Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’m more familiar with the crab cactus under its popular name of Christmas cactus. It’s fuchsia-like flowers, which are typically crimson, appear around Christmas.
The crab cactus is a hybrid which often goes under the name Zygocactus. One of its parents, Schlumbergera truncata, is a native of the coastal mountains of south-east Brazil, near Rio de Janeiro. It is an epiphyte, growing on trees, or a lithophyte, growing on rocks.
Look in a field guide and you’ll find a bewildering variety of forget-me-nots. I resorted to picking a stem and comparing it with the life size illustrations by Ian Garrard in The Wild Flowers of the British Isles, enabling me to identify it as wood forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica, which, as the name suggests, is found in damp woodland but also on rocky soils in mountain areas.
It is also found naturalised in grassy places as a garden escape and this plant, growing by the pond, may have arrived with a plant that we’ve brought from my mum’s, as she had drifts of it in amongst her shrubs and flower borders.
10 a.m., 51ºF, 11ºC, 75% cloud, slight cool breeze.
10.45 a.m., 50ºF, 10ºC, cool breeze, 90% cloud: As I draw there’s only one brief visit by a pollinator – a bumble bee – to these Spanish bluebells, so perhaps there’s not much in the way of nectar this morning.
When we revamped the border earlier this year we took out a dense clump of Spanish bluebells by the hedge that never produced much in the way of flowers. They were already here when we moved in over thirty years ago and since then they have multiplied vegetatively by producing offset bulbs. I’ve seen no evidence of them spreading by stolons (creeping stems), which some websites say is possible. The bulbs are able to pull themselves down into the soil by shortening their roots, so the clump went down to about a foot below soil level, one bulb piled on top of another.
Unfortunately this introduced species is capable of crossbreeding with our native bluebell to produce a vigorous hybrids which can spread into woodlands. The bumble bee that visited our garden bluebells could easily make its way into the wood a hundred yards away where native bluebells are starting to flower.
I need to remove all our Spanish bluebells as I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the decline of its woodland relative.
2.00 p.m.: A bumble bee visited all the dog violets in a group amongst the grasses but paused only briefly at one or two bluebell flowers next to them, which suggests to me that, today at least, they’re not offering much of interest to passing pollinators.
3.15 p.m., 50ºF, 10ºF, 85% cloud, 30.1 inches, 1022 mb: My first job this morning at 6 a.m. was to flip open the studio skylight window and emphatically bang it shut again to shoo off a pair of mallards who were tucking into the tadpoles in our back garden pond. Yes, I know that all of those thousands of tadpoles can’t possibly survive but I somehow feel responsible for them. As I draw these kingcups, I can see them constantly coming to the surface, so the ducks haven’t made much of an impression on their numbers.
4.40 p.m.: This dandelion has sprung up amongst the chives at the edge of the herb bed. Although the Noodler’s brown ink that I’m using is waterproof, I do struggle with adding a yellow wash; it seems to pick up just a hint of the brown ink.
I was recently reading Exotic Botanical Illustration with the Eden Project and noted that authors Thurstan and Martin advise, in the context of botanical illustration, never to choose any yellow that is described as ‘cadmium’ as it will be opaque. Alternatives include ‘transparent yellow’ which I’ll try when my cadmium yellow and cadmium lemon run out.
As I’m working, a nuthatch visits the sunflower feeder at the other end of the lawn.
Meriel Thurstan, botanical artist
85ºF, 29ºC, in the sun, 0% cloud, slightest breeze, pressure, 1034 mb, 30.5 inches
Common Dog-violet, Viola riviniana
We refreshed the wood chip on the paths by the raised bed last autumn so we don’t have lots of violets growing like weeds on it this spring, however these have survived in a crevice between the sandstone blocks on the south-east facing side of the bed, so I hope that they’ll soon start spreading again.
Thanks to the close up photograph that I took of our miniature pansies, I now know that the two white dashes that I can see in the middle of each flower – like a little moustache on its ‘face’ – are the lateral hairs, not stamens or stigmas.
Rosy garlic, Allium roseum, is one of the ‘perfect for pollinators’ collection of bulbs that we planted in the autumn. It is edible but is said to be so strong that it deters deer and squirrels, so perhaps I should plant some around the bird feeders!
3.50 p.m., 45ºF, 7ºc, light drizzle, overcast: We’re getting so ahead with our garden this spring that, if I want to draw a weed, I need to go down behind the greenhouse and even then there’s not much to see so far. The bitter-cress is quick off the mark, growing and setting its seeds ahead of most of the other garden weeds. This looks like hairy bitter-cress, but to be sure I’d have to count the number of stamens (it has six).
There are five opposite pairs of leaflets on each pinnate leaf. It’s growing in disturbed, rather clayey ground alongside chicory, cleavers and chickweed. It’s only the bitter-cress that has burst into flower.
As it was drizzling, I used pencil and crayons for my quick sketch of the bitter-cress.
4.55 p.m., 45ºF, 7ºC: The rain has helped the cowslips that I planted in the meadow area to settle in. No umbrellas, pop-up tents or folding chairs today; I simply crouch down amongst the dripping grasses and get on with my drawing. The rain spots will be part of the drawing.
Adding pot-grown wild flowers to the meadow is working well. Whenever I have twenty minutes to spare, I can head down the garden and find something fresh to draw.
3 p.m., 58ºF, 14ºC: Small scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, is, as its names suggests, smaller than the field scabious, which is the species that we occasionally find growing on some of our local hedge banks. Field scabious has pinnate leaves while the the lance-shaped leaves of small scabious are entire, with fine teeth along the edge.
We planted it yesterday in the sunny border by the back lawn.
I try to get down to wild flower level by sitting at the edge of the lawn on a picnic blanket in as near as I can get to the lotus position, the way traditional tailors used to sit (and probably still do). I’m determined to finish my drawing down at this level but after 10 or 15 minutes it feels as if my hip joints were getting pulled apart so I sit with my legs folded sideways as I add the colour.
Greenfinch, song thrush and blackbird are singing, with a pheasant bursting into a grockle in the background. Then a burglar alarm joins in.
At the old mill race, Horbury Bridge, we’re looking down at the celandine, which is now in full flower, when we spot a wren gathering material from the steep shady bank on our right and taking it over to a crevice in the stonework on the sunny bank of the stream. To me this nest site looks perilously close to the flood level of the stream but the male builds several nests and it’s up to the female to decide which one will be suitable.