Illustrious career describing plants international effort

It might turn out to be an international success story.

A botanical illustrator who was brought up in West Africa depicts a South American plant being grown in the Dunedin Botanic Garden winter garden glasshouse in an illustration and successfully submits it to this year's Margaret Flockton Exhibition in Sydney.

Well, that is the plan for botanical illustrator Sue Wickison, who is working on illustrations of the subtropical Aristolochia ringens, commonly referred to as gaping Dutchman's pipe.

Ms Wickison lives in Wellington, but has a house in Dunedin and visits her two University of Otago student offspring regularly.

It was on one such recent visit she spotted another Aristolochia, one of the largest singular flowers in the world, at the Botanic Garden glasshouse, Aristolochia gigantea.

These flowers can be up to 36cm long and 30cm wide.

Flies are attracted by their sight and smell, but are then captured by the flower, usually overnight, to ensure that they carry off the ripe pollen to the next plant once released.

It is just the sort of flower "which takes you out of your comfort zone" which attracts the interest of Ms Wickison, although it was not always easy to get close to examples.

The discovery of the Aristolochia gigantea led to her exploring the glasshouse and finding the smaller Aristolochia ringens (which also briefly imprisons it pollinators).

When the Otago Daily Times visited the glasshouse, plant collection curator Stephen Bishop was assisting Ms Wickison by providing some cuttings of Aristolochia ringens foliage and flowers for her to begin drawing.

It would take her about a week to do the drawing and several more weeks to complete the illustration.

Building up colour in a watercolour was a slow process, she said.

Ms Wickison was born and raised in Sierra Leone where her enthusiasm for natural history was fostered by her father, who was a teacher, amateur botanist and artist who took her on collecting expeditions.

After completing an honours degree in scientific illustration at Middlesex University, London, her career as an illustrator began at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew where she spent nine years.

In 1986, she visited the Solomon Islands to collect orchids for Kew and, while there, found a previously undiscovered orchid which has since been named after her - Coelogyne susanae.

She had not realised her find was previously un-named.