August 25
Partridge-pea
(Cassia
fasciculata)
This native
plant provides delicate fern-like foliage all summer. When
the bright yellow flowers open in late summer they attract
many flying insects. The most obvious is the Cloudless
Sulphur butterfly that is the same color and size as the
flowers. I knew I should include one in the painting. But
when I put him in a big jar to paint his portrait, he
wouldn’t sit still. He kept trying to fly through the
glass. As I didn’t yet have the heart to sacrifice a little
life for the sake of art, I let him go and, instead,
painted the red wasp which is also always found on the
plant. I had no qualms about killing a wasp.
Sometime later, I learned about John Abbot (1751-ca.1840),
an English-born naturalist who arrived in Georgia in
February, 1776 and spent more than sixty years studying and
illustrating southeastern butterflies and other insects and
the plants on which they were found. His collected
specimens were displayed in major natural history
collections of Europe. He also sold watercolor
illustrations of the plants and insects.
When I saw Abbot’s illustration of
Partridge-pea,
I
was so glad I had
not put the Cloudless Sulphur in my painting—it would have
looked like I had copied him. But how wonderful it is that,
for at least two hundred years, that plant and that
butterfly have worked and survived together. (We can assume
that Abbot did
kill
his
butterfly to
paint it.)
I do, however, have the Cloudless Sulphur in this painting
in a different way. As I was painting the Partridge-pea, I
noticed a green caterpillar and a yellow one, each
resembling the developing seedpods. I take it as my mission
to report what I see so I put them both in my painting as I
found them. Years later, in a lecture, I heard that the
Cloudless Sulphur caterpillars are variable in color and
habit—the yellow ones feed on flowers, the dark ones feed
on stems. I could hardly wait to check my painting and see
if that’s how I painted them. It is! There is no substitute
for personal observation.
By the end of September it is time for me to strip the seed
pods off the Partridge-pea (which may be four feet tall by
then) and pull it up from my garden. It is an annual and
won’t come back next year except by seed. The same is true
for its little cousin in the painting, Cassia
nictitans. Remaining in
that open area of my landscape will be the perennial,
Ageratum (Eupatorium
coelestinum), illustrated
in my painting dated September 24, which will continue to
bloom another month or two.
The Cloudless Sulphur butterfly may be seen in my painting
dated September 20, visiting Rudbeckia
laciniata for nectar.
(Click on the picture for a
larger image)
(Click here for the next
painting)