I love to watercolour, and have generally gravitated towards portraits and plants. When I began working as a plant evolutionary ecology research assistant, the aesthetic appreciation I had developed for plant diversity became connected with my scientific appreciation. Now, it’s not only plant form that fascinates me, but also the ecological and evolutionary factors shaping it!

I’ve found it useful to link these two by creating visual representations of my study species and hypotheses. Referencing my own photos or iNaturalist images, I draw digital images of petals, reproductive organs, leaves, and stems. Then, I paste them together to compose a plant illustrating a hypothesis or finding.

Here’s one example, of my hypothesis for my M. guttatus kin discrimination project:

kin-pred-comp

And here’s another, of S. officinalis, from a presentation on my floral plasticity work. This one is accompanied by a photo of the process:

sap_pred_bg

So far, this consists of three species, but I hope the list will get longer as I explore new study systems! The folders containing these illustrations are below – feel free to use them, with credit.

Mimulus guttatus

Saponaria officinalis (contains a bonus bee!)

Moricandia moricandioides