Ranunculus asiaticus variability and its lessons for BRIT K. W. Bridges Professor of Botany (retired)
Presented at Botanical Research Institute of Texas Fort Worth, TX August 4, 2014
I got interested in Ranunculus when I started taking photos of these plants in Carlsbad, California. I visit this area frequently and usually stop by this area where they grow Ranunculus every year. I was visiting a friend recently and showed him some of the Ranunculus photos that I had taken. He really likes Ranunculus and this started a discussion about where he could get some materials so he could grow then in his garden.
It only took a few Google searches to find out that Ranunculus were once very, very popular. They began to be grown in places like England in the early 1600s. By 1800 there were a lot of varieties available. The peak popularity in England was around 1850. There were between 800 and 900 varieties of Ranunculus available to the public. The Ranunculus popularity didn't last. There were just a few varieties being sold 50 years later and this lack of commercial diversity persists to this day.
Commercial catalogs, such as BloomingBulb.com, list just nine Ranunculus varieties, plus a mixed selection. The situation is similar in the UK. Note that the Ranunculus varieties are basically primary colors.
Flower Fields, in Carlsbad, California, advertises that they produce nearly all of the Ranunculus sold in the US. This 50 acre farm is where I've been taking photographs for many years. The Ranunculus are arranged in colorful bands of primary colors.
Easy To Grow Bulbs is the sales agent for the Flower Fields’ Ranunculus. They list just 12 colors plus a mixed selection. This plant catalog has the standard primary colors that we saw in other suppliers, plus the Cafe, Flamenco and Merlot varieties.
When I walk through the Flower Fields’ display of Ranunculus, I tend to work the edges of the field, especially in the distant corners. This lets me get closer to the flowers and, more important, I am able to find variability that I don't easily see in the main parts of the field. Some of this variability is in the shape of the flowers.
Color patterns are also variable. I'm seeing varieties that are quite different than those listed in the catalogs.
This variability makes the Ranunculus much more interesting. A lot of these Ranunculus varieties are worthy of growing in a garden. Indeed, I think that many of them are more beautiful than those sold as primary colors.
The differences between some of these varieties and those represented by the "primary colors" can be quite astounding.
There aren't a lot of individual plants of these unusual varieties. You find them here and there. They are not growing many of them.
Many of these unusual Ranunculus varieties stand out and seem worthy of more widespread availability.
The more variability that I saw in the Ranunculus, the more curious I became.
My question focused on finding out what we know about Ranunculus diversity. There are two obvious sources of information Herbaria hold preserved specimens. This is the "gold standard" for documenting and preserving information on botanical diversity. A complementary alternative is to see the diversity as it has been documented in botanical illustrations. Specialized libraries hold floras that have illustrations of the biological diversity.
I began my search based on my knowledge that there were once hundreds of Ranunculus varieties. I had also been seduced by seeing a few very interesting living examples as a result of my wanderings at Flower Fields. What was this variability like? Certainly there must have been some spectacular varieties that caused the immense popularity of the Ranunculus.
The plant catalogs for the period of peak popularity didn't help much. Here are a few of the descriptions of the 363 Double Ranunculus varieties. The descriptions are far to brief to allow you to picture what these varieties would look like.
I found very few herbarium records. And, of course, the long dried herbarium specimens have lost their colors. There were also few illustrations and, of the few that I found, they generally didn't link names to the illustrated varieties. And, as far as I can tell, we've not maintained comprehensive living collections. I consider this to be quite a tragedy. We've lost the knowledge of an immense amount of biological variability. Hundreds and hundreds of varieties have disappeared. All that remains are brief (one or two word) descriptions of all of those lost Ranunculus varieties.
This has caused me to go back and look at the roles of our collections. Perhaps if we are clearer about the role of a collection, we won't let this kind of loss happen again. I characterize the herbarium collection as specialist oriented. This is where the professional systematist works. The specimens themselves are used for digital information. The professional makes counts and takes measurements on these specimens. The specimens also hold the important DNA for genetic determinations. The botanical illustration are more oriented to the lay public. This is the source of the analog information relating to the appearance of the specimen. This is analog information that is related to things like color patterning. Illustrations are often made to emphasize the aesthetics of the specimens. In the case of Ranunculus, I'm thinking that we mostly lost our diversity information by not doing a good job with illustrations.
I divide the illustration of plants into two overlapping categories. The botanical illustrations are technical and attempt to accurately portray the appearance of the specimen. These are often quite technical and are generally not drawn to be aesthetically attractive. On the other hand, plants are used in still life illustrations. These are pictures that emphasize aesthetics. Still life pictures are the sort that you'd want to frame and put on display.
There are, of course, botanical illustrators that make aesthetically pleasing drawings. This is an form of art that requires talent.
The still life paintings also requires considerable talent. I feel that in many ways, these still life paintings come closest to what is needed to capture the appearance of flowers.
When I see these still life painting I wish that the artists had captured the beauty that must have been seen in all of those Ranunculus varieties.
For me, the images produced by still life paintings represent the type of botanical illustration that best captures the appearance of plants. All aspects of the plant’s appearance can be shown, including the flowers, leaves and fruit. When properly composed and produced, still life images can be very compelling. This has been a very popular art genre.
Let me bring us back to the present. How do we fill the gap in how we store information, particularly as it relates to variability of species?
We need to look at the characteristics of the media available to document the appearance of plant varieties. The traditional still life paintings were done with oil. The medium for botanical illustrations has been watercolor paintings and lithographs. In more recent times we have had film photography. This table has been color coded to show a the positive characteristics of a medium (green) versus those that are negative (red). The traditional media, oil painting and watercolor/lithographs, produce desirable results. But the products are limited in their availability, expensive to produce and require high skills to create. Film photography is an inferior medium primarily due to its poor archival quality. Also, people tend to not like film prints when compared to the painted or printed alternatives. However, producing film photographs has a low cost and requires only moderate production skills. The negatives attributes of film photography, however, have kept this from being a viable archival technology.
We now have a new technology: digital photography. This is the same table of media characteristics. I've duplicated the film photography column and added one for digital photography. Note that where film photography was deficient, digital photography excels. Overall, digital imaging appears to have the potential to provide a way to capture the kind of variability information that we've been missing.
Recognize that digital photography is a new technology. While it is still "photography," it share very little with film photography. Digital cameras have more resolution than their film counterparts. Inks used to print digital images have archival quality. Digital photos can be edited with layers. This seems like a strange attribute, but you'll soon see that it, too, is important. Notice that the illustration on this slide looks like one of the still-life paintings that were shown earlier. This is actually a digital photograph.
We saw earlier that the aesthetics of the still life paintings best captured the "analog" information that we've been loosing. These two images are digital photographs. I believe that they demonstrate that today's digital technology can be an excellent substitute for the traditional still life oil painting. These digital images can be printed in large sizes and they retain their colors, just like their oil painting predecessors.
These digital still life images were created using a technology called "light painting." This is not an elaborate technology. It requires a digital camera (specifically, a digital single lens reflex), a sturdy tripod, a dark room and a small flashlight. The photographer takes multiple, long-exposure photos in a completely dark room. During each exposure, a small section of the object being photographed is painted with the flashlight. This process typically take about a half-minute for each exposure. The overall process results in one or two dozen individual images. The images are edited and combined in software like Photoshop. It is a fairly straight-forward process with each digital image layered to make a composite. Once the photographic composite is complete, it is available for storage and, if desired, printed using archival materials.
I believe that the production of digital still-life images represents an opportunity for BRIT to start filling the gap in the collection and documentation of plant diversity that is now being missed. I'm not just talking about Ranunculus, of course. There must be many species for which we are loosing information about their variability. I list that steps here that I believe are required not just to create illustrations, but to tie these illustrations into all facets of BRIT's programs. Note that because this activity has aesthetic attributes that go beyond the scientific role of the herbarium, this activity also supports BRIT outreach possibilities. Imagine how these digital still life images can be used as gallery prints, as educational displays, distributed in ebooks, or as the illustrations in BRIT-produced calendars.
If you look at these possibilities, you'll see that the addition of digital imaging of this sort can help unify all the aspects of BRIT. It brings support to the scientific mission and brings together many of BRIT's other activities. The production of digital images is a great volunteer activity. It is a creative outlet and the products are highly desirable. Imagine a volunteer who creates a "great master" quality still-life image and take a large copy home and puts it on the wall. Every time a visitor sees the print (and admires it), the volunteer will explain BRIT's mission. I think that a new program, such a this, can help BRIT remain in the forefront of similar institutions.
Thanks to … Howard Myers for starting the discussion. Will McClatchey for continuing the discussion. Pat Harrison for helping me get the discussion inside BRIT. Flower Fields for persisting in the face of urban expansion. Nancy Furumoto for being patient with a slow photographer and for having the “good eye” in finding interesting Ranunculus varieties.