So it appears the Zebra G does in fact break in, i.e., it gets more flexible (the tines spread more under equivalent pressure), not to say more elastic (rate of relaxation under release from pressure) the more you use it, at least to a point. Our Pachira aquatica has no doubt reaped the gains. In the sketch above, I was seated on the floor such that my eyes were about 40cm below the lip of the vessel, and if you’re familiar with P. aquatica you might spot the foreshortening this yielded: the canopy appears modestly compressed — admittedly, could be partly an effect of the edge of the paper — while the stems and especially the pot appear elongated, the latter evoking a dramatic volume it lacks in life despite my having left it incomplete.
I was going to open by saying I don’t know why I take such pleasure drawing this particular plant — rather, this particular kind of plant — but in fact I think I do. It’s not that it’s easier than other kinds of vegetation — the ovoid leaves are perhaps a bit more legible than those of its neighbor the poor dying-back sedum, or the dense herbaceous stems of the lavender visible, if you’re sitting at the foot of the P. aquatica, by turning your head in the other direction, through the window that gives on the balcony.
But the Pachira foliage is not that much more legible than that of its more herbaceous coevals, and the shaggy haircut (Tokyo avant garde c.1983 vibes) has proved surprisingly difficult to capture. No, I think what attracts me to this one is the contrast — and the attendant contrast in markmaking strategies this demands — between the ligneous stems and the canopy, and in particular — though you can hardly see this unless you poke your head up under the canopy — the rapid deliquescence once you get beyond the woody part (in the sketch above I’ve tried to evoke that with the pair of gracile arcing branches ascending from the rightmost two stems). Note too that the canopy stems exclusively from axillary stems originating, in this house, 1–6cm below the termination of the main stem, while the main stem itself undergoes no terminal brachiation. It’s not clear to me if the main stems continue to develop after the axillary stem starts putting out. Is the apical meristem active? Does this extra length of stem serve some continuing physiological purpose — perhaps serving as a buffer for excess soil water potential? As its binomial suggests, P. aquatica’s home turf is tropical wetlands, so you’d expect some kind of adaptation for excess water potential. It’s not clear in the sketch, but the stem bases are developing enlarged lignotubers not unlike those you see in trees with water-volatile habitats (from tidewater cypress on the one hand to spotted gums on the other).
Another thing that’s probably not clear from the sketch is the phototropism — all the stems are crowding toward one side of the pot because that’s where the sun is coming from.
Meanwhile, the lavender, for all that they’ve been getting plenty of sun, seem about ready to pack it in for the season. In fact, in the two days between when I made this and when I’m writing this, some other member of our household has taken the initiative to mow the lavender visible in the rear down to the silica gravel that topped its bed. You can see I don’t yet have the technique to render plants legible at multiple depths across a single composition.
Silica gravel, in fact, is where I wanted to go today, specifically our compulsion to pick up small stones and carry them elsewhere, and the implications for how our (“our”) habits of markmaking take form, over horizons evolutionary, historical, and developmental. I find myself returning, again and again, to a 2015 paper by archaeologist Tom Dillehay and colleagues that turns on the interpretation of such so-called manuports (things carried by hand) … and to a more recent report of the use of small stones as prosthesis by a parrot who’d lost his maxilla, or upper bill, to accident or attack. But this will have to wait for next time.