A drawing of beaked hawks-beard

Beaked hawksbeard 'crepis vesicaria'

Gerard E Cheshire is a writer I follow avidly. His interests are the deciphering of ancient languages and medieval plant biology.  These interests bring together drawings of plants from a time well before both photography or 'scientific' illustration techniques, and a way of writing about nature that doesn't separate out daily human life experience, from nature observation and a need to embed thinking into wider cosmic narratives. There is a wonderful holistic experience to be gained from every one of the pages he studies. Cheshire is also very generous, he sends links out to his work in order to update his followers , such as myself, and every time I look to see what he is doing I am rewarded by fresh insights into how to approach something as apparently simple as drawing a plant. 

This juxtaposition below is typical of Cheshire. 

A photograph of the root of beaked hawksbeard, compared with its drawing from Manuscript MS408

On the left we have the reality of the photographic image, but the drawing takes us into much deeper realms. My first thoughts on seeing a field full of beaked hawksbeards this morning when I went for my walk, was how like suns these flowers were. 

Hawksbeard

The flowers like dandelions radiate out from a centre, the evolutionary design for these flowers echoing the sun itself. You cannot escape the connection, as you walk through a field of these flowers and then look up at the sun, they are in many ways one indivisible experience of yellowness and radiance. Hold a flowerhead in your hand and it will turn your skin yellow as it radiates reflective light. 

Cheshire then reminds us that the drawing of the root is done in such a way that we are imaginatively intertwined with four braids of Persephone's golden hair and that these represent earth, air, fire and water. Empedocles the philosopher invented the idea of the four elements in his text, 'The Doctrine of the Four Roots'; thus linking in imaginative terms, the base from which everything emerges to plant roots. The world itself, like a plant, grows. What a wonderful idea. Persephone of course had to spend half the year underground, the myth of her abduction and return to the surface representing her functions as the embodiment of spring and the personification of vegetation. 

If we then look at the way the flowers have been drawn we see another wonderful complexity visualised.

The sun rising over the flower bud

When you see a beaked hawksbeard, it may or may not be in full flower. Sometimes it will take the form of a seed-head or an as yet unopened bud. A photograph will like the one at the top of this post perhaps be able to show us a couple of states at once. However the artist in this case has drawn a rising sun, emerging from behind the seed pod/flower bud. The flower will be a sun when it has emerged, and like the sun it will disappear during winter, only to emerge again next summer. What a wonderful image. 

The full page depicting beaked hawksbeard

In the image above the leaves begin to move across the page as if their form is morphing between plant leaf and insect life and the text that accompanies the drawing is itself of great interest, and the deciphering of texts like this is another of Cheshire's skills. 

From this plant can be derived, doses of ichor, the wisest medicine, and it can be beneficial to midwives and child bearing women, the sun's rays as caught in the plants flower, bringing benefits of health and happiness. 

The text also operates as a poem, and as a cross between medical information, cosmic connections and everyday need. Please remember, this is also just one page, from one manuscript and Gerard E Cheshire continues to find these old manuscripts and translate them and publish his findings. I think in his quiet academic way, he is offering us something marvellous. 

Beaked hawksbeard 'crepis vesicaria'

See also:

The full Crepis Vesicaria manuscript by Gerard E Cheshire

Gerard E Cheshire's academic link for papers

Drawing plants

Beuys and Cotman 

The evolution of an idea