Story behind the art of Tracy C. Wager

29th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Society of Illustrators

A new Tetramolopium species for Hawaii

Tetramolopium stemmermanniae

This is a story about re-illustrating a rare Hawaiian Tetramolopium plant species. It was first discovered 35 years ago, and in 2023 was determined to be a new plant species for Hawai’i, Tetramolopium stemmermanniae.

I first drew this diminutive shrub with its teeny-tiny flowers in 1991 for a guide titled Rare Plants of Pōhakuloa Training Area (Shaw et al. 1997). The specimen I originally illustrated was collected as part of an initial plant survey at the U.S. Army's Pōhakuloa Training Area (PTA) on the Big Island of Hawai’i, conducted for the U.S. military by an environmental project at Colorado State University (CSU). This project did surveys at military installations around the mainland U.S. and elsewhere. During that initial plant survey we found 23 other rare and endangered species at PTA, which I illustrated for the guide over the next eight years. 

The pressed specimen I was provided in 1991 to illustrate for the guide did not match any of the other rare and endangered Tetramolopium species we found during the survey. This puzzled all the botanists involved in the project. Experts at the Bishop Museum Herbarium in Honolulu could not provide a positive identification on the specimen either. For years it was just known as Tetramolopium sp. 

More populations of the plant were found and collected over the years. Drs. Cliff Morden and Mitsuko Yorkston from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa conducted a molecular population study on nine Tetramolopium species, including this potential new species. The analysis indicated the new Tetramolopium, the one I originally drew, is genetically distinct from other known Hawaiian species, including those that occur on PTA in the same area. A new illustration was needed to submit to journals as part of the process of designating it as a new species for Hawai’i.

Steve Evans, a botanist working at PTA made new plant collections for a holotype (a single type specimen upon which the description and name of a new species is based) and the isotypes (any duplicate specimen of the holotype) needed for deposition in recognized herbaria. He measured every part of the plant needed for the description for its publication. Together, Nancy Hastings, another CSU botanist, and Evans wrote the description. Hastings wrote the dichotomous key and they refined it together; the key is needed to place the proposed new species named Tetramolopium stemmermanniae into the Tetramolopium genus in Hawaiʻi. Evans chose to name the plant after Lani Stemmermann to honor her. She was a local Hawai’i botanist and a tireless advocate for native Hawai’i plant species. 

Evans marked the precise dimensions on the original illustration I had drawn. He sent me a newly collected, pressed and dried holotype herbarium sheet and numerous reference photographs. Evans also included a small taped envelope attached to the herbarium sheet with extra floral parts, leaves, and seeds. This gave me something to rehydrate to get a more accurate representation of what the pressed elements looked like when fresh. I then executed a detailed pencil sketch using a dissecting scope to verify the measurements Evans had provided.

My pencil sketch was reviewed and scrutinized by the botanists and scientists involved with the project to be sure key characteristics from the exhaustive new measurements were captured accurately. Once approved, I did the final drawing in pen and ink on Mylar while retaining an artistic layout of the details that would give this new species shape and distinction from the other Tetramolopium species I had previously illustrated. 

Did I mention that the flowers on this plant were tiny? Two millimeters. I think it has the smallest flower I have ever had to illustrate! I am proud to have played a part in documenting a new plant species. For a complete description of this new species, see Systematic Botany 48 (3): 376-385). 

For fun, I am attaching a link below that was in our CSU/CEMML newsletter, as it tells the full story I tried to abridge for my story, and you can see photos of the plant in situ. Yes, it is a dreaded composite as we say, as they are so hard to key out in the field! This new species of record is restricted in its distribution to Pōhakuloa Training Area and on Mauna Loa, on the Big Island of Hawai’i to date. 

https://cemml.colostate.edu/cemml-botanists-help-gain-recognition-for-new-hawaiian-plant-species/

Back Yard Apple Blossom Branch

Malus domestica 'Granny Smith'

This apple blossom carbon dust illustration started with bones and led to a shift in my professional life. I was living in Fort Collins, Colorado, in the late 1980s attending Colorado State University (CSU), pursuing a master’s degree in Forest Pathology. I had an undergraduate BS in biology with a concentration in botany, but mycology had become my passion. The only funding I could find to continue my education was a research project in northern New Mexico working for the US Forest Service collecting data on a tree disease caused by a fungus called Armillaria. If you have a moment, look up Armillaria. It is considered to be the world’s largest living organism, though there is an aspen clone in Utah called Pando vying for that first-place award amongst scientists! 
 
After four stressful years of lab and field work testing the pathological effects of six different clones of Armillaria species on six different tree species in a greenhouse on campus at CSU and in the field in New Mexico, I took a scientific illustration course for a little art therapy.  
 
One of the assignments in the class was to use an old medical illustration technique called carbon dust on clay-coated paper. It was used primarily for illustrating bones and skulls because it afforded an easy method to show modeling of lights and darks, creating a 3D effect in gray scale that could then be printed in journals and scientific publications.  
 
Out for a run one morning, I came upon a well-preserved intact skull of some small creature. I rolled it up in my jacket for the rest of the run home, hoping I had found my muse for the assignment. I set the skull up with some good side light. I ground up my carbon pencil as instructed to get a small quantity of carbon dust and prepared my drawing surface, a special clay coated paper that had to be protected from skin oils.  I did my preliminary sketch on tissue paper, transferred the drawing lightly to the clay surface, and - I froze. The little skull was just making me sad. 
 
After a few frustrating hours working on drawing the skull as my subject, I went into the back yard of my rental house for a break. The old heirloom apple tree there had exploded with flowers. My landlady had said she and her sister planted the tree some 50 years earlier. While it produced a delicious Granny Smith type apple, it was on the decline. Before a tree dies, it will often put out one last burst of flower blooms. I snipped a branch off, brought it back to my drawing table, clipped it to a stand and began to sketch. Before I knew it, I had a pencil drawing, so I transferred it to the clay-coated paper and got to work exploring the carbon dust technique. 
 
Unlike the skull, the apple blossoms captivated me. Suddenly, it was dark out and my neck was in a permanent crick. I put down the brushes and stumps I had been using to ever so slowly and gently build up the highlights and shadows on the drawing and went to bed. In the morning, I went back in and darkened some areas to almost black. Then I used an X-acto knife to scratch in the leaf veins, added details to the stem and marched over to class to present my piece. The professor was a little miffed that I had not done a bone illustration as instructed. But, he gave me an “A” because he felt the technique lent itself well to botanical illustration!  
 
This drawing led me to switch my focus to fine art and botanical illustration. After that class, I quit my master’s program, and I got a second undergraduate degree, a BFA with a concentration in graphic design. That degree, along with my previous undergraduate BS in biology/botany, helped me draw myself into a job at CSU in 1990. My future boss, Dr. Robert B. Shaw, handed me an envelope from his lab coat pocket with a pressed plant specimen in it from his research project in Hawai’i. He said, 'draw this and get back to me.' My illustration earned me a position as a graphic designer/illustrator on this research project at CSU, a position I still hold 35 years later.

In another twist, the plant specimen I drew was determined some 30 years later to be a new plant species for Hawai’i. My updated pen and ink botanical illustration of this new plant species, Tetramolopium stemmermanniae, was also accepted into this 29th Annual International as well. But that is a whole other story!

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