• 2 x variety of native wild azalea, rhodendron canescens “Phlox Pink”
• 1 x sassafras, Sassafras albidum
• 1 x Brazilian pipeweed, Aristolochia fimbriata
• 1 x Cat’s whiskers, Ophiron labiatus
• 1 x Purple porterweed, Stachytarpheta sp.
• 1 x Gulf Coast penstemon, Penstemon tenuis

On Friday, October 14, my sister and I attended the storied Houston Bulb & Plant Mart, the Houston Garden Club’s annual extravaganza. This year, Bulb Mart was held at the Holly Hall Retirement Community literally across the street from the old Astrodome (Reliant Stadium to newbie Houstonians). As always, it was a high-decibel, tightly packed bedlam of grabbing, gabbing gardeners.

I managed to snag the following goodies:

• 80 x anemone corms, Anemone coronaria, “De Caen”
• 40 x ranunculus, Ranunculus asiaticus, “Tecolote” (mixed colors) and “Merlot” (a bi-colored deep pink and cream)
• 2 x Amaryllis, Hippeastrum x, “Vivaldi” and “Clown.” These are my Christmas decorations for 2011!
• 3 x hyancinth, Hyacinth orientalis, “Delft Blue.” In the fridge now to chase those winter blues!
• 1 x Ophiron labiatus, to pair with the one from the plant sale
• 1 x Aristolochia fimbriata, likewise
• 2 x Australian violets, viola hederaceae
• 1 x Toad lily, Tricyrtis formosiana, “Alice Staub,” a dwarf variety
• 2 x Maidenhair ferns “Cree”, Adiantum capillus
• 1 x Anemone “Alice Staub” Anemone huphensis?. This is a shade-loving variety, unlike the corms, which are high sun. It is a low plant, with trilobed leaves and pink blossoms. If you know the species name, let me know in the comments!

And finally, my Bulb Mart impulse purchase:

• 2 x American pitcher plant, Sarracenia wrigleyana. Weird, whacky, wonderful. Sun-loving bog-dwellers. Carnivorous plants. What will I do with them?!

Translation: This is a yellow cab.

The treachery of text.

Apologies to René Magritte.

Mark Davis has co-authored an article in Nature that challenges this current orthodoxy. As the Boston Globe summarizes the argument, imported plants (and even animals) should be judged by their performance in the local ecosystem, rather than by some arbitrary criterion of arrival date to the location.

Davis, et al, correctly point out that species migrate and go extinct even without the influence of man, so that to gauge the original status of a local ecosystem by what was observed and recorded when historicizing humans arrived on the scene is to use a false standard of measurement. Instead they urge scientists to examine how the new plants interact within the ecosystem as a whole before deciding to root out the presence of an exotic.

This more cautious approach is perhaps similar to the development of the current practice of wildfire management on public lands. Early in the US National Park system’s history, wildfires were viewed as unequivocal disasters, and every effort was made to prevent them from occurring. When a blaze did spring up, the Park Service fought it aggressively. Today, environmental scientists know that much of the Great Plains prairie ecosystem was the result of managed burns by the American Indians, who took advantage of local fires started by spring thunderstorms to clear out sapling growth and maintain the grasslands needed by the vast herds of buffalo, antelope and elk. Park Service policy is now to allow natural fires to burn within park boundaries, while maintaining enough control to keep them from reaching private lands.

While Davis and his co-authors seem to have been careful to describe their observations in fairly neutral terms, other recent writers on the topic have not been so circumspect. Hugh Raffles of the New School for Social Research compared the antagonism to introduced species to that suffered by human immigrants. Michael Pollan, the food and gardening writer, has even used the term “xenophobia” to describe the fashion for native planting among gardeners.

The new hypothesis has provoked a powerful response from other environmental scientists and botanists. University of Tennessee-Knoxville biologist Daniel Simberloff and 140 others published an impassioned critique of the article in the Letters to the Editor department of the following issue of Nature. And of course, the history of conservation biology is littered with examples of invasive species taking over a local environment when released from the control mechanisms found in predators and diseases of their former homeland.

As the Boston Globe points out, this academic battle is so acrid because it is a war over the rhetoric describing the way species grow and interact, rather than the actual mechanisms of species change in the environment. He who controls the terms wins the war of words.

I was especially interested in the gardens and landscaping. Charleston’s classic house style is a long, narrow 2- or 3-story structure with the narrow end facing the street. One of the broad sides has a porch running the length of the house, facing the long, narrow yard that extends to the back of the lot. The lots are equally long and narrow, so houses are crammed quite close together.

This layout is similar to our townhouse lot. I was hoping to get some brilliant ideas for designing our own 100′ x 8′ side yard. Just like our yard, Charleston gardens frequently have shady light conditions. The climates are not too dissimilar, either.

Sad to say, a lot of those 18th-century side gardens have been converted into parking spaces for the modern day owners.

Some ideas gleaned from our trip:

Windowboxes stuffed to the brim with carefully selected flowers were everywhere in Charleston.

The beautiful compositions of the windowbox plantings at the front windows were a neighborly gesture.

The lacy red foliage of Japanese maples is reflected in the peeling red paint of the old hitching post.

You always want what you cannot have. Beautiful red-leaved Japanese maples seem to thrive in Charleston. Here in Houston, they fry like bacon in the summer sun. Fortunately, crape myrtles were a popular alternative.

Fatsia hedera is a popular choice for the Charleston shade garden.

Fatsia filled nearly every shady garden strip we saw. Don’t you just love how the gray spotty tree trunks melt into the faded, humidity-patched stucco wall? While so many Charleston houses had fresh, sorbet coats of plaster, some seemed to almost revel in a slight decay.

Lush greenery everywhere!

Ferns, hydrangeas and liriope galore. Every border was stuffed with green.

Brick walkways lead the eye to focal points like this pergola.

Brick paths both straight and meandering combine with pergolas, sculptures and benches to create miniature vistas.

I couldn't resist showing you another windowbox!

The blue ageratum really pops against the deep salmon stucco. You can’t pitch a rock in Charleston without breaking the antique window pane of a National Historic Register house.

I’m so inspired by her resolution that I’m going to be a copycat and do the same thing, albeit here in Houston. The next step is finding nature zones to sketch in. We’ve been to Brazos Bend State Park, and I’ve been to the Houston Arboretum quite a few times. The problem is that most of the nature in the Houston area has been groomed and tamed thoroughly. Do you have any good suggestions for state parks and other wilderness locales in the Houston metropolitan area that you’ve enjoyed for sketching and painting?

One of my brand new toad lilies waiting to be planted in the garden.

I went to the Houston Bulb and Plant Mart a couple of weeks ago with my friend. The Bulb Mart is run by the Houston Garden Club and is famous for not only the widest variety and largest quantity of bulbs sold in Houston, but also for offering really unusual and fascinating plants for the home gardener. I love bulbs, and both she and I needed some shade-loving plants for our back gardens, so it was a fun morning.

There was such a crowd at Bulb Mart! We went on the first day, which was tax-free, and ended up spending about half of our time there waiting in the long, snaking, checkout line. There were a lot of folks replacing their losses from last year’s hard frosts.

In the shade-lovers section, I spied these little beauties. Toad lilies, tricyrtis formosana, love the shade and moisture. They have exotic blossoms and bloom in the early fall. Their flowers are really gorgeous, with purple spots on a pinky-white ground and very prominent stamens. And they spread! So I bought two.

I can hardly wait to plant and paint this specimen.

My poor hand! Fire ants are no joke in Houston!

Last Monday (09/13), I was weeding the front easement space in preparation for a big family visit. Just as I was thinking, “Gosh, I guess the neighbor’s poisoning of his side of the space must have killed all the fire……ANTS!”, between 15 and 20 of the little red demons stung me simultaneously. The fact they sting as one, using the hive mind, makes it even worse. This is definitely one of the major disadvantages of living in Houston!

This photo is from the next day, when the swelling and allergic reaction were at their worst. I could barely pinch thumb and forefinger together at that point. Fortunately, the situation improved rapidly after that, and now, I just have a bunch of ugly, weeping, itchy scabs.

My Brazilian botanical painting friends wondered why I was so cowardly about ants when we went to the Amazon. Bom, é por isso ‘stou gritando com medo dos bichinhos!

Waiting to bloom: Corpse Flower Lois © Wrenaissance Art

Like almost everybody else in Houston this July, I rushed to see Lois the Corpse Flower bloom at the Museum of Natural Science. Or rather, to watch her in bud, as she didn’t actually bloom until 3 weeks after the initial announcement. The crowds were not too bad if you went at 7 am, as I usually did. Besides the flower, it was an amusing exercise in non-profit public relations, marketing and expectations management. How does one balance the need to promote an interesting educational event to the public using the media, without pushing said newsmedia into a hype machine for a natural process that can’t possibly meet the breathless vaporings of the 6 o’clock broadcasters?

The atrium where the flower was displayed was very cramped, with no room to discreetly sketch, although I did manage to get a basic palette mixed for a final composition one weekday morning.

The plant itself is pretty interesting. Arum titan grows from a corm, just like anemones. Unlike anemones, it grows on limestone cliffs in the Indonesian rainforest. The bloom imitates the look and smell of carrion to attract the beetles that pollinate it. Immediately after pollination, the giant flower closes, and the plant enters dormancy, later re-sprouting in its vegetal stage.

For an illustrator, the flower offers many rendering challenges of texture, color and composition.

Check back often to see updates as I illustrate this fascinating flower!

Ipanema beach near Posto 9, 2 pm on 4 April 2010

Saturday afternoon before Easter, and the beach is hopping near Posto 9, Ipanema. It was sunny, but a bit cooler than it had been earlier in the week. Ipanema was full of tourists, Brazilian and foreign. It was a good thing everyone got their fill of sun, because:

Easter Sunday morning, Ipanema beach at Arpoador, looking west

Easter Sunday dawned with overcast skies. The early strollers and sunworshippers got out as usual, but the tourists were no doubt disappointed.

The school controversy continues in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro

This banner was strung up on my old building on Sunday, March 29 (or at least, that’s when I noticed it). The photo was shot on 1 April, after I’d moved out.

The slogan reads, “We will struggle without ceasing,” and was posted by one of the anti-school-expansion faction.