Category: Trees

Larch Cones

larch conesThese larch cones from Langsett have opened up since I brought them back to the studio.

larch conesI’m pleased at how my habitual set up for natural history drawing is working: a Lamy Safari filled with Noodler’s brown ink plus Winsor & Newton professional watercolours (formerly known as artists’ watercolours) applied with a water-brush. In my early days I’d always carry a dip pen and a bottle of brown Indian ink with me but this gives very much the same effect and is so much more convenient and reliable.

There’s not much colour in this though; I started with yellow ochre, as I so often do, then added neutral tint to get the darker brown. There might be the slightest hint of raw umber and burnt sienna which I’d been using earlier in the palette lid of my W&N bijou watercolour box.

Boletus in Stoneycliffe

Oaks, Stoneycliffe WoodStoneycliffe Wood YWT nature reserve, 3.50 p.m., 52°F, 12ºC

boletusWe’re getting misty mornings and still sunny afternoons as we’re under high pressure. With no breeze and no birdsong the woods are surprisingly quiet as I walk up Coxley Valley for a short sketching session.

There’s a clatter of wood pigeon’s wings in the oaks above me. Mallards are quacking on the upper dam. Brief calls from jackdaws and a thin desultory song which I take to be a robin.

There are plenty of fungi about following the recent rain and this settled spell of fine weather including this boletus.

Fruit Bowl

fruit bowlTomatoes are fruits, so I’m calling this a fruit bowl. I’m trying out the loose version of Victorian cross-hatching that I’m intending to use for the Waterton comic.

cotoneastermum in 1924I’m missing getting out to draw natural history. I’m glad that at this time last year I kept taking advantage of every free day to draw orchids, waders and reed-beds at the RSPB Old Moor reserve. But on Friday I did get half an hour, between other commitments, to sit and draw a branch of cotoneaster. The sketch of the girl with the ribbon in her hair is from a oil on canvas portrait of my mother, painted c. 1924.

high street treeWe grabbed a late lunch at the Caffe Capri on Friday, giving me a chance to draw a beech tree on Horbury High Street. The tree seems to be is suffering from being almost totally tarmacked in as the ends of many of its twigs are devoid of leaves but we’ve had a cool, dry June so perhaps in a milder, damper summer it would recover.

Green Spire

pigeonlimeThe lime trees in the gardens of Victorian villas in Horbury are characteristically tall and columnar in shape. When they need to be replaced the tree officer for the local council requests varieties which have a similar shape; Tilia cordata ‘Rancho’ or Tilia cordata ‘Green Spire’.

heatherOrnamental heathers are now bringing some early spring colour into gardens.

Lichens on Poplar

poplar bark

Bracket fungus on willow
Bracket fungus on willow

These lichens, yellow Xanthoria parietina and pale  Parmelia saxatalis, were growing on a poplar at Alverthorpe Meadows which we walked around with friends Roger and Sue recently.

In a nearby tree was a mystery bird. It was the size of a song thrush but had the streaky spots of a mistle thrush. On a dull day looking up at it silhouetted amongst the bare branches I couldn’t get much further with an ID but luckily normal redwingRoger had brought his bridge camera with a powerful telephoto and when we viewed the bird on screen when we got back we could see clearly that it was a redwing. It’s unusual to see just the one redwing on its own, so I think that threw us.

white blossommagpie's nest

The pied plumage of the magpie in blends well with the bare branches.
The pied plumage of the magpie in blends well with the bare branches.

But the trees won’t be bare for much longer. It’s good to see the blossom (not sure what species this is) appearing. But whatever time of year there’s always something to see, even if it’s just the bracket fungus on a willow or the magpies busy repairing their nests.

Bracket fungus
Blushing bracket fungus Daedaleopsis confragosa on willow

We met one of the Wakefield countryside rangers who told us she was planning the annual toad-count. She realises toadthat it’s important to choose the right night for it – mild and damp – or you won’t get a good impression of the numbers.

Auntie Bar

Barbara and Jack at my christening
Barbara and Jack at my christening

ebony warriorAs an 9 or 10 year old I pinned a map of Africa on my bedroom wall, surrounded by a collection of the 3D models of African animal heads that they printed on the back of Corn Flake packets. I hoped that some day I’d be able to fly out to Tanganyika to visit my godparents, Barbara and Jack Wilkinson, though sadly that never happened. I’ve still got the five inch tall ebony warrior that they sent me. He still sports his feathery plume, hide shield and Masai regalia but he lost his spear long ago.

Jack taught biology at the agricultural college at Arusha, close to the Kenyan border. It’s a beautiful setting with Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro looming in the background. Returning to Britain when Tanzania won its independence, they settled in Leek, Staffordshire, where Jack continued to teach biology. He died of cancer about thirty years ago.
Barbara was doing fine when we visited her last summer before my mum’s fall but she too had a fall at new year. She died on the morning of my mum’s funeral. Like my mum she was in her 97th year.
We made our way, via the Peak District, to her funeral today. I’ll miss our occasional visits to Leek to meet up with her and go out for a lunch, which for me was always Staffordshire oatcakes (a kind of pancake), at the White Hart Tearooms.

Leaf Skeletons

poplar leaffirst celandineThe poplar leaves by the lock on the Leeds Liverpool canal at Gargrave have all but turned to leaf mould, leaving fragmentary leaf skeletons.

On a south-facing bank by the road I see my first celandines of the year bursting into flower, pushing up amongst their dark green heart-shaped leaves and the dried stems of last year’s growth.

wall

garden snailsAt the foot of this gritstone wall I pick up a couple of garden snail shells to draw. Inside a third shell I find another species of snail sheltering. Compared to the garden snail this one has a more flattened spiral, rather like an ammonite.

snail shell

Poplar twig

Ash Trees

ash treesToday’s snow showers have been punctuated by brighter intervals but it doesn’t seem worth going out and clearing the driveway as the thin slushy layer that has accumulated here is likely to melt away in rain showers and warmer temperatures tomorrow. I hope that the forecast is right and that it won’t freeze solid and need scraping off laboriously.
pheasantThe snow brings a cock pheasant to our bird feeders and I guess that, now he’s discovered us, he’ll become a regular. Other colourful visitors today have included bullfinch, chaffinch, goldfinch and greenfinch.
I enjoyed drawing with my dip pen with the Tower Pen nib so much yesterday evening that I wanted to try it on a landscape and, as it would have been an uncomfortable business to set myself up outdoors I goldfinchdrew the view from my studio window. I’d hoped to include the snow-covered meadow but the sun was soon masked by the next bank of cloud approaching from the northwest and it was getting late in the afternoon anyway so I confined myself to the silhouette of the ash trees against the eastern sky.

Slush and Showers

beechJust what you’d expect for mid-January; grey slush underfoot and sleety showers drifting through every twenty or thirty minutes. Not a day to go out drawing, so this multi-trunked beech was drawn in centrally heated comfort, when we visited my mum. It was easier to draw during the gloomier periods; once the low midday winter sun came through, tree and shrubbery disappeared into a formless mass of twiggy darkness with the glistening highlights of drooping boughs etched across it.

Published
Categorized as Trees Tagged

Atlas Cedar

scale of cone‘Mature cones of the blue Atlantic cedar are plump and pink-brown, sitting up like over-fed skittles on the boughs of brush-like blue foliage’cedar cone

Hugh Johnson, The International Book of Trees, 1973

kew gardens kew urnApart from starting to sketch one of the urns on Victoria Gate at Kew Gardens, I didn’t get to do any drawing. We met up with friends and, as it was so cold, we kept on the move, popping into the greenhouses to warm up. My glasses steamed up instantly as we entered the palm house!

I picked up these pieces of the cones of the Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica, to draw back in our hotel room. The scalecones are described as dehiscent, meaning that they burst or gape open, scattering these scales on the ground below.

Atlas cedar grows on the northern flanks of the Atlas and Riff mountains of Morocco and Algeria. They can grow to forty metres.

cone‘In Morocco’s Atlas mountains, macaque monkeys clamber among the cedars and scamper across the ground in search of roots.’scale

David Attenborough, The First Eden,  The Mediterranean World and Man, 1987.

The first photograph in Attenborough’s book shows an Atlas cedar with macaques resting on its boughs, a surprising contrast of conifer – which I’d associate with temperate or northern boreal climate zones – and African animal.