KALAHEO — Outside National Tropical Botanical Garden headquarters, the wiliwili trees are in bloom. And on the other side of the full-length windows fronting the trees, artists are creating plants of their own.
In the center of the room, a table is packed with flowers, fruits, branches and berries — all specimens taken from NTBG’s gardens. There’s barely enough room for a microscope at the end. It’s surrounded by stations where artists are recreating plants with watercolor and colored pencil.
At the end of the room, Asuka Hishiki, from Japan, works with light pinks and peach colored pencils. She’s recreating the seedpods of the skunk tree and you can smell the project from across the room.
“It smells so bad I have to put it outside at night,” Hishiki said, finding the right hues to match the little flowers and large seedpods of the deciduous tree. “You see how the seeds sit inside (the pod), it’s like a mouth. It’s like a pretty monster.”
At a different workstation, Marilyn Garber, from Minnesota, is wondering if she needs to go find a hammer. She’s recreating a piece of the Terminalia samoensis, a leafy tree with rosy seeds that have tiny almonds inside.
“They’re edible, but they’re really small,” Garber said. “I’d like to break the seeds open and do the almond, too.”
When she’s finished, Garber’s piece will show a dissection of the seeds and to show the different stages and parts of the plant.
Esther Carpi, of Washington, D.C., is doing the same thing. She’s working on a plant called Genipa Americana, also known as jagua. The sap of the unripe jagua fruit is used as ink for tattoos that’ll last for several weeks, similar to henna ink.
“It’s a really pretty flower,” Carpi said. “I’m going to probably include the (dissected) fruit, too. I can’t wait to cut it open.”
All of the artists in the project are part of NTBG’s Florilegium Society, headed up by botanical artist Wendy Hollender and hosted by Tim Flynn, herbarium collections manager and David Lorence, director of science and conservation at NTBG.
The society is in its fourth year, but Hollender has been documenting the plants at NTBG for 11 years. She’s been a botanical artist for more than two decades.
The artists are working together, meeting annually for about three weeks for a workshop and painting session with Hollender, to create an anthology of NTBG’s plants.
“We’ll make a book at some point about the plants in our garden,” Flynn said.
There’s a lot of leeway for the artists as they chose their specimens and help build the book, but this time around they’re creating images for signage around the gardens. So, they’ve chosen their plants from a list of about 50 options.
In the end, NTBG gets their plants documented into an anthology and the artists get access to one of the most varied plant collections in the world.
“Last year when I was here I didn’t even go to the beach,” said Mali Moir, from Australia. It’s her third visit to NTBG to be part of the society. “I just love all the people here and the gardens.”
And hailing from just across the island, Joan Luzney of Wailua is one of three Kauai residents taking part in the project.
“I absolutely love what we’re doing,” she said. “Sharpening my skills and what we’re doing for the garden.”
Their work is going to be on display at NTBG in a show entitled “Something old, something new”, set to run from May 7 through June 13 at NTBG headquarters.
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Jessica Else, environment reporter, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
