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Peony “Anne Rosse”- the human story behind the plant.

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Peony “Anne Rosse”, Paeonia “Anne Rosse”.

Peony “Anne Rosse” – behind every cultivated plant there lies a human story.

This week I promised to write more about Birr Castle, Co. Offaly, Ireland, and it’s place in plant collecting history. For this purpose I post my botanical watercolor illustration Peony “Anne Rosse” from the series I painted for an exhibit in Birr Castle’s Visitor Center. I choose this peony not only because it is a beautiful Irish ‘cultivar’ (cultivated variety) but also because it’s story is central to Birr Castle’s horticultural legacy.

Countess Anne Rosse.

Anne Rosse, for whom the peony is named, was Countess Anne Rosse, wife of Michael Parsons, the 6th Earl of Rosse. The Parsons family has lived at Birr Castle in the Irish midlands for almost 400 years and it was Michael’s father, the 5th Earl of Rosse, who laid the foundation for the extensive plant collection for which Birr demesne is now known. However, it was under the careful guidance of Michael and Anne that this foundation was built upon and developed.

A shared passion for plant collecting and gardening.

The couple were very well matched. Anne Rosse, neé Messels, came from a strong gardening background and as the daughter of Leonard Messels of Nymans, a well-known garden in the south of England, she had “a profound devotion to gardening” (Birr Castle website). Michael, the 6th Earl of Rosse, was an experienced plant collector and undoubtedly their choice of China as a honeymoon destination in 1935 was the result of this shared passion. While there the Earl arranged for the first major plant collecting expedition to be undertaken by a Chinese.

6th Earl and Countess Anne became very well known for their horticultural introductions.

Many other expeditions to the Americas and eastern Asia were sponsored and subscribed to by the Earl. As a result of all this exploration and subsequent plant propagation the 6th Earl and Countess Anne became very well known for their horticultural introductions, including Peony “Anne Rosse”. This tree peony, a cross between Paeonia lutea var. ludlowii and Paeonia delavayi, is the result of two different plant collecting trips to eastern Asia by the Rosses: one by the Earl to Tsang-Po Gorge, Tibet before his marriage and the other by the couple to Yu, China in 1937(Birr Castle website).

A giant facsimile of Countess Anne’s plant journal.

The botanical watercolors I painted for this exhibit are used in a giant facsimile of Countess Anne’s plant journal. There are 24 botanical illustrations in the series: two for every month of the year. As I painted this beautiful peony named for her it was not difficult to imagine Countess Anne walking around Birr demesne delighting in the latest bloom, busily sorting through new plant specimens just arrived from China or designing a new planting scheme.

The human story behind the plant.

Behind every cultivated plant there is a human story. Many of these stories start with a solitary plant collector, usually male, braving the elements in foreign lands to find new and rare plants. The story of Peony “Anne Rosse” is different. Here is the story of a husband and wife sharing a life long passion for plant collecting and gardening. I picture them working as a team, side by side, complementing each other’s skills and I can only imagine the delight and pleasure they must have experienced seeing the first Peony “Anne Rosse” bloom.

Aislinn Adams

Botanical Illustration, Adding Color This Week.

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Korean dogwood

© Aislinn Adams  Kousa dogwood, Cornus kousa

Watercolor illustration for a change!

All my blogs so far have featured black and white drawings for the “Digging in” gardening column of the Washington Post. This week I thought it was time to introduce some color by posting a watercolor illustration of Kousa dogwood, Cornus kousa. The Kousa dogwood, also known as the Japanese flowering dogwood, is native to eastern Asia and Japan but has been gracing the gardens of Europe and North America since the late 1800’s.

My neighbor’s Kousa dogwood

I can see my neighbor’s Kousa dogwood outside my side window as I write this blog. Living in an historic home in downtown Salem, Oregon, where the houses stand close together like old friends, I can enjoy looking at my neighbor’s Kousa dogwood without getting out of my chair. The tree is not yet in bloom, unlike its North American cousins, the flowering and Pacific dogwoods. The Kousa dogwood flowers about a month later.

The dogwood flower- not a flower?

I have illustrated the Kousa dogwood three times for the “Digging In” gardening column: once in flower, and twice in fruit. The strawberry-like fruit is very attractive in the fall but the flowers in early summer really steal the show. What we so often admire as the dogwood “flower” is in fact not the flower but the flower bracts. The true flowers are tiny and dark green in the center. When the Kousa dogwood is in flower it has a flamboyant air about it, probably because its “flowers” often point upwards in horizontal rows. It’s as if the tree is holding out its arms to embrace passersby and proclaim how good it is to be alive.

Birr Castle, Ireland.

The watercolor illustration I’ve posted above is from a set of botanical illustrations I painted for an exhibit at Birr Castle’s Visitor Center, County Offaly, Ireland. The story of Birr Castle is a fascinating chapter in the history of plant collecting and I will tell you more about it next week.

Botanical Illustration and the Joys of Weeding!

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Bermuda grass, Cynodon dactylon

Gardening with native plants and the joys of weeding!

I have drawn my fair share of weeds over the past decade for the Washington Post’s “Digging In” gardening column. Some of the weeds I’ve drawn are true to their name without much to recommend them while others can be quite beautiful while still very “weedy”.  I have created botanical illustrations of Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) twice for the “Digging In” gardening column and although I hate to speak ill of any plant, even a weed, I have to admit I’m not a great fan of this grass. It is a real nuisance plant for gardeners across the United States of America, including here in Oregon where I live. Fortunately for me I garden with native plants, mostly in the shade, so I don’t have much trouble with Bermuda grass as it prefers a sunnier spot.

A damned good weeder!

I met a gardener once who was a great native plant enthusiast. I was an intern at Mt Cuba Center in Delaware at the time, very new to the United States and just learning my way. We were both on a native plant trip to the Smokey Mountains. I innocently asked her what she did for a living and, with a twinkle in her eye she quietly replied, “I’m a damned good weeder”. Later I understood what she meant as I learned that she was independently wealthy and not in need of a “living” at all. Gardening with native plants was her passion, her avocation, and as any gardener knows, if you love gardening you do a lot of weeding.

I love weeding.

I like to think of myself as a “damned good weeder” though not independently wealthy. I love weeding. Not the back-breaking Himalayan blackberry pulling variety, though that can have it’s moments, but rather the careful, knowledge-building kind where you learn to distinguish the seedling of a troublesome weed from a welcome native plant. If you garden with native plants you really need to be able to tell the seedlings apart: to separate the team players from the troublemakers so to speak.

Weeding monotonous? Never!

Some people find weeding very boring. I know some weeding can be horribly monotonous, especially the kind where all you do is pull up everything green except your rows of ornamental annuals or showy perennials. This is not the kind of weeding I mean. I’m referring to the kind where you are constantly observing and frequently delighted by some new native seedling found half hidden under the foliage of the mother plant.

I love this kind of weeding also because it allows me the time to enjoy the dank, rotting leaf smell of the soil and the more subtle perfume of less showy native wildflowers, not to mention the “green” scent of lightly crushed leaves, one of my favorite smells.

If you really want to know a plant.

In my last blog I wrote that if you want to remember a plant draw it. Well, if you really want to  know a plant grow it. I have found no better way to get to know the American native plants of my new homeland than by getting down on my knees, up close and personal, weeding.

Aislinn Adams.

If You Want to Remember a Plant.

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Star magnolia, Magnolia stellata

If you really want to remember a plant, draw it!

I always say that if you really want to remember a plant, draw it. There’s nothing more effective to really make you look deeply at a plant than spending hours drawing it. I don’t know of anything better to imprint it on your brain.

Drawing makes you take the time to look.

When Georgia O’Keeffe was asked why she painted flowers she replied, “Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.” I don’t know how much time people spend looking at flowers these days but I do know that if you draw a flower you really have to take the time to look at it.

Drawing has improved my memory.

I spent 10 years drawing botanical illustrations for the weekly “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post. As a result of that work I now have a collection of 500+ botanical illustrations. When someone asks me if I have illustrated some plant, like the star magnolia (Magnolia stellata) above for example, I can always remember if I have or not. I may not remember in which month or year I did it, though I usually have a fairly good idea, but I can definitely remember.  This is due to the hours and hours I spend looking at a plant while illustrating it. Each pen and ink drawing I produced for the “Digging In” gardening column took anywhere from 10 to 20 hours to create, depending on its complexity.  That is a long time to spend looking at a plant.

You don’t have to be an artist to draw.

I don’t believe that you have to be a great artist or illustrator to enjoy drawing plants or to benefit from the hours you spend with them in this way. If you are a plant enthusiast who loves to garden or an amateur botanist who loves to study native plants and you want to remember what you see here’s my advice; the next time you are out in your yard or walking in the woods, bring along a sketchpad and pencil, find a plant that interests you, and start drawing. Don’t judge your results harshly but rather check later how well you can remember the plant you drew.

Aislinn Adams

Botanical Illustration of Kalmia latifolia, Mountain Laurel.

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Mountain Laurel

Botanical illustration of the beautiful Kalmia latifolia, mountain laurel.

One of the many botanical illustrations I drew in my first year for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post was Kalmia latifolia or mountain laurel. In the ten years of botanical illustration for the newspaper I drew this flowering native shrub twice.  I like this native plant so much that I chose my more recent illustration of it as the subject for one of my greeting cards in my botanical illustration series #1, created from my Washington Post work.

 

My first time seeing this lovely native shrub in flower.

I didn’t think about the other Kalmia latifolia illustration from that first year until recently. A friend, while admiring my botanical illustration greeting card series, told me that Kalmia latifolia was her favorite plant. Her remark made me think back to the first time I saw it flowering. It was on the side of the road in rural Carroll County, Maryland.

 

Mountain laurel is a favorite plant for many.

My friend is not alone in her choice of favorite plant. Michael A. Dirr in his “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants” describes Kalmia latifolia’s flower as the “most beautiful flower I know…. especially as the buds are opening”. The unique, “intricate beauty” (Dirr) of the mountain laurel flower buds remind me of ornamental icing on a traditional wedding cake; rows of tiny, perfectly formed dollops ending in minute peaks. The Kalmia latifolia flower buds- often dark pink on the outside opening up into pale pink flowers- are so perfectly formed they look almost unnatural.

Flowers with an ingenious strategy for pollination.

 

I took my time preparing those botanical illustrations.  Not only the buds, but the flowers too, are challenging to draw-and just as beautiful. The ten stamens of each flower curve into little pockets in each petal- spring-loaded if you will. When the pollen is ripe the slightest touch of a visiting insect will cause the bent stamen to spring forward showering pollen into the air. What an ingenious strategy to aid pollination. I often wonder what the insect “thinks” when the stamen filament is suddenly released slapping it in the eye or anther? Maybe after the surprise of the first time the insect grows to expect it and enjoy it even. I certainly enjoy the challenge of drawing such intricate botanical illustrations.

Aislinn Adams