Friends of Silver Falls Native Plant Illustration Project- Getting started!
This is the second blog in a series I’m writing about a large native plant illustration commission I received from the Friends of Silver Falls State Park (FOSF). To read the first blog click here.
Detail of Scouler’s corydalis, Corydalis scouleri, from my older sketchbook.
Tús maith, leath na hoibre, A good start is half the work!
Irish Proverb
When I first received this commission I was very excited: so many wonderful species and so much potential for good work, but my head began to spin when I thought about the scale of the job ahead of me (thirty native plant species). I realized immediately that the project would involve many comprehensive studies of the different growing stages of each plant. I knew too that if I wanted to do a good job I needed a good plan. But by the time the project finally started it was June and Oregon was beginning to experience its worst drought on record. I could feel the panic rising as I watched many of the native species on the list wither before my eyes. To calm my nerves I focused on the art materials I’d need, starting with the right sketchbook. I had already begun to make my own for other projects and knew I would do the same for this one but I wasn’t sure what page dimensions to use.
Finding the right sketchbook!
Study of Scouler’s corydalis, Corydalis scouleri, from my older homemade sketchbook.
Feeling the panic nipping at my heels I began drawing Scouler’s corydalis, Corydalis scouleri, (in bloom in my own garden at the time). I used a homemade sketchbook I already had – made from Fabriano Artistico Extra White Watercolor Paper. I realized very quickly, however, that the pages were too small. I love the brightness and versatility of this paper, which I use for graphite as well as watercolor studies, but I needed bigger pages.
Making my own sketchbooks for the project.
Luckily my local art store had a sale in Fabriano Artistico Extra White (140 lb, 300 gsm) at the time. I bought 22×30 inch (559 x 762 mm) sheets and divided each one into four x 11×15 inch (279 x 381 mm) pages. I then had them spiral bound into sketchbooks of 12 pages at my local printer. I thought, rather than having one large sketchbook, dividing the pages up like this would make it easier to manage- and safer. Damage or loss of my sketchbook would be a real setback- especially if all my plant studies were in one. By splitting up the pages this way the sketchbook is lighter too and more manageable. I can study about 10 plants per sketchbook and when full move onto the next.
My first FOSF sketchbook of 12, spiral bound pages. The cover (printed on my Epson printer) shows a pen and ink illustration of Western tiger lily, Lilium columbium, created previously. It is one of the native plants on my project list (shown below).
Friends of Silver Falls Native Plant list included it in the sketchbook.
The finished botanical illustrations.
The finished botanical illustrations will be reproduced on 11×16 inch (279 x 406 mm) sheets (similar to an herbarium specimen sheet) so my sketchbook page dimensions, at 11×15 inches (279 x 381 mm), help me visualize how much plant information can fit onto that size sheet. I’ve already begun using my first sketchbook and it’s working well so far. The only change I will make to the second and third will be to insert lighter tracing paper sheets between the watercolor pages so that I can protect them better. I’ve made a tús maith (good start) I think. I will let you know how the “other half” of the project goes in due course.
Aislinn Adams
Blog #2 Friends of Silver Falls State Park Native Plant Illustration Project.
Native plant Illustrations for Silver Falls State Park- a timely enquiry leads to a dream commission.
Pen and ink illustration. Western ground ginger, Asarum caudatum, one of the native plants growing at Silver Falls State Park.
The Friends of Silver Falls State Park
Earlier this year I visited the Nature Store at the South Falls area of Silver Falls State Park. I was hoping the attractive gift store might be interested in carrying some of my botanical art greeting cards and was finally making enquiries. The aptly named Nature Store is housed in the restored historic log cabin to the north of the South Falls Lodge and is run by the Friends of Silver Falls (FOSF) non-profit. Since their founding in 1986 the FOSF’s mission has been to fund educational and interpretive programs at the park and the Nature Store is the main source of that funding. As a very active voluntary organization they have a long tradition of collaboration with the park staff. Being Oregon’s largest, Silver Falls State Park attracts over a million visitors annually so the FOSF provide valuable help on a weekly basis as well as at busy times of the year like the annual Mother’s Day Wildflower Festival.
Perfect Timing!
As soon as I made enquiries at the store a friendly shop assistant (a FOSF volunteer) handed me their administrator’s business card advising me to email her. This I did as soon as I got home and was promptly rewarded with a reply. My timing couldn’t have been better as it turned out, not only was the FOSF interested in selling my native plant greeting cards, they also had a project they were deliberating upon and wondered if I might be interested- illustrating a series of thirty native plant identification sheets to be displayed at the lodge. I could hardly contain my excitement and of course I said yes immediately.
Red flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum. One of my native plant greeting cards that can be found at the Friends of Silver Falls State Park Nature Store.
Old herbarium specimens to be replaced by new botanical illustrations made possible by the Maroe Brown Trust.
Regular visitors may remember browsing through a set of herbarium specimens, housed in a wooden box, that sat on a counter in the lodge dining room. For many years these specimens (provided by the FOSF) helped visitors identify native plants growing in the park. Over time the popular specimens succumbed to the wear and tear of visitor use and had to be removed. At the time of my enquiry the FOSF had just received a generous bequest allowing them to consider replacing the old with new botanical specimens, however, in the end they decided to use botanical illustrations instead. It was my good fortune to walk into the Nature Store at just the right time and thanks to the generous bequest of Maroe Brown – long time FOSF volunteer and native plant lover- I have this great opportunity to work on the new FOSF series of native plant identification sheets.
Illustrating thirty native species-a long term project.
Illustrating thirty native species will take time, several seasons in fact, but I look forward to the challenge. It’s not often that one has the opportunity and funding to really get to know a plant subject: to study and record its different growing stages and most importantly, to observe it in its natural habitat. At 9,200 acres, the park (often called the “Crown jewel” of the Oregon State Park system) is vast. I look forward to exploring its diverse regions as I search for the native plants on the list – and I hope you can join me on this botanical adventure as I write about it here.
Aislinn Adams
Blog #1 Friends of Silver Falls State Park Native Plant Illustration Project.
The saga of the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection and the Irish nurseryman Bernard McMahon’s unwitting role in its fate!
This week I’m posting a different botanical illustration of the Pacific Northwest native plant named for Bernard McMahon- and not one of my own. This actual botanical illustration was very possibly created in McMahon’s home. To find out how read on.
Tall Oregon grape. Mahonia aquifolium syn. Berberis aquifolium. Illustrated by Frederick Pursh in his Flora Americae Septentrionalis, 1814. According to Joseph Ewan (Frederick Pursh 1774-1820 and his Botanical Associates) you can see where Pursh traced the plant from the dried specimen in the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection.
The Lewis and Clark Plant Collection and Bernard McMahon’s role in its fate.
While researching my last blog – Nurseryman Bernard McMahon and the Oregon native plant with an Irish connection– I promised to return to the story of Bernard McMahon’s, sometimes unwitting, role in the fortunes of the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection.
“The convoluted history of the seeds and plants collected by Lewis and Clark, their passage from Washington and Oregon into the botanical record was nearly as arduous as the journey itself… Working largely behind the scenes, one obscure figure, Bernard McMahon, assumed a primary role in nurturing the seeds from field to page.”
Robert S. Cox
From the Pacific Northwest to McMahon’s nursery.
In order to understand how this happened let us go back a little and look at the history of this famed collection once it arrived back in the eastern U.S. The collection was shipped back east in two stages. The first shipment was sent back in 1805 and the second brought back by Lewis & Clark in 1806. There were two parts to the collection- the dried specimens and the live seeds. The dried specimens were sent to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia where, it was understood, Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton would assist Lewis in preparing their description for publication. The seeds were divided between McMahon and William Hamilton who were to propagate and grow them in secret until such time as Lewis would bring the account of his travels and the plant collection to print. Apparently, McMahon proceeded immediately to germinate the seeds whereas Hamilton was slower to set to the task.
From under his nose!
While Jefferson and Lewis were counseling McMahon to keep the precious live plant collection secret fearing some unscrupulous botanist might, on discovering its existence at McMahon’s nursery, rob Lewis of his right to describing them first, in the end it was the dried specimens that were more at risk of being spirited away. Ironically, this was not done by some outside interloper but by the very person McMahon recommended to assist Lewis bring his work to publication; and it was this assistant who ultimately published the collection first, not in the United States but in England – adding insult to injury.
MacMahon helps speed up the plant collection’s journey to print.
For a variety of reasons both Barton and Lewis delayed in preparing the material for publication. McMahon, wishing to be helpful and possibly anxious to shorten the “quarantine” period of the secret plants he had in his care, recommended the young German botanist Frederick Pursh for the job. Pursh was probably already familiar with some of the dried specimens, having been employed by Barton at the time that the first shipment of plants had arrived back east.
Difficult working conditions bring Pursh to MacMahon’s home.
By all accounts Barton was a difficult person to work for and things did not go well between him and Pursh- so much so that by early 1807 Pursh had moved into MacMahon’s home and begun working on Lewis’ plants there. At this time Lewis was Governor of the Louisiana Territory and living in St. Louis. MacMahon wrote several times to St. Louis seeking instruction on Pursh’s behalf but with no success. He also took it upon himself, while waiting for the arrival of Lewis, to pay Pursh to describe the dried specimens (which had been brought from Barton’s Herbarium.) Pursh had the work more or less completed by early 1809 and grew restless waiting for further instruction. However, in 1809 Lewis died in tragic circumstances. Clark, as executor of Lewis’ will, took over responsibility for the collection material but, while MacMahon kept the live and dried specimens in safe keeping for Clark, Pursh left (or should I say absconded?) with the drawings and descriptions- and as it turns out some of the dried specimens as well.
Somehow, amazingly, during all this time (over a year) while Pursh was living at MacMahon’s and working on the collection, he never discovered the live specimens growing at the nursery (Joseph Ewan- Frederick Pursh 1774-1820 and his Botanical Associates.)
Finally published in London, England.
A description of the well-travelled collection was finally published in England by Pursh in his Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1814.) It is not clear to me if Pursh was ever properly reimbursed for the work he did for Lewis. Nonetheless does that excuse his behavior? Does a combination of frustrated ambition and impecuniosity justify his conduct? His mysterious disappearance from the U. S. and reappearance in London a couple of years later caused much speculation and criticism amongst American botanists at the time and maybe it is for this reason that his Flora never sold well.
What of the live plant specimens at McMahon’s Nursery?
According to Ewan the first evidence of McMahon advertising plants for sale from the collection was 1815. Sadly he didn’t live long enough to benefit from such sales, dying the following year. But as I mentioned in my last blog, his life and work was memorialized by the botanist Thomas Nuttall who, in 1818, named the genus of shrubs Mahonia for him in his flora, The Genera of North American Plants. According to the record this flora was much more successful than Pursh’s.
Aislinn Adams
Nurseryman Bernard MacMahon and the Oregon native plant with an Irish connection.
Mahonia aquifolium syn. Berberis aquifolium.
© Aislinn Adams 2008
Tall Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium- Oregon’s state flower and its Irish name!
I’ve always marveled at how something as fragile as a plant can end up thousands of miles from its original home: collected and pressed into herbarium specimens or more amazingly, kept alive on long transcontinental journeys and treacherous sea voyages. Somehow they avoid destruction and are finally transplanted into a foreign soil and there, not only survive but thrive.
I must confess I feel a certain affinity with these well-travelled plants. I am also a transplant from a far off land having emigrated to the U.S. from Ireland. However, my journey was pretty uneventful and mundane when compared to the fortunes of these early pioneering plants and their adventurous collectors who often risked everything to bring them back.
As a horticulturist and botanic artist I feel not a small debt to these enduring plants and their collectors. So, when I post my botanical illustrations, instead of writing about their cultivation I prefer to write the human stories behind the plants. The story behind this week’s botanical illustration, tall Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium, contains all the elements of a good plant story but it also has another important attraction for me: it connects the place of my birth with my new home in Oregon.
Two scientific names for one plant!
The connection to Ireland lies in the second scientific name for this genus of shrubs. For some reason Oregon grape has two scientific names- Berberis and Mahonia. Generally speaking, botanists use the first name while horticulturists use the second. As a horticulturist I learned to name the genus Mahonia and even though I have been aware of both names for many years it has never bothered me which one was used. Now that I’ve discovered the Irish connection I’m more inclined to favor the latter.
Years ago in Ireland I chose Mahonia aquifolium for my first garden. Back then I didn’t give the plant’s scientific name much thought. It wasn’t until I moved to the Pacific Northwest and discovered Mahonia aquifolium growing in the wild that I began to wonder about its Irish-sounding name.
Irish Nurseryman Bernard MacMahon
That is how I discovered the Irish nurseryman Bernard MacMahon (1775-1816) . Maybe it was because MacMahon had to leave Ireland in a hurry that so little is known about his early life other than he emigrated (probably from Ulster) around 1796. (Some historians suggest that he fled government persecution due to his political leanings towards the United Irishmen.) Fortunately we know a lot more about his life in the U.S.
MacMahon Nursery and Seedhouse.
By the early 1800’s MacMahon had established a successful nursery and seed business in Philadelphia where many of the up and coming young botanists of the day would gather (including William Darlington and Thomas Nuttall.) However, MacMahon’s main “claim to fame” was his popular gardening book The American Gardener’s Calendar– the first book of its kind to be published in the U.S. It ran to 11 editions and had many admirers, one of whom was President Thomas Jefferson. So impressed was Jefferson with The Calendar that he became a regular correspondent with MacMahon, often trading plants and seeds.
Lewis and Clarke’s Plant and seed collection.
1806, the year The Calendar was published was also the year that Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery returned from the Pacific Northwest. As directed by Jefferson the expedition returned with a trove of plants and seeds collected along the way. Jefferson expected Lewis to publish their description as soon as possible. Unfortunately, due to his untimely death, publication was delayed. The story of this famous plant and seed collection is an interesting but complicated one with many twists and turns and MacMahon’s, sometimes unwitting, role in its fortunes will be the subject of my next blog. In the meantime, for the purpose of this story, all you need to know is that the collection passed through the grasp of several individuals before finally arriving in the capable hands of MacMahon.
“Classified” seeds!
This was no ordinary collection. Jefferson passed on the larger portion of the collection’s seed to MacMahon with strict instructions: as federal property he was forbidden to propagate any of the seeds for commercial use and the collection had to be kept secret while its description awaited publication. In spite of these restrictions MacMahon set to propagating and growing the seeds with great diligence and skill and the plants flourished. He never really benefited from the plants commercially, nor from being able to advertise their existence at his nursery but in the end he was honored posthumously for his efforts. In 1818 Thomas Nuttall named this genus of shrubs for him in his publication The Genera of North American Plants. I suppose one could say the reward for his hard work, loyalty and discretion was immortality in a plant’s name- for which I am very glad – because every time I see this plant I feel the connection between Ireland and Oregon and the distance recedes.
Aislinn Adams
Botanical illustrations become rubber stamps for Spring.
© 2011 Aislinn Adams
Fawn lily, Erythronium oregonum
Botanical Illustrations become rubber stamps for Spring.
I’m delighted to announce that twelve of my black and white botanical illustrations are now available as rubber stamps. I’ve just signed my first license contract with the rubber stamp company Impression Obsession.
Spring is finally in the air and the inspiration for this rubber stamp collection. There are lots of blossoms to choose from- Florida dogwood, Chinese plum, peach blossom, fawn lily, passion flower, rhododendron, lily of the valley, daffodil and crab apple. I am particularly happy to see the American native plant in the selection- fawn lily, Erythronium oregonum – a favorite from the Pacific northwest where I live.
Check out the complete collection of my new botanical illustration rubber stamps at this link.
Aislinn Adams
My First Blog and Last Botanical Illustration
My last botanical illustration for the Washington Post- Southern magnolia Alta
As I write this, my first blog, I also work on my last illustration for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post newspaper. I have been producing a weekly botanical illustration for this column for ten years. My last illustration is of a southern magnolia Alta, Magnolia grandiflora “Alta”- an upright, columnar, tree. I’m glad to have it as the subject of my last illustration as I love its flowers and leaves. I want to do a good job, create something beautiful. There are southern magnolias growing on my street here in Salem, Oregon but it is March and not the season for blooms. I could draw the whole tree in its conical shape but I don’t think that would be as interesting as a close-up drawing of its large, dramatic white flowers and big, shiny, evergreen leaves.
Native plants of the Appalachian Piedmont Region.
In search of some references I “google” southern magnolia Alta and the first image I click on is from Mt Cuba Gardens, Delaware in the eastern United States. I take this as a good omen as I know the garden well. I had been an intern there in the spring of 1997, my first year in the USA. Mt Cuba is well known for its extensive collection of plants native to the Appalachian Piedmont Region. I sought an internship there so that I could study these native plants. That spring at Mt Cuba I was surrounded by beauty. Every day I watched the garden come alive as a diverse array of spring ephemeral flowers woke up from their winter slumber. I felt very lucky to be able to work in such a bewitching place alongside thoughtful gardeners who were very passionate about what they did and shared their knowledge generously. As I pour over photos of Mt Cuba and wander down memory lane I picture myself in those pictures amongst the plants. Even after so many years the garden is still familiar to me. I recognize where I worked and remember how I had carefully stepped between the creeping phlox and bluets in search of any weeds that might have escaped attention.
Spring blooms in the eastern United States.
My first spring in the eastern United States is a vivid and forceful memory. I had no idea how dazzling a display nature could bring forth. I was totally bowled over by the spectacle. I wonder if many of you, having grown up with this annual display, are now so accustomed to it that you take it for granted. Being from Ireland and seeing it for the first time that spring was intoxicating. I was charmed and delighted by every new plant discovery and marveled at what seemed like a never-ending parade of blooms- red buds, choke cherries, tulip poplars, mountain laurels, dogwoods- so many species, so much color. Later that same year I was delighted once again by the southern magnolias.
I’ve heard that our strongest sense for memory is smell but my memory of that first spring is an extremely powerful visual one. I find it difficult to pull myself away from the Mt Cuba pictures. It is an effort to come back to today and my last botanical illustration for the “Digging In column”. I have a deadline and time is slipping away. The southern magnolia Alta beckons.
Aislinn Adams
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