The tale of the Greenhood Orchids

Storytime!

Every painting that I create is special to me, but some subjects that I paint have particularly noteworthy stories behind them. This is one of them:

As you may know, I am currently exhibiting some artwork in the wonderful Botanica exhibition at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. This exhibition usually has a different theme each year that we artists are encouraged to paint to. Of course, some themes are easier to work within than others. This year's theme is 'Deception and Disguise'. That is; plants that use mimicry, camouflage or other neat tricks to aid in their survival and/or reproduction. So cool! But also...

"What on earth could I paint??"

There is no point painting anything that I'm not interested in or passionate about (because that would show in my work) and I don't happen to know of any sneaky plants that I have access to in person (painting from life is approximately 10000000000x better than painting from google images).

The obvious subject to paint for this theme is some sort of orchid- some of the cleverest tricksters out there....but I don't have any orchids. And the ornamental kind that you can buy in Coles are pretty but not sneaky. And though the obvious next option is to visit an orchid house I don't have easy access to such things either. Furthermore, Australian native ground orchids are pretty small and not that easy to find on demand in the wild. I needed to find an alternative.

I spent hours researching plant subject ideas. I was learning about succulents that disguise themselves as rocks (lithops), and plants that play dead when touched(mimosa pudica) and all sorts of weird and wonderful options that I just couldn't commit to doing myself for various reasons.

So I gave up. I took my kids to the park with my Mum instead and played on the swings.

After a while, my Mum drove my girls home while I stayed a little longer to play with my son some more. It didn't matter that we didn't have a car because there is a bush track shortcut that connects my parents' home to the playground. As we we enjoyed our stroll back to the house through the bush I was chatting with my boy when I noticed over his shoulder a collection of white...things (???) dotted behind him just off of the path. What were they??

ORCHIDS! A WHOLE COLONY OF ORCHIDS THAT I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE! (It turns out that they are a pretty common variety BUT I HAD STILL NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE)

It was very exciting. Actually, I'm still excited all these many months later in recounting the story. I mean, what are the chances?!

The orchids I found are called Pterostylis nutans or 'Nodding Greenhood Orchids' or 'Parrot's Beak Orchids'. They are certainly not your typical beauty of a flower but they are absolutely fascinating as, though they appear to be green and white, upon closer inspection they are actually translucent!

See?!

So! I snapped some photos with my phone, collected one to bring back to my parents house and hoped that the orchid had a sneaky trick to fit the theme as well. And it does! Nodding greenhood orchids release a kairomone which attracts it's pollinator-the fungus gnat. The gnat is lured in to land on the flower's labellum which is then triggered to tip the insect further into the flower. The insect pollinates the flower as it attempts to escape it's temporary trap. Perfect.

I would have loved to have gone back to the colony for a better look at these fascinating flowers. But life is busy and time got away from me. By the time I eventually wandered back down the bush track the flowers were gone. Happily, the photos that I had taken of the colony and the sketches that I made from that one lonesome flower were enough for me to create the painting that you see below.

So what do you reckon? A pretty neat story about a pretty cool little flower, I think.

Lauren xx