Showy Lady Slipper

 

 

I have been meaning to do this drawing for awhile and actually started it in July right after these orchids flowered in June in a fen in Northeast Ohio. While I worked in Ohio I was responsible for monitoring this population of showy lady slippers (Cypripedium reginae) on an annual basis. Showy lady slipper flowers are about the size of a chicken egg making them one of the largest of the native orchids - it is also covered with hairs that can cause poison ivy-like dermatitis on some people. I never had an issue with orchid hairs but I have with the poison sumac (Rhus vernix) that shares the same habitat. Besides the poison sumac the fen was always a very enjoyable place to spend the day counting orchids and botanizing. Also in this illustration are two sedge species Carex leptalea (3 flowering culms) and Carex interior (1 flowering stem) that are commonly found with the orchids.

This is 16"X20" and done with Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils - I had to scan it in four pieces and splice them together resulting in some inconsistencies in color.

 

www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com

Sedges

Anyone who owns a “Flora of …” field guide has surely noticed that the Genus Carex can easily chew-up 50 plus pages of dichotomous key without the help of pictures or line drawings.  It is intimidating.  Ohio is home to more than 160 different species of sedges easily making it the largest genera in the flora.  One of the primary characteristics used to identify sedges to species are the perigynia, an inflated sac containing the achene (seed).  Usually a 20X hand lens is needed to observe the characteristics of these structures as most of them are around 3-4mm long.  I have only been interested in sedges for a few years, but from my first look through the hand lens I was struck by the beauty of sedges especially when magnified.

Here is a banner of 11 different perigynia all from sedges native to northeast Ohio – can you identify any of them? 

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Cerulean warbler

The warm weather that we had in early to mid March has been replaced in NE Ohio with more seasonal temps and the cool weather seems to have frozen or at least slowed down their bud breaking process.  I have always been fascinated by the way leaves are packaged in buds and by the colors of the small unexpanded leaves.  Here is a sketch of tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) breaking bud and hosting one of our most beautiful warblers - the cerulean warbler (Setophaga cerulean).  When tuliptree first breaks bud you can see that the leaves are packaged by perfectly folding the oddly shaped leaves in half and shrinking them. 

I am hoping that the cool weather sticks around so I have some time to sketch some of my other favorite trees breaking dormancy.

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Ransacked by a Rafter of Turkeys

Last week on February 27th I noticed that almost all of the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) in the fen had been ransacked by a rafter of wild turkeys. In all cases the tops of the cabbage flowers were simply ripped off or ripped open but all parts and pieces appeared to be present – the turkeys were not eating the skunk cabbage – so what were they up to?

It is well documented that the inside of a skunk cabbage flower is stinky and can be as much as 36 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, often melting the snow around it. The temperature difference creates a nice toasty sauna-like atmosphere for potential pollinators. I imagine a bunch of early emerging insects crowding in to the warm and stinky skunk cabbage saloon to get a bite to eat and stay dry on cold February and March nights not realizing that the local turkeys know right where they are. Tired of a winter diet of nuts and soft body insects the turkeys probably have a hankering for something warm and crunchy.

I can’t find anything online about turkey destroying skunk cabbage in search of insects, but I have to think that is what they are up to – I hope it is not just a bunch of young Jakes being teenagers.

http://www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com/

Meet the Correspondents - Nate Beccue



My name is Nate Beccue and I am honored to be included in this group - thank you for the invitation Kate!  I grew up in East Central Illinois along the Sangamon River –the place where I found my love of nature.  My mother, mother-in-law and now brother are all art teachers so I have quite a bit of art influence in my life but no formal art education.  I have a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources and a master’s degree in Forest Ecology from the University of Illinois and I work as a Natural Areas Manager at the Holden Arboretum in Northeastern Ohio. 

Birders like to talk about their “spark bird” the one that ignited a passion for birding, I like to say that I had a “spark subject” that started a passion for nature illustration.  In grad school I was documenting some tree falls in the woods and saw an Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) that was just breaking bud, I don’t know if it was the colors or the dynamics of the opening leaves but I had to draw it.   I bought some Crayola colored pencils and got started.



My "spark"

My favorite subject to draw in detail are winter twigs of woody plants – I am amazed by the variety of colors in a twig, the details of a bud, the imperfections and their causes and then the dynamics of a twig coming to life each spring.  In addition to twigs you will find that I will draw anything I find in the woods especially botanical and I am starting to gain more interest and confidence in drawing birds.  A few years ago I started carrying a field notebook for fast sketches and notes of things that I see on a daily basis working in the woods.  I recently switched from Crayola colored pencils to Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and almost always draw on Bristol board or in my notebook.  I own watercolor, oil and acrylic paint and will also play with that stuff every once in a while.  If you would like to take a look through my work please visit at www.buroakbotanicals.blogspot.com.

Enough of an introduction – here is a page from my notebook from earlier in the week - a little look at some of the botanical activity where I stopped for lunch on Tuesday.  Lunch was adjacent to a slip above the East Branch of the Chagrin River and the first thing to catch my eye were the undersides of hundreds of round-leaved ragwort (Packera obovata), a brilliant violet anytime of year but especially striking in February.  Next I noticed some young sedges, their exposed roots barely clinging to the eroding slope.  Carex (sedges) is a difficult genus to master, but in this part of the world there are only a few sedges with leaves this wide and the pale bases of the leaves give this one away as C. platyphylla.  Much more common here, and abundant to my right on the wooded hillside, is C. plantaginea it is given away by the red/maroon bases of leaves.  And making their 2012 debut all over the hillside is wild leek aka ramps (Allium tricoccum) a solid two weeks ahead of schedule based on my notes.  As always a great day to be in the woods!