STORY BEHIND THE ART OF DEREK NORMAN
19th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists & The Horticultural Society of New York
The Wild Leek in Close-up
Allium tricoccum
After many years of living on a ravine close to Chicago I had come to revere every spring the carpet of green that heralded the arrival of another crop of lush looking wild leeks. Over the years my admiration for this little plant grew to a passion. Finally, some five or so years ago I began a serious attempt to research the complete life cycle of the wild leek over the course of a full year. The idea was to complete a pen and black ink drawing for the ASBA exhibition, “Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps”. In preparing my field studies, pencil drawings and establishing the detail of every facet of the plant with fine line pen and black ink, I ventured, more by accident than design, deep into watercolor. It was the gentle seduction of the plant as it transformed itself from one stage to another that convinced me that the full story of Allium tricoccum deserved to be told in full color. So, after a very full year my full-color watercolor exploration came into being. And was subsequently accepted into the Bartram Exhibition.
Since all my life pen and black ink has been my go-to medium of choice it hardly seemed likely that I would completely abandon all those earlier detailed black and white ink drawings. And so it was, that not too long after, I retrieved them from my rather crumpled file and created a rough scientific botanical plate composition. The design has evolved over the last year or so and has survived the travails of a move from north (Chicago) to south (Mobile).
Now that I’m geographically separated from the Wild Leek, I see my efforts as a very personal tribute to the modest beauty of Allium tricoccum. And my modest hope? That I might have accomplished a detailed complementary drawing that in total documented the plant in full black and white and color.
Allium tricoccum has long grown along the eastern part of continental North America, from Ontario to Georgia and prized as a spring-time edible delicacy. In may parts of the country it is fondly known as “ramps”, a name supposedly derived from Anglo-Saxon English.
As Wikipedia informs us ‘Allium tricoccum is a bulb-forming perennial with broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems, and a scallion-like stalk and bulb. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. The flower stalk appears after the leaves have died back’.
Quite apart from its appeal to the world of botany and gastronomy, it has also made a name for itself as a cultural icon, having the distinction of being the plant that gave its name to the City of Chicago. Well documented folk-lore has it that the name “Chicago” is derived from a word (shikaakwa) which means “wild onion” in the language spoken by the Algonquin peoples. This became the Indian name for the Chicago River, in recognition of the presence of wild leeks in the watershed. Early French explorers began adopting the word, with a variety of spellings; in the late seventeenth century, it came to refer to the site at the mouth of the Chicago River where today, Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River cross paths. The original site of the City of Chicago.
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Read more about this artist’s work: 17th Annual International