence in botanical illustration through his participation in societies and in botanical illustration workshops.
Citation for 2022 Jill Smythies Award

About Andrew Brown

Dr. Andrew Brown

RHS Judge Andrew Brown providing feedback to Jackie Isard on her RHS Gold Medal winning exhibit - at the RHS Botanical Art Show preview day earlier this month.

Dr Andrew Brown giving a talk - From Plant to Plate - at Kew about producing a scientific illustration on the Worldwide Day of Botanical Art 18th May 2018

Andrew Brown with his Voodoo Lily in the 'British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection' exhibition at Kew in 2016

About the Jill Smythies Prize - and the Linnean Society
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The hanging format picture provided to RHS by Melinda Edstein for her exhibit "Red flowering, bird pollinated Australian flowers"

RHS Silver Gilt Medals for Botanical Art 2022
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An exhibit is only as good as the weakest painting.

Two Western Australia Eucalypts by Andrew Carr

The RHS Special Awards
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Best Botanical Artwork 2022 
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Yoko Harada with Shirley Sherwood on Friday.

The Genus Arisaema in Japan by Yoko Harada

my first tutor is Elaine Searle and I have graduated RBGE diploma course and my local teacher now is Mieko Ishikawa in Japan. 
Yoko Harada

Best Botanical Art Exhibit 2022​

Viola montagnei by Nigel Pickering (1957 - 2021). RHS Botanical Art and Photography Show 2022

Notoleptopus decaisnei, Esmee Winkel, The Netherlands

The Margaret Flockton Award

Margaret Flockton Award is unique amongst international art awards, focusing exclusively on contemporary scientific botanical illustration, as distinct from botanical art RBG Sydney Flickr Album Margaret Flockton Award 2021

Reproducability is extremely important, because the nature of our work is that it is reproduced so anything too delicate can be lost on reduction.
​Composition will usually be the thing that wins a work. If you can make a composition sing in terms of the way it tells the story of the plant you're doing well.
Comments by Lesley Elkan from the Facebook Live Event

About the Prizewinners

I photographed Esmee Winkel with her RHS Gold Medal scientific botanical illustrations in 2016 - just after she'd given me her best tips for cleaning Rotring technical pens!

Esmee's illustrated has been awarded the First Prize for its exacting skilful technique and perfectly balanced composition. The clarity of the strong line is complemented by the perfectly rendered elements, with a concise stipple techniques used only where required to convincglu describe form. Line weight is also used to describe shadows and depth. The illustration reveals the life cycle and key features of 
​Judge's Comments

For the excellence of her depictions of plants for scientific use, including the detailed portrayal of their diagnostic characteristics, Alice Tangerini is our 2020 winner of the Jill Smythies Award. In addition to illustrating new species, Alice has illustrated multiple taxa from the same group for the same publication, such that the details of the drawings can be used to distinguish the species.

Since 1972, Alice has made diagnostic illustrations for over 1,000 plant species in pen and ink, graphite, and more recently in digital media, for a variety of publications. Using mainly herbarium specimens as her resource material, she has prepared these illustrations to portray the species in a realistic manner with necessary reconstruction to remove the artefacts of drying and physical damage. Significant taxonomic characters have been enlarged with the aid of a microscope to facilitate their use in species descriptions. 

Over the years, the detail and accuracy of her drawings and examinations of the specimens have resulted in authors changing descriptions, based on details observed by Alice that had escaped the botanists’ notice. For instance, her detailed examination of a proposed new species of bromeliad resulted in the production of a newly written, enhanced description. As a result, the authors, Lyman B. Smith and Harold Robinson, decided to name the new species Navia aliciae in her honour. Such collaboration with scientists in describing a taxon is the hallmark of exemplary botanical illustration.
The Jill Smythies Award 2020

​About The Jill Smythies Award
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A medal and £1000 to a botanical artist for outstanding, diagnostically relevant, published illustrations.

Established in 1986 by the late Mr B E Smythies FLS, in honour of his wife, the late Florence Mary Smythies ("Jill"), whose career as a botanical artist was cut short by an accident to her right hand.

​Awarded to a botanical artist in recognition of excellence in published illustrations in aid of plant identification, with the emphasis on botanical accuracy and the accurate portrayal of diagnostic characteristics.

About Alice Tangerini
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