Figs are one of the most prominent fruits in the Bible, popping up repeatedly and inviting us to consider what they represent.
Farming figs requires care, patience and maintenance, fertilizing and pruning. The shoots that pop up like periscopes must be trimmed, and many varieties won’t bear fruit until the fourth year. New shoots can be propagated to grow a new fig tree.
New fig tree growing from a shoot
Fig trees can live for centuries and grow to enormous heights.
Cathedral Pine in Danbulla National Park Credit: Mike Prociv @ Queensland Government
With a crown as big as 2 Olympic swimming pools towering nearly 50m over you, this mighty 500-year-old fig tree will take your breath away.
As you stroll along the boardwalk, gaze into the roots and canopy of this rainforest giant. See if you can spot some of the plentiful wildlife.
Fig trees are often regarded as keystone resources in tropical landscapes. For they bear fruit year-round and are one of the few reliable sources available for resident as well as migrant birds and other animals.
Ripe figs smell lovely and attract a host of animals to feed on them.
The common fig contains only female flowers and propagates without pollination, but within the family, there are hundreds of varieties. The fruit may be oval or pear-shaped and may be white, green, red or purplish-black.
Parrots eating figs in a fig treeSquirrel eating figs Credit: Dreamtime
Fig trees may be even more essential in urban landscapes with rapidly diminishing green cover and related reduction of fruiting trees.
Fig tree in Nairobi Credit: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
Four stores-high fig tree centuries old was saved by environmental activists after being threatened by Kenya’s roads agency to make way for an expressway. The environmentalists explained that this tree was a beacon of Kenya’s cultural and ecological heritage.
Most people are unaware of several talented women who worked in the field of botany as early as the 18thcentury.
Consider Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) Maria was an extremely enterprising and independent German woman. In 1699, along with her daughter, she travelled to Surinam to carry out research into the reproduction and development of insects. She is now regarded as both a highly gifted artist and an exceptional empirical scientist, one of the first to demolish the prevailing notion of the spontaneous generation of insects from mud.
Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian
Since women were not allowed to sell paintings in oils in many German cities, Maria became skilled at watercolor and gouache. She was the first to portray caterpillars and butterflies with the plants that nourished them. Maria’a book, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium,was published in 1705 in both Latin and Dutch with colored engravings. Marian paid the production costs her self and acted as the publisher.
Maria’a book, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium,was published in 1705 in both Latin and Dutch with colored engravings. Marian paid the production costs her self and acted as the publisher. Two folio editions of 254 aquarelles by Marian were taken to Saint Petersburg for Peter the Great’s personal physician.
Ananas mit Kakerlake (Pineapple with cockroach) by Merian (c. between 1701 and 1705) Hand coloured copper engraving
Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft (October 29, 1791 – May 16, 1828) was an American botanist who devoted herself to creating richly detailed illustrations and descriptions of the botanical specimens she found on Cuba. Her work culminating in a remarkable three-volume manuscript entitled, Specimens of the Plants & Fruit of the Island of Cuba. This book was never published and went missing for 190 years. It was recently discovered at Cornell Library’s division of rare manuscripts. The book includes 121 watercolor plants with detailed notes.
Page from Specimens of the Plants & Fruits of the Island of Cuba by Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft. Credit: Cornell University. Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft Credit: Cornell Division of Rare Manuscripts
Just as remarkable was Mary Delany (May 14, 1700- April 15, 1788), an English woman whose collection of intricate paper collages of plant life are now in the British Museum. Mary Delany created dramatic and precise collages, made from colored paper, much of which she had dyed herself. The works were then mounted on black backgrounds. Describing her method in a letter to her niece dated October 4th, 1772, she wrote: “I have invented a new way of imitating flowers”. She was then 72. In ten years times Mary Delaney completed nearly 1,000 cut-paper botanicals so accurate that botanists still refer to them – each one so energetically dramatic that it seems to leap out from the dark as on to a lit stage.
Beatrix Potter (July 28, 1866 –December 22, 1943), famous for The Tale of Peter Rabbitand other children’s books, has been underappreciated for her contribution to science and natural history. In her early twenties, Beatrix developed a keen interest in mycology and began producing incredibly beautiful drawings of fungi. She taught herself the proper technique for accurate botanical illustration.
When she wanted to present her scientific work to London’s Linnean Society she needed to have her uncle do the presentation because women were barred from membership. The paper never got peer-review and was dismissed as not worthy of consideration. A century later the Linnean Society apologized for its historic sexism.
Beatrix Potter’s drawing of Hygrophorus puniceus Credit: Armitt Museum and LibraryBeatrix Potter’s drawing of Lepiota friesii Credit: Armitt Museum and Library
The female amateur botanists and naturalists of earlier eras didn’t just reproduce knowledge. They took what they learned and used the traditionally feminine skills they already had—along with their keen powers of observation—to create something better, and new.
A native of Protection, Kansas, Stan Herd nourished a love of art as a young man and was awarded an art scholarship to Wichita State University in 1969.
After working in New York for a number of years he returned to his heritage in rural Kansas and began developing a large quantity of artwork including paintings and large murals with mostly western imagery. A few years into his career as an established western artist, Herd had a thought.
“I was on a flight back from Dodge City in 1976 after painting a mural on a bank when I was looking down at a field and saw a tractor traversing a field corner to corner when the idea came to me to create a design on the ground,” he explained. “
Herd’s first Earthwork was of Chief Satanta, a Kiowa leader. It was several years in the making before it was unveiled in 1981. The 160-acre portrait would become the first of many Earthworks.
Chief Satanta Earthwork and photo by Stan Herd
To date Herd has created about 40 commissioned commercial pieces and 40 art pieces of his own. The commercial works afford him the freedom to do the work that means the most to him.
He has used combines, tractors, Roto tillers, drills, and many hand-held tools combining new and existing vegetation to carve out an image. His work sometimes includes mulch, rocks and stones as well. Herd said he usually has a dozen people assist on an average Earthwork project, sometimes family, friends, locals, students and agriculturists who know the area and its crops.
Stan Herd Amelia Earhart as seen from the air. Photographer: TALIS BERGMANIS Credit: THE STAR Keyword: ART
An example of Stan Herd’s commercial work for Shock Top Belgian Ale. This one is in Austin Texas. It is made with two ingredients in the ale: wheat and oranges.
In 2018 Herd received an email from a tobacco executive in China inviting him to visit Yunnan province and see if he wanted to participate in the construction of a public park. After a bit of consideration and recovering from the surprise of the invitation, Herd jumped at the chance. This would be a four-acre earthwork on a hillside in the center of the 800-acre Taiping Lake Park.
Thus began an epic undertaking that found Herd traveling to China 15 times in 15 months. He insisted on creating the design outline without a GPS – laying every single line by himself.” The work was interrupted by several rainy seasons.
Herd used more than 15,000 bricks chipped out of locally quarried rock. These were placed to create beds for flowering plants and medicinals native to the region. Together the stone and vegetation formed the patterns of the subject’s face and clothing.
Construction Young Woman of China in Yunnan Stan Herd
Herd’s comment about the finished art: “It beautifully represents the elegance of the (women) of China. … And this artwork also (embodies) communication in culture and art areas between China and America.”
Show above is Stan Herd’s Young Woman of China.
Stan Herd’s most recent project is a 1.2-acre recreation of Van Gogh’s famous artwork, Olive Trees, which he “planted” in Minneapolis. The piece was commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and involved weeks of mowing, digging, planting, and earthscaping to create the piece viewable from the air near the Minneapolis airport. The field location was specifically chosen so that flight passengers can easily see the land art.
Olive Trees by Stan Herd. Van Gogh’s signature dazzling painted sky was recreated using a field of oats mowed in concentric circles.
Olive Trees by Stan Herd as seen from a plane.
Like many of his artworks, Herd’s rendition of Van Gogh’s painting will disappear over time as the crops grow out and the elements wear down the design.
Young Woman of China might not be big enough to be seen from space, however, it does have one advantage over the Great Wall of China. As Herd explains: “It’s so deep and embedded in the ground, and so massively created on that hillside, it will be here hundreds of years from now.”
Stan Herd has certainly created a niche in the art world. Dan Rather reporting on CBS News called him the Father of Crop Art.
Best known as a scientific photographer, Martin Oeggerli takes close-up images of microscopic creatures and structures that have been featured in scientific publications and art galleries worldwide.
Most of Oeggerli’s best images are taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). SEM is always black and white because it uses electrons instead of photons to view the specimen, and only light carries color information. As an artist, Oeggeril wants the images to be attractive. He tries to highlight morphologically different structures to make them more visible so that the viewer can recognize complexity. And he goes to great lengths to reproduce the original color.
Oeggerli, otherwise known as Micronaut, has collected and explored pollen grains. Here are a few examples from his gallery:
Water cabbage (Pistia sp.) is an invasive plant. Despite a tiny flower, the pollen is a medium sized elliptic monad covered with equatorial crests, which are rarely found features in the pollen universe. (c) Micronaut
Forget Me Not pollen (c) Micronaut
Pollinium of an orchid, consting of many hundred single pollen grains Credit: (c) Micronaut
Purple willow pollen (c) Micronaut
Pink thrift pollen (c) Micronaut
Pollen on pistil of a geranium (c) Micronaut
One image might take 20-60 hours to create depending on how much detail and how many structures are in the picture. Because Micronaut goes to great lengths to reproduce the original color each one is a work of art.
There is a lot of research going into tiny drones, but the latest research involves Living Iot.
Bumblebee with backpack. Photo credit: Mark Stone/University of Washingotn
Researchers at the University of Washington School of Computer Science & Engineering have found a new way to collect data using bumblebees. The team has designed a backpack, complete with wireless communication and location tracking, to collect data on temperature, humidity and crop health.
A drone can only operate for about 20 minutes before needing to charge again. The integrated battery in the bee’s backpack lets it run for seven hours straight, yet weighs just 102 milligrams. A full-grown bumblebee, for comparison, could weight anywhere from two to six times that. They are strong fliers that can carry three-quarters of their body weight in pollen and nectar. And because they return to a hive each night, data from their sensors can be uploaded and their tiny batteries can be recharged.
Backpack for a bumblebee Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington
To track the bees, the researchers set up multiple antennas that broadcast signals from a base station. A receiver in the bee’s backpack uses the strength of the signal and the angle difference between the bee and the base station to triangulate the insect’s position.
With a drone, you’re just flying around randomly, while a bee is going to be drawn to specific things, like the plants it prefers to pollinate.
Bees are essential pollinators for the crops we depend on. Without them one-third of our foods would disappear. So on top of learning about the environment, the research team is hoping the sensor they have developed can give us a better understanding of bee behavior and help keep them from becoming extinct.
Husni Che Ngah photographed newly hatched stink bug nymphs around their empty egg shells. (Credit: Husni Che Ngah/Biosphoto)
They’re creepy when they buzz loudly past you towards light sources and produce an extremely pungent odor when disturbed, but stink bugs live their lives content to feed on plants and would rather not encounter you.
There are more than 200 species of stink bugs in North America. Adults are usually some shade of green, tan, or gray-brown.
After mating, the female lays batches of 20 to 30 eggs, depositing them on the underside of plant leaves. Her eggs look like tiny barrels and are light green in color to blend in with their surroundings and avoid predators. Sometimes the eggs are pearly white at first, turning pink later. On top of each egg is a circle of white projections.
A single female can lay up to 300 eggs in a single season.
Stink bug nymphs and their eggs on underside of citrus leaf Photo credit: Project
Stink bug nymphs and their eggs Credit: pinimg.com
Macrophoto of hatching stink bug by Adolf Abi-Aad/Flickr.com
The eggs hatch in four to five days, marking the beginning of the nymph stage. A small triangle on each egg shell is used by the nymph as a knife to cut the shell open. Stink bug nymphs usually remain gregarious for a short period of time after hatching, as they begin to feed and molt.
Self-portrait, 1944 by Helen Lundeberg Photo: Laguna Art Museum
Helen Lundeberg was born in Chicago in 1908. At the age of four her family moved to Pasadena, California. She was a gifted child and as a young adult was inclined to become a writer. After graduating Pasadena High School in 1925, a family friend sponsored Lundeberg’s attendance at the Stickney Memorial School of Art. There, she was a pupil of Lorser Feitelson, a New York artist recently returned from Paris. Eventually, Feitelson and Lundeberg married and remained lifelong artistic collaborators. Together they founded a new style of art called New Classicism or Post Surrealism. They described this art as a fusion of the dreamlike style of Surrealism with the formal structure of Renaissance paintings.
From 1936 to 1942, Lundeberg was employed by the Works Progress Administrations’s Federal Art Project for which she produced lithographs, easel paintings, and murals in the Los Angeles area.
WPA Mural: Pioneers of the American West .1908 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Irises, 1936 by Helen Lundeberg
Artist Flowers and Hemispheres, 1934
Her work often contained paintings within paintings as in one of her best known paintings shown below.
Double Portrait of Artist in Time, 1935 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Selma (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) 1957
Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson, 1974 Photo by Fidel Danieli in the Archives American Art
In the 1960s and 1970s, Lundeberg continued her journey through abstraction, exploring imagery associated with landscapes, interiors, still lifes, planetary forms and intuitive compositions she called enigmas. She switched to liquid acrylic paint that allowed her to depict brighter and fresher colors. In the 1980s, Lundeberg created her final body of work – a confident series of paintings that deal with landscapes and architectural elements.
Forms in Space, 1971 by Helen Lundeberg
Blue Planet, acrylic on canvas by Helen Lundeberg
Repeatedly described as formal and lyrical, Lundeberg’s paintings rely on precise cacompositions that utilize various restricted palettes. This creates images that posses a certain moodiness or emotional content unique to her work.
Untitled, by Helen Lundeberg
Untitled (March), 1969 by Helen Lundeberg. Credit: Louis Stern Fine Art
Interior with painting, 1982 by Helen Lundeberg
Helen Lundeberg in her studio ,1982 by Harry Carmea
Throughout her 60-year career, Lundeberg imbued her work with a personal vision, exposing the imaginative world of her mind. Created with a palette of muted hues, Lundeberg paintings are best known for radiating a sense of calm and order. She died from complications with pneumonia at the age of 91.
Polish photographer, Marek Miś, has developed a technique for photographing living and inanimate microorganisms, plant tissues and micro crystals directly through the eyepiece of a microscope. You may have seen his awarding winning photographs in either the Nikon Small World Competition or the Olympus BioScapes Competition. Here are a few of my favorites:
Crustacean (Nauplius) Polarized Light by Marek Mis
Abstract of the drug Rywanol by Marek Mis
Longitudinal stem cross-section of nettle polarized light by Marek Mis
Rotifer created using Rheinberg illumination by Marek Mis
Polarized light micrograph showing a section stem apple tree plant Marek Mis
Desmid (Micrasterias) by Marek Mis
Marek’s microphotographs are made using various lighting techniques – bright field, dark field, phase contrast, Rheinberg illumination, polarized light, oblique illumination and mixed techniques. To see more of Marek Mis’s work go to this URL: http://www.mismicrophoto.com/plants.php
Confocal microphoto of a barnacle appendage by Igor Siwanowicz
German photographer, Dr. Igor Siwanowicz who works at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology specializing in invertebrate photography, has succeeded in showing the world there is beauty of form in the insect world.
Confocal microphoto showing detail of a foot of a giant diving beetle by Igor Siwanowicz
You can see a more complete portfolio of Igor Siwanowicz’s work here:
Here’s a special book to add to your library… Seeing Flowers: Discover the Hidden Life of Flowers, Photography, by Robert Llewellyn, written by Teri Dunn Chace. The book features over three hundred extraordinary photographs of flowers, organized by family, from the Amaryllis family through the Viola family. These exquisite macro photographs of flowers are completely addictive.
Llewellyn uses “image stacking”, where multiple shots of a subject are taken at varying focus points and then melded together in a computer application. He shoots as many as 100 images for a single photograph, each image focusing on planes separated by perhaps only a centimeter. Llewellyn’s camera is attached to a computer-controlled motor-driven mount on a vertical axis above his subject. The results are luminous, delicate portraits with every last hair and pollen grain in focus.
Macro photo by Robert Llewellyn
Macro photo by Robert Llewellyn
Macro photo by Robert Llewellyn
Macro photo by Robert Llewellyn
Macro photo by Robert Llewellyn
To see more of Robert Llewellyn’s photography go to
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