When in Botanical Doubt, Don’t Ask by Nancy Smith

In May, I attended a weekend retreat sponsored by Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary to sketch and paint native plants of the Outer Banks of NC. I was one of a small group of eighteen participants along with 3 experts: a naturalist, a botanist, and a botanical illustrator.

We stayed in an historic hunting lodge built in 1913 that was gracious and roomy inside though simple in its furnishings. It had 12 bedrooms, a large kitchen and dining room, a living room with a massive fireplace, and a couple of servant quarters thrown in for good measure. The added touch of an antique goose decoy floating in the downstairs bathtub with blue and green glass stones scattered along the bottom assured me I was one with Audubon.

I discovered that botanicals are complicated to draw, and painting in the presence of a botanist has its own challenges. Naively, I assumed that plants were sacred to a botanist, so I was horrified when our expert pulled out her special pair of clippers and chopped off the end of a Pepper Vine. I was dumbfounded when she encouraged us to take as many samples as we wanted, even entire plants if we could carry them. That flew in the face of all those years of my husband’s admonishment to “not pick the flowers”. I walked around all morning tentatively gathering plants, sure the nature police were on their way to get me.