From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 3, July 2023.
The Neotropical flora was the theme of the 20th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, which was held on May 19, 2023. One species among the flora is Heliconia terciopela, which is endemic to a small region of lowland wet forest on the Pacific coast of Colombia. The name “terciopela” is Spanish for “velvet,” which refers to the smooth, short, uniform pubescence that covers the inflorescence. It also signifies the primary forest habitats where this species of Heliconia and the highly poisonous snake Botrops asper, locally known as “terciopelo” or fer-de-lance, are both found. Alice Tangerini drew this illustration in 1992 using unmounted dried specimens including leaves and an inflorescence. She reconstructed it into its more natural appearance with the help of slides of the living plant. Dissections were made with the Wild M5 microscope and reduced to fit the page format. The finished drawing was in pen and ink on Cronaflex drafting film without any digital recomposition. A partial detail of stamens was cut from the final inked image as it did not reveal any necessary information. The illustration was included along with four other drawings of Heliconia in the 1993 issue of Caldasia.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.