Chicago Botanic Garden

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Losing Paradise?
Endangered Plants Here and Around the World

Rare and Ephemeral Beauty:
Botanical Art and the Future of Plants

by Sir Peter Crane, Carl W. Knoblock Dean of the School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies at Yale University

 

A fundamental law of nature, a law that applies to species of all kinds, whether animal or plant, and whether in the oceans or on land, is that most species are rare. Whether in a local nature reserve, within the borders of a single country, or on the entire surface of our planet, only a few species are common and widely distributed across the landscape. At all scales, the vast bulk of biodiversity on our planet is composed of species that are relatively restricted and grow in just a few places.

In extreme cases, these rare species can be very rare indeed, perhaps just one or a few individuals. In other cases, species may be relatively common locally but completely absent further afield. But in either case, these are the species about which we tend to know the least. Among plants, they are often not represented in the living collections of the world’s botanical gardens. Even preserved samples may be sparse in the great herbaria of the world. And because these plants are rare in the wild, these are the species that are at the greatest risk of extinction. Without protection, they may be lost before they are even discovered or described.

PHOTO: Echinocactus grusonii
Echinocactus grusonii, United States
Artist: Ingrid Finnan

In the twenty-first century, challenges to maintaining the variety of plant life will continue to mount: habitat destruction and environmental degradation combined with other pressures, invasive species, nitrogen pollution, global climate change, and many other factors, will continue to eat away at the botanical fabric of our planet. Everywhere, the diversity of plant life is being eroded. Those of us dedicated to the cause of plant conservation can help to hold back the tidal waves of biotic impoverishment, but even with exceptional protection very rare species remain vulnerable to bad luck: they could easily succumb to a local outbreak of disease or a chance forest fire. Species like the Wollemi Pine, illustrated in this book, which has only about 100 individuals surviving in the wild, are inevitably perched precariously over the abyss of extinction.

But some rare plants do have one thing going for them; their rarity also makes them attractive. Very often they are the out-of-the-ordinary and out-of-the-way novelties that a dedicated naturalist might travel to see, and that special laws are designed to protect. These are the species for which specialists, and very often nonspecialists too, have a particular fascination. In a few groups of plants, like the orchids and cacti, these rarities are also the plants that most often attract the attention of unscrupulous collectors. Rare species are also a natural focus for botanical artists. Many of our planet’s most precious and spectacular plants have made their scientific debut as a botanical illustration rather than as a living plant.

Before the camera, the work of skilled artists was the only way to capture the form and color of plants. During the great age of plant exploration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, botanical illustration was integral to discovering and documenting the world of plant diversity. In 1768, when Joseph Banks embarked with Captain James Cook for the Pacific, he took with him Sydney Parkinson to record the plants that he saw. In the same year, when John Ellis received the first specimens of the bizarre and wonderful Venus Flytrap from his contacts in eastern North America, he sketched it himself but then turned immediately to the artist James Roberts to prepare a spectacular engraving. And when the magnificent Bird of Paradise flower was first brought from southern Africa to Europe, its distinctive beauty was captured by Francis Bauer, one of the greatest of all botanical artists. It was Banks who installed Bauer at Kew to document and illustrate the flood of new plants coming into cultivation at that time.

Other great explorers were artists themselves. In 1837, when Robert Schomburgk first came across the Giant Amazonian Water Lily (Victoria amazonica) in the upper reaches of the Orinoco River, his first report included his own sketch of this new botanical wonder. And two decades later, when Thomas Baines first encountered the bizarre welwitschia (Welwitschia mirabilis) in the deserts of what is now Namibia, he sent back to Kew not only the first specimens, but also the first illustrations of what Darwin later called the Platypus of the Plant Kingdom. William Hooker, who wrote important early accounts of Victoria, and his son, Joseph Hooker, who carried out the first scientific study of Welwitschia, were both fine artists in their own right, but both leaned heavily on Walter Fitch, Bauer’s successor at Kew, to make the definitive illustrations of their spectacular new plants. Between 1834 and 1888 Fitch illustrated more than 2,500 plant species in the pages of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine for these two successive directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His prodigious output underlines the importance of botanical art for the scientific study of plants during the nineteenth century.

Fitch was based in Edinburgh and Kew for his entire career, but some botanical artists were themselves great travelers. Between 1817 and 1885 the intrepid Victorian artist Marianne North journeyed to Africa, Asia and the Americas, always painting the most eye-catching and charismatic local plants. In the Cape, she searched out spectacular proteas. In South America, she drew striking landscapes and monkey-puzzle trees in the foothills of the Andes. And in Japan, she framed a beautiful landscape of Mount Fuji with flowering wisteria. Like Walter Fitch, her output was prodigious, and less constrained by the need to serve botanical science she also incorporated animals, buildings, and landscapes into her art. Marianne North painted almost 1,000 species of plants in her lifetime. Almost all of it housed in a single breathtaking room at Kew, in the Gallery that bears her name. Her work provides a glimpse into a world that was already disappearing in the late nineteenth century.

A century later, an equally intrepid artist, Margaret Mee, perhaps one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth century, also undertook extraordinary journeys to paint new and spectacular plants for her patrons and collaborators. Based in Rio de Janeiro, she followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian explorer and plant collector Richard Spruce as she traveled deep into in the Amazonian rainforest. Bromeliads and orchids are especially prominent in her work, but there are also waterlilies, heliconias, and all manner of trees and shrubs among the 400 paintings that she produced during her years in Brazil.
Marianne North, Margaret Mee, and the many other botanical artists who have worked in botanically under-explored parts of the world have often encountered new species in the course of their travels and this process of botanical discovery continues. New plant species continue to be described at an astonishing rate, especially from the tropics, where great botanical diversity often coincides with relatively poor knowledge because of limited capacity for scientific study of plant diversity. For example, a recent study of all the species of legumes on Madagascar recognized 129 new species. With Malagasy orchids, the number of new species was more than 100. A similar study of the palms of New Guinea covers about 250 species, many of them new science. They are all illustrated with beautiful new pen and ink drawings by the Kew-based artist Lucy Smith.

So the strong connections between botanical discovery and botanical art continue. The traditions established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are still alive today. Botanical artists pursue their work in the studio, in the botanic garden, and in the field, all over the world. Sometimes they work closely with scientific specialists in plant diversity. Other times they create works for a broader public. But in all cases the twin goals are both beauty and accuracy. Even with superb techniques of modern photography there is still no better way to capture the essence of a living plant, or the transitory beauty of an ephemeral flower, than through a careful drawing or painting. As the collection of magnificent illustrations in this book shows, botanical art continues to have a special role in the discovery and conservation of plant diversity. A photograph can provide an exquisite snapshot of a plant or flower at a single point in time. But the skilled artist can summarize many specimens in a single illustration. The image is in part a single specimen, in part a synthesis. This is the nature of the best botanical art as it seeks to meld beauty with clarity and accuracy.

And extraordinary works of art have another function. They satisfy our hearts as well as our minds. When Margaret Mee sought out the rare night-blooming Cereus and recorded its brief nocturnal flowering in one of the greatest of all plant portraits, she reminded us of the ephemeral beauty of Amazonian forest itself. Her work became a rallying point for rainforest conservation in Brazil. The illustrations in this book have a similar purpose. They remind us how much there is to appreciate about plants under threat, and just how much we have to lose.

Top banner artwork: Cycas seemannii, Australia, by Rita Parkinson