Plants to paint

The Beckler’s Botanical Bounty Group have just spent a wonderful week in the Civic Hall in Menindee. We pile our tables full of microscopes and paint brushes and papers and plant specimens kept in all sorts of unusual containers. Take away coffee cups make excellent plant holders, but one artist had an old glass clag jar to stand her specimen in.

I have two plants that I am looking forward to painting. One is an upright species of the Cullen genus, Cullen australasicum I found it growing on the Menindee/Broken Hill Road, just past the Copi Hollow turn off. When I say “on the road” I mean right in the crack of the road between the bitumen and the verge, with parts of it flopping onto the road! It must love the runoff from the camber of the road.

Here is a closer look at my showy plant.

My other plant is far less of a drama queen. It is Pimelea trichostachya. It has a stem that grows straight from the sandy soil and then branches. Each of the new stems has a fluffy head instead of petals as we usually think a flower has. It is quite a sweetie.

And a close up, in the take away coffee cup 🙂

I have drawn both plants onto tracing paper, done colour swatches and taken lots of photos. So when I get back to Melbourne I should be ready to get the paintings underway.