Raymond Sheppard sketches: Flora

 I'm sitting on a wealth of sketches and drawings on my computer which Christine Sheppard very kindly shared with me. Rather than look at my published collections of books, magazines etc., I thought this time I'd share some wonderful sketches of flora by Raymond Sheppard.

Less for me to write and more for you to see and adore!

Chinese Fountain Palm - (Livistona Chinensis)

Himalayan Dwarf Fishtail Palm (Wallichia Densiflora, Himalyas)

Asoka tree (Saraca Indica)

I did wonder with the illustrations above whether Sheppard was doing research for a publication so went looking at the obvious: Jim Corbett books. And in Man-Eaters of Kumaon we see a boar under - what looks to me to be - a Himalayan Dwarf Fishtail Palm, but I'm no horticulturist!

Man-Eaters of Kumaon, p.187

 There's one colour piece in the 'flora' folder which shows the Sabal Bermudana, or "Blackburnianum Bermuda" as Sheppard has it. I love the light touch, identifying colours, shapes and how the leaves join the trunk.

 Sabal Bermudana

 Then we move a bit closer to home

 

"Small evergreen weighted with snow"

"Tree trunk"

"Burnham Beeches"

"Beeches"

I spent a pleasurable hour scouring all my scanned images and couldn't find an evergreen laden with snow - most snow scenes being in polar regions. 

The pen and ink and watercolour of the tree trunk is a beautiful study of overlapping bark 

The beech tree studies are delightfully simple outlines with shadows giving them their grandiose bulk. As the Woodland Trust tells us about the site Burnham Beeches:

There has probably been woodland on the site since the end of the last ice age. One of the three Scheduled Ancient Monuments on the site shows inhabitation as early as the Iron Age. It is characterised by a mixture of ancient woodland, wood pasture, coppice, ponds and streams, grassland, mire and heathland. The most prominent features are the veteran Beech and Oak pollarded trees that provide a stable habitat for many rare and endangered deadwood species 

 I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did in putting it together.