An iconic emblem of Hawai’i, the hibiscus flower, will spend the month of June celebrated on an island far away in the Pacific Ocean, thanks to an artist inspired by the Aloha State’s native plants.
“Gloria,” a painting by Big Island resident Paula de la Cruz, appears in Plantae 2024, a prestigious exhibition by the UK Society of Botanical Artists. The fair, held online this year, opened on June 1 and will close at the end of the month.
The piece represents Hibiscus arnottianus subsp. immaculatus, also known as aloalo, hau hele, kokiʻo kea, kokiʻo keʻokeʻo, pāmakani and the white Molokaʻi hibiscus. It is an extremely rare plant with a natural range limited to about four valleys on the island of Moloka’i located between Maui and O’ahu.
“When I moved here and started learning about the islands’ history of cultural and natural devastation, I wanted to learn more about their native forests and their ethnobotany,” said de la Cruz, who made Kapa’au in North Kohala his home. full time for several years. back.
Through her research, de la Cruz found an absence of information about native plants in the forest her community once occupied, which is now a grassland. So she dug deeper, but visits to local residences revealed only gardens adorned with non-native flowers. Even plants sold as “native” in certain nurseries turned out not to be.
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Eventually, de la Cruz discovered Hui Ku Maoli Ola, an O’ahu nursery dedicated to truly native plants. Their vibrant collection of Hawaiian hibiscus inspired De la Cruz to make the group, several members of which are endangered, his muse.
“I thought, ‘Well, I can’t draw all the genres that are in danger,’” De la Cruz recalled. “’Why don’t I start with something as ubiquitous as the flower of Hawai’i?’”
There are seven species of hibiscus native to Hawaii, with flowers featuring a variety of colors including white, red, orange and purple. The petals of the islands’ state flower, maʻo hau hele or Hibiscus brackenridgei, are a vibrant yellow.
“Gloria,” created with watercolors, colored pencils, and silverpoint, is just the second image in a triptych illustrating the lifespan of the Hibiscus immaculatus flower, which lasts just 24 hours. It is framed by “Timida”, in which its white petals have not yet opened, and “Modestia”, in which the petals are wrinkled and the staminal column, once erect, falls.
De la Cruz creates art with a sense of purpose. He wants to draw attention to the silent life forms that make up 80% of the total biomass of Earth, a planet currently in crisis due to climate change.
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“What is the role of botanical art today? On a warming planet, the function is to communicate the beauty of the quiet world of botany,” he said. “I think it’s very easy to get someone excited about going on a safari in Africa, because you see lions, you see elephants, that’s exciting. But we are so used to seeing plants as a green background that we don’t even realize it.”
De la Cruz recently became a full-time botanical artist. The Argentine worked in advertising in New York City until September 11; In the wake of the attacks, she decided to continue her education and entered a two-year program at the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. There, de la Cruz was introduced to the world of botanical art when she encountered a fellow student holding a drawing of a pineapple.
De la Cruz immediately fell “in love” with this art form and has studied it ever since. During the years he spent as a journalist writing for publications such as The New York Times, WSJ Magazine and Air France, he covered “the intersection of travel, botany and art.”
The Kapa’au resident, who is working with a marine biologist on a native limu (seaweed) project, now hopes to make the leap from botanical art to botanical illustration. It is arguably an even more specialized field in which illustrators work hand-in-hand with scientists to document new species or create flora: treatises that list plants from a given area or period.
David Lorence is a taxonomist and senior research botanist at the Kaua’i National Tropical Botanical Garden, who has named and published approximately 160 new species, subspecies, and varieties of tropical plants from around the world. As a result, he has collaborated with botanical illustrators throughout his long career: His most recent book, the two-volume, 1,137-page “Flora of the Marquesas Islands,” co-authored by Warren Wagner of the Smithsonian Institution, features hundreds of images. . by the esteemed Alice Tangerini.
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Tangerini, an idol of De la Cruz, is known for observing and capturing details that go unnoticed by scientists documenting the same plants. As a result, a species of bromeliad, Navia aliciae, was named in his honor.
According to Lorence, botanical illustrators can work independently or as staff members of scientific institutions. Most of his work consists of black and white ink compositions, however, full color pieces are not unheard of. Lorence indicated that this trend is due to the mundane reality of financial constraints. Pen and ink requires less time than other media and therefore costs less.
“We poor taxonomists, you know, don’t have unlimited resources at our disposal,” Lorence laughed.
But that doesn’t mean botanical illustrations are any less demanding than botanical art. Far from there. While both fields require rigorous adherence to realism and accuracy, scientists like Lorence need work that provides some contextual information and captures details that aren’t necessarily visible to the naked eye.
Although he now works in a field filled with technology, Lorence prefers handmade botanical illustrations over photographs, and doesn’t think the craft will go away anytime soon.
“I think it will continue to be a standard requirement or part of publishing a new species… I think it will stay with us for quite some time,” he said, with the caveat that molecular tools are now also used to differentiate species or identify them. new.
Editor’s note: Reporter Scott Yunker works occasionally as a gardener in the horticulture department of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
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