Discussion

Daffodils

April 15, 1802, the English poet William Wordsworth and his younger sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, walked together along the shore of England's Ullswater lake near where they lived and saw a field of daffodils. Dorothy wrote about the sight in her diary:

“I never saw daffodils so beautiful, they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them,”

William wrote a poem about the experience in 1804 that was published in a collection of his poetry in 1807. It is worth sharing. This is a photo of Ullswater with wild daffodils still growing by the lake shore.

Here is another field of daffodils, this time at Bodnant Gardens in Wales.

The wild daffodils Wordsworth and his sister saw was Narcissus pseudonarcissus. It is a member of the Narcissus genus.

There appears to be some confusion about the distinction between a narcissus and a daffodil. Some sources seem to use the terms interchangeably. One web site that purportedly describes various daffodil cultivars labels all of the ones that it shows as types of narcissus. 

Some people prefer to reserve the term "daffodil" for N. pseudonarcissus, England's and Wordsworth's wild species. That species is what I am using for my model.

Here is a closer view of daffodil plants.

Daffodil's are perennials that grow from bulbs in the spring. Note the sword-like leaves that sprout from the base of the plant. Bulbs can produce from one to three stems, each with one blossom, but most produce just one. Here are the bulbs.

Here is a close-up of a daffodil blossom.

The things that look like petals around the central trumpet-like corona are tepals; originally sepals (parts of the calyx) that resemble petals but seem to be very much like them. The pistil (female organ) of the flower with the stigma on the end sticks up from the base of the corona and can barely be seen in this photo. Some are visible in the photo before the bulbs above.

There are daffodils in Japan, but they are not native plants there. They originated in the Mediterranean area and reached Japan through China centuries ago.

Oxalis

There are about 550 oxalis species around the world. Most are perennials that grow from tubers or bulb-like structures. Common names for it are wood sorrel, false shamrock, shamrock plant, good luck plant, love plant.

From the photo above, it can easily be seen why it is often confused with shamrocks, but the two are completely different plants.

Those 550 oxalis species can vary quite a bit in appearance. My model is the Oxalis pardalis.

Butterflies

Butterflies or butterfly-like creatures have been around since before the age of the dinosaurs ended. It is believed that about 20 million years ago, butterflies branched away from moths to become its own line of brightly colored insects. Recent research suggests that happened somewhere in North or Central America. Today, there are about 17,500 butterfly species around the world.

Life for butterflies begin as eggs that are frequently laid on leaves, providing a ready food source for the larvae when they hatch.

The eggs hatch to become caterpillars; the larva stage. This is the caterpillar of a monarch butterfly.

The next stage of a butterfly is the pupa. Butterflies shed their skin to become a chrysalis.

There is a mistaken belief that butterflies spin cocoons around themselves. Some moths do, but butterflies are different.

The butterflies that emerge for the final stage of their lives. come in many colors.

Here are a few specific types of butterflies.

Artwork

Takeuchi Seihō (1864 – 1942)

As a youth, Takeuchi studied in both the Kanō and Maruyama schools. Two of his works won awards in 1882. He went to the Paris Exposition of 1900 and toured Europe studying Western art. Back in Japan, he developed his own style, a blend of Western and Maruyama realism. He was appointed an Imperial Household Artist in 1913, and in 1919, he was appointed to the Imperial Fine Arts Academy.  Here is a print of his titled White Daffodil.