A SECOND LOOK

By the end of last Spring, the end of November, the Strelitzia juncea in the garden had more than 25 flower stems. As I noted back then, it was the best flowering this clump has produced. Now however, the flowers have faded and the petals shrivelled to a dry, dark-brown state. This is the way of things, of course; and one of the joys of the plant world is the seasonal change we observe.

I took this photo of one of the last two flower stems, showing the drying petals as well as the final coloured petals for this season. I have previously been struck by the extraordinary colour that remains in the stem and spathe in this phase. I had pruned all of the other finished flower stems last week. After throwing several into the compost I felt I should not waste those that remained. Their colour and shape demanded the attention of my ikebana eye. I felt this material provided a challenge to my ikebana mind. 

Once before I had been struck by the colours that remained in the flower stems after flowering. In March 2020 I created the ikebana below.

In this instance the focus is on the pink at the back of the "neck", if the flowers were indeed "birds".

Last week I first focused on the shapes of three double-headed Strelitzia flower stems. For preparation I used olive oil to clean some of the sticky substance exuded from the flower spathe. Then I wiped the oil off with a paper towel, leaving a soft sheen to the surface.

 

This is the final ikebana. I re-used the fading leaves from a bunch, with flowers included, that were given to us four weeks ago. Unfortunately the flattening effect of the photograph removes the feeling of depth and the way the secondary flowers interact with each other.

The suiban is by the New Zealand ceramic artist Elena Renka.

Yesterday I decided I had to use the rest of the flowers I had set aside. To start with I used the same cleaning process described above. Then I observed that the spathes of the flower heads presented different angles to the main stem. Many were almost at right angles. But a couple "looked down" and a few more were "looking up".

I have used the spent flowers to make an ikebana in which the lines are closely placed to create a very structured arrangement of lines and angles. None of the flower heads actually touch each other and all of them face inwards toward the midline. The one downward facing flower I used is at the back. The right angle flowers were placed next then the upward looking flowers were placed highest. This placement gave a certain logic to the ikebana and an over-all coherence of design.

The following three quarter and side views shows the depth of the arrangement.

The vessel is by the Victorian ceramic artist Isabella Wang.

 

Greetings from Christopher
7th January 2024