ArtPlantae Today

The Art of Plant Taxonomy

October 17, 2014 by Tania Marien

Cutting edge research meets botanical art in a new exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The exhibition Inspiring Kew offers a historical perspective about how scientists at Kew have inspired artists. The exhibition features botanical paintings from the 17th century, as well as artwork by contemporary artists Rachel Pedder-Smith and Laurence Hill.

Many of you are familiar with the work of Rachel Pedder-Smith. Today I would like to introduce you to artist Laurence Hill.

Laurence Hill takes a systematic photographic approach to botanical art. Hill’s life-size presentation of the genus Fritillaria is not only beautiful to look at, it is a lesson in biodiversity. Titled Fritillaria: A Family Portrait, the composite image he created is composed of 80 Fritillaria and provides “insight into the biodiversity of life” (Hill, 2014). His digital photographic image stretches across 5 panels and is 10 meters long and 1.4 meters high (~33 ft. x 4.5 ft.). Specimens in the image are arranged according to the molecular phylogenetic analysis of the genus as described by Peter D. Day, Madeleine Berger, Laurence Hill, Michael F. Fay, Andrew R. Leitch, Ilia J. Leitch, and Laura J. Kelly (2014).

In the color booklet accompanying his exhibit, Hill describes his collaboration with Dr. Ilia Leitch and her research team at Jodrell Laboratory. He also presents a dendrogram explaining the taxonomic relationships between Fritillaria species and includes a replica of the 10 meter-long image now on view in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art (the fold-out image is 1/10 the size of the original). This booklet can be purchased at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery for £2.50. It can also be purchased from Laurence Hill for £2.50 plus shipping (convert currency). Transactions will be processed through PayPal. To order the booklet from the artist, please contact Laurence Hill.

Laurence recently presented the first of two gallery talks about his work. His next gallery talk will be on November 5, 2014 at 2 pm. Seating is limited and reservations are required. To reserve a seat, please contact the Shirley Sherwood Gallery.

About Laurence Hill
Laurence Hill manages Fritillaria Icones, a searchable photographic database assisting with the identification, research and conservation of Fritillaria. This very informative database is an Open Access Web-based resource.

Laurence maintains a living collection of Fritillaria and has worked on Fritillaria Icones for many years. He graciously took the time to discuss his project and what educators will find at Fritillaria Icones.

Over several years I have been building a living collection which I systematically photograph and post online. This new dataset provides a supplement to other taxonomic resources, e-vouchers for published work and insight for many other botanical disciplines.

My living collection of Fritillaria, a genus of about 160 taxa, has over 700 accessions which are photographed at four stages through their annual cycle:

The bulb just after root growth has starts

The whole plant and a dissected flower at dehiscence of the anthers

The capsule just before seed dispersal showing it both whole and dissected

The seed just after germination

These images are dated, scale bars added and then formatted into PDF’s with accession details. Each PDF is put online with the URL incorporating the accession number and not the species name. This acts as a form of DOI or universal identifier so in the event of any taxonomic revision the image specimen set will continue to be associated with any reference.

These image sets can be used for species identification, delineation and classification but they also show:

Root structure

Period of growth

Photosynthesis period

Flowering point relative to other species

Mode and tempo of bulb renewal

Vegetative growth

Reproductive output

Seed type

Most herbarium specimens record a plant in flower and botanical illustrations prioritise the parts thought to be taxonomically important by the consensus of the day. I have chosen these four time points with Fritillaria to record a wide set of non-prioritised data. As photographs the information they carry is constantly open to re-interpretation. As a record of a botanical collection they have a phenotypic value and also service the interests of disciplines. Many of my accessions have been sampled for genetic research, both DNA sequencing and genome size, and these PDFs act as e-vouchers both for published work and online databases.

By combining images and textural information including synonyms and common names plus appropriate embedded metadata, the images on Fritillaria Icones have an enhanced visibility to internet search engines. Information, no matter how valuable, that lacks visibility will be underutilized.

My project is an example of how living collections in botanical gardens should be systematically recorded with photographic protocols established for genera or families. Databases need to move beyond random single images to embrace a more structured approach using horticulturists specifically trained to record the plants in their care. This would be an additional resource both to the taxonomic community but also to physiologist, genetics’ and non-traditional uses of taxonomic information.

These two PDF’s have the complete compliment of images.
Fritillaria amabilis
Fritillaria pontica

The information found in Laurence’s beautiful and informative database is available for educational use and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Sign-up for Laurence’s Gallery Talk on November 5

Literature Cited

Fritillaria

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

Hill, Laurence. 2014. Fritillaria: A Family Portrait.

Posted in Education, teaching & learning, Teaching & Learning |

Fallen Fruit Comes to Riverside

October 16, 2014 by Tania Marien

Plants, Life, Riverside is an interpretive project about plants in an urban setting. Today we learn how fruit and participatory art connects communities.

Fallen Fruit is an art collaborative founded ten years ago by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. Fallen Fruit uses fruit as a common denominator to change the way people see their world. David and Austin explain:

“Fallen Fruit began in Los Angeles in 2004 with mapping ‘public fruit’ – fruit that grows on or over public property. Our projects include diverse site-specific artworks that embrace public participation. Fallen Fruit’s art works invite people to experience their city as a fruitful, generous place, inviting people to engage in sharing and to collectively explore the meaning of community and collaboration through temporary communities and exhibition programs. Our work focuses on urban space, neighborhood, located citizenship and community in relation to fruit.”

Fallen Fruit has held events and exhibitions in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe, Spain, Colombia, Australia and Greece. This weekend Fallen Fruit will host an event in Riverside, CA. On Saturday October 18, they will bring their Lemonade Stand to Cesar Chavez Community Center as a participant of Riverside Art Make, a community-focused campaign to bring the arts into Riverside’s 26 neighborhoods. Riverside Art Make is organized by the Riverside Art Museum.

Fallen Fruit’s lemonade stand is not your typical lemonade stand. Visitors to the pop-up beverage counter receive real lemons and are instructed to draw a self-portrait on their lemon. In exchange for their self-portrait, Fallen Fruit gives visitors a glass of organic lemonade. David and Austin explain that “the lemon self-portraits create a new form of public that illustrate some of the archetypes that construct community.”

David and Austin’s lemonade stand differs from traditional lemonade stands in yet another way. Their lemonade stand comes with a microphone set up for real-time storytelling. Visitors will be invited to use the microphone to respond to prompts selected by Fallen Fruit.

You are invited to take part in Riverside Art Make on Saturday, October 18, 2014. The lemonade stand will be open 11 am – 2 pm.
The Cesar Chavez Community Center is located at 2060 University Avenue, Riverside, CA (map).

This weekend’s Art Make event will be held in collaboration with the City of Riverside’s Neighbor Fest celebration in Bobby Bonds Park.

Watch Video About Fallen Fruit

About David Burns
David Burns is a life-long Californian and native of Los Angeles. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from UC Irvine and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts. David is a co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a contemporary art collective that uses fruit as a material for creating art projects that investigate the boundaries of public spaces, including urban geographies, historical archives and time-based media. Prior to his work with Fallen Fruit, David was core faculty in two programs at CalArts from 1994 to 2008. David’s curatorial practice investigates narrative structures in contemporary art with notable exhibitions for the journal Leonardo at MIT; the Armory Center for the Arts and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Currently, David is faculty in the Social Practice graduate program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Concurrent to the development of his career in contemporary art and academics, David has also built expertise in corporate branding strategy, advertising and television as a technical consultant for projects with Mercedes Benz, Discovery Channel, SEGA Gameworks and others. David’s work activates the nuances of social spaces, public archives and cultural indexes as an authentic negotiation by creating works of art that are expressions of people and place and reframe the real-world and the real-time.

About Austin Young
Austin Young grew up in Reno, Nevada. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and studied painting at Parsons in Paris, France. Early in his career, Austin transferred his interests from traditional painting and taught himself portrait photography. In many ways, Austin is more accurately described as an image-maker: his works illustrate the sublime qualities of character that make celebrated people unique. Based on a visual language of iconography, his trademark style and techniques have captured musicians, artists and celebrities including Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery and Margaret Cho. In several series, Austin captures portraits of drag and transgendered subjects, confusing personality and identity issues in confrontational and unapologetic images of people who do not cross gender but instead split gender and socially-constructed identity. Recently, Austin’s portraiture practice has become a reality TV subject, with Austin featured as a recurring character on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Austin directed and produced a feature length documentary, Hadda Brooks, This is My Life, about torch singer Hadda Brooks, and has completed production on his second feature film, a crowd-sourced musical titled TBD, a musical play and video by EVERYONE who comes. Austin is a co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a contemporary art collective that uses fruit as a material for projects that investigate the synergistic qualities of collaboration. Fallen Fruit performs works of art that are transgressive about authorship and prescribed meaning.

Related Interests
Fruitarians, Hunters, Politics & You

Many thanks to David Allen Burns for his help with this article.

Posted in Plants Everyday, Plants Life Riverside |

More Than Just a Plant Project

October 10, 2014 by Tania Marien

Plant projects can be overwhelming. I had a school plant project once that was, quite simply, a hassle. I did not think there was enough direction and many parents didn’t like it either.

Since then I have seen other people’s children struggle through plant projects. There must be a better way, I always think. I may have found a better plant project in the literature. What I like about it is that it encourages the exploration of different plant communities instead of requiring the collection of specific plant species. It also invites students to include a plant they find especially interesting.

Teacher Catherine Hibbitt writes about this plant project in
A Growth Opportunity. In her article, Hibbitt describes how her project is more than a traditional plant project and explains how her students also learn project management skills, learn how to conduct research, and learn about biodiversity, patterns in nature and ecology.

Hibbitt (1999) explains her project begins with students visiting a field site to record as many observations as they can. Students write and sketch about what they hear and see. After sharing observations with each other, students are led into the collection phase of the project during which they collect, study and describe tree leaves. Students also collect other plant types and eventually prepare herbarium specimens and present their collections to the class. The herbarium collections created at the beginning of the school year are used as a foundation for lessons in plant reproduction, plant behavior, plant chemistry, plant products, writing and natural science illustration (students create posters and postage stamps).

The instructions for this plant project can be found in Hibbitt (1999).
Get a copy of this paper at the NSTA Store for 99¢.

Example of an Ongoing Plant Project
Two years ago we learned about a plant project in the Chicago area dedicated to encouraging an interest in native plants. Scientific illustrator Kathleen Garness is completing the illustrations for this project. I am happy to pass along news about the plant guide she is helping to create.

Kathleen says the project team has updated the plant families’ page on the website of the Field Museum of Natural History. They added information about six plant families to the collection: the Cyperaceae, Iridaceae, Juncaceae, Poaceae, Polemoniaceae, and Violaceae, bringing the total up to twenty. The project team hopes to add five more families during the next year.

Botanists Linda Curtis (author of Woodland Sedges of Northeastern Illinois) and Morton Arboretum’s Andrew Hipp (author of Field Guide to Wisconsin Sedges) edited the Carex family page; Stephen Packard (founding director, Audubon Chicago Region) edited the Grasses page; Kay Yatskievych from the Missouri Botanic Garden edited the Iris page; Rebecca Collings from the Field Museum edited the Phlox family page; and Dr. Harvey Ballard Jr. edited the Violaceae.

The guide Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region is available online for free. The pages of this guide are standard 8.5″ x 11″ pages, fit easily into a 3-ring binder and are easy to laminate. Artists, naturalists and educators in the Chicago region are encouraged to bookmark the guide’s website.

Go to Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region

Literature Cited
Hibbitt, Catherine. 1999. A Growth Opportunity. Science Scope. 22(6): 34-36

Posted in Education, Teaching & Learning |

InterpretPlants Workshops for Fall, Winter & Spring

October 10, 2014 by Tania Marien

Learn More

Posted in Education |

InterpretPlants Workshops at Fullerton Arboretum

October 6, 2014 by Tania Marien

The InterpretPlants™ program continues to expand. A new series of classes for 2014-2015 at the Fullerton Arboretum has been announced. A summary is posted below. Visit the InterpretPlants page for details and to register.

Farmer’s Market Guide to Plants
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 (1-4 pm)

Farmer’s Market Guide to Plants
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Saturday, November 1, 2014 (10 am – 1 pm)

Pollination Ecology for Young Naturalists (age 12+)
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Saturday, December 6, 2014 (10 am – 12 pm)

Pollination Ecology for Young Naturalists (age 3-5 accompanied by adult)
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, December 11, 2014 (10:30 am – 12:00 pm)

History of Botanical Illustration
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, January 29, 2015 (12 – 4 pm)

Discover the Arboretum Potting Shed
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, February 19, 2015 (1-4 pm)

A Visitor’s Guide to the Cactus Garden
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, March 19, 2015 (1-4 pm)

Farmer’s Market Guide to Plants
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, April 16, 2015 (1-4 pm)

A Visitor’s Guide to the Cactus Garden
Fullerton Arboretum at CSU Fullerton
Thursday, May 21, 2015 (1-4 pm)

Don’t forget that ArtPlantae will be at FallFest 2014 this weekend. See you there!

Posted in Learning Opportunities |

Want plants in your classroom? Try this.

October 3, 2014 by Tania Marien

© 2005 ArtPlantae Artist's Herbarium, Hippeastrum flower

Here is a wonderful idea that can be used at schools that do not have the room or the funds to create a garden.

In 2004, undergraduate student Stefanie Lawniczak and professors D. Timothy Gerber and Judy Beck pilot tested a program enabling teachers and students to have direct access to plants at their schools. This program was created around three of the twelve principles of plant biology established by the American Society of Plant Biologists (#4, #7, #12) (learn more, get bookmarks).

Lawniczak et al. applied the National Science Education Standards to these principles and created five themed plant displays. The themes they chose to address were: Environment, Plant Families, Plant Organs, Growth & Reproduction and Plant Origins. Displays were placed in the media centers at three elementary schools and were left in place for 10 weeks. The theme of each display changed every two weeks. Teachers were invited to use display plants as subjects for their classroom studies and students were invited to drop questions in an “Ask a Botanist” box. At the end of the 10-week program, teachers received surveys and were asked to share their thoughts and experiences. Lawniczak et al. received positive feedback from teachers, as well as helpful recommendations about how to improve their displays.

Learn how each themed display was created and get a list of the easy-to-find plants (e.g., orchids, geranium, Hippeastrum) used in each theme.

Order a copy of Plants on Display at the NSTA Store for 99¢.

Literature Cited
Lawniczak, Stefanie and D. Timothy Gerber, Judy Beck. 2004. Plants on Display. Science and Children. 41(9): 24-29

Posted in Education, teaching & learning, Teaching & Learning |

Gallery Talk: Plants Inspiring Artists & Horticulturalists

September 30, 2014 by Tania Marien

Susan Minton, horticulturalist, retired professor and member of the Philadelphia Society of Botanical Illustrators, will give a gallery talk at Drawn to the Details, the botanical art exhibition at Jenkins Arboretum & Gardens. Susan will explore some of the fascinating characteristics of plants that inspire both artists and horticulturalists.

Here is a sneak peek at Susan’s presentation Captivating Colors, Fabulous Forms:

A common thread that binds gardeners and botanical artists is a fascination with plants: how they look, how they grow, what makes each species unique. For all of us, but perhaps especially for artists, it is often easy to be so entranced with their colors and shapes and textures, that we forget how amazing they are from a botanist’s perspective. Scientists are continually uncovering new and wondrous details about how plants function, what purposes their particular (and often peculiar!) characteristics serve, and the many ways they interact with their environment.

Plants have inspired artists and gardeners for centuries. Learning about them will enhance your work and enrich your experience, both in the studio and in the garden.

You are invited to attend this special presentation.

Captivating Colors, Fabulous Forms
Jenkins Arboretum & Gardens
October 12, 2014
2-4 PM

Get Directions

Posted in botanical art, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Announcements, Special Events |

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