Scars on a Cabbage palm

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The past years have left some scars.  Recent life events of sorts have left me a bit tattered and in need of repair.   No wonder this cabbage palm attracted my pen and brush.  This one has had experiences that have left their marks as well.
 

Cabbage palms in general seem to be always present in our area but seldom noticed.  They are like the fairytale stepchild of landscaping; going about their business in the background but never the star of the show.  Yet… they provide so much and ask for so little.  And to me they are beautiful in many ways.

The cabbage palm, or Sabal palmetto, is our Florida state tree (as well as that of South Carolina).  You might say that Florida was built with this amazing palm.

Early life in Florida was easier because of it.  The growing bud was harvested as food, the berries used medicinally, and the trunks became lumber, utensils, game sticks, and hunting implements.  The matted fiber tucked behind the “boots” makes excellent kindling, as boy scouts learn on overnight adventures.  

 

Cabbage palm with boots.

Boots are the old leaf bases that criss-cross in a spiral around the trunk.  The boots are not always present – sometimes removed by landscapers but they also show up that way in the wild, perhaps removed by fire or time.  The fronds can be woven into mats, bowls, hats, and baskets.  They are used for roofing chickee huts, for making rope, twine, and thread.  

Cabbage palms support a variety of wildlife.  Birds and small mammals eat the berries and find shelter in its fronds (not to mention a friendly rat snake or two).  Larger mammals eat the reachable or fallen berries.  The small white-to-cream flowers provide nectar for insects and bees, which in turn make flavorful honey.  Frogs and anoles make their home in the canopy.  It even provides larval food for the Monk Skipper butterfly.   Just one cabbage palm  might be thought of as a mini-eco system.  Wow.

 

My original sketch in pen.

With all of these gifts, we often turn to this palm only as a way to fulfill our native landscaping quota for new construction.  They grow in a wide range of conditions (salt, drought, and wind tolerant), are available everywhere, and reasonably priced (as palms go).  This hardy native palm is found naturally throughout Florida and along the coastal plains of Texas and up into North Carolina.  

The palm I sketched has no boots except at the very top of the trunk; the pattern of ringed scars around the trunk are where the leaf bases once held fast.  But there are also ravages from other escapades – perhaps a run-in with a large truck caused the deeper, ragged cuts near the top.  The trunk is thinner at the bottom and fuller towards the top.  Were there lean years and then better ones?  It sits alone alongside a major roadway, out of place yet standing tall, but with a slight curve along the stem – leaning towards or leaning away?  

This bit of poetry seems to fit so well:

“Task: to be where I am.
Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd
role: I am still the place
where creation works on itself.”

~ Tomas Tranströmer,
from the poem “Guard Duty” (1973)

Media
Aquabee sketchbook, 6x9”
Pitt artist pen, dark sepia
Mission Gold watercolors
#8 round wc brush

The small sketch (with boots):
on same paper with
Aquarelle watercolor pencils
Med waterbrush

More reading:

 All about the cabbage palm from FNPS (Florida Native Plant Society):
https://www.fnps.org/plants/plant/sabal-palmetto

 

Edible parts of the cabbage palm from popular author Green Deane:
http://www.eattheweeds.com/cabbage-palm-sabal-palmetto/

 

The many historical uses of cabbage palm:
 Ethnobotany from Native American Ethnobotany, A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants.
 http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=sabal+palmetto

Sketching and painting at Fakahatchee Strand

Fakahatchee grassy marsh, originally uploaded by Elizabeth Smith.

“There are still remnants of the old wild Florida. There is always something. Anytime. Day or night, cold or warm, in the rain or shining sun you can find bits of the old wild left around, if you can only get away from your fellow man for a spell.” ~ Archie Carr

One way to rediscover the old wild Florida is to visit Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, which I did as part of the En Plein Art – Arts in the Fakahatchee event last Saturday, which also happened to correspond with the 34th Worldwide SketchCrawl. Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park has many different types of habitats: strand swamp, marl prairies, cypress strands, tropical hardwood hammocks where one can find royal palm groves, pine rocklands, and even an estuarine system. A group of us met on the south side of US 41, just across from the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk, where an old remnant of the highway bordered a vast sea of gold and green grasses.

There were remnants of charred cabbage palms along the roadside, with interesting textures. I found myself sketching one of the palm trunks near the ground because of the dried palms fronds and grasses arranged around it. We are in South Florida’s dry season, and one can find this reflected in the plants and grasses. Things aren’t the crunchy dryness of late spring quite yet, when fire danger is high, but the ground beneath the sea of grasses is only damp, not wet or marshy.

As I painted, I found myself thinking of what it was like when men and women first encountered these habitats, and how their environment shaped their days and nights. Another artist and I walked out into grasses, which was hard going. They were taller than they looked, head height and higher in some places, the ground so low that we couldn’t get to a vantage point for painting. I settled for coming back to the road and painting along the edge, while she remained, creating a lovely intimate watercolor of grasses framing a clear blue sky.

Off in the distance I observed wood storks flying in low over the grasses. Along the edge of the road, orange, white, and yellow butterflies nectared on the Spanish needles and rattlebox wildflowers in bloom. Overhead flew two large groups of tree swallows in seemingly random patterns. Later a trio of black vultures circled the sky. The sun was out all morning, with clear skies and occasional puffy clouds that soon vanished. Our high was 79 degrees (F)! What a beautiful day! Thank you to Amy, Anita, Cathy, Cyril, Karen, Kerri, Linda, Mary, Rose, and Stephanee for coming! A special thanks to Cyril for making the signs, and to Karen for creating the event!

SketchCrawl pages

Cabbage palms, originally uploaded by Elizabeth Smith.

Today was our second participation in the 30th Worldwide SketchCrawl! We went to Freedom Park again, and along the boardwalk I noted the changes from the last SketchCrawl in October.

The water levels are much lower, and the alligator flag is brown and brittle, with some plants sporting new growth from the bases. The sky is tinted a bit cooler in hue, and there are many more bare branches emerging from the evergreen foliage; grasses and sedges have turned ochre and brown.  I watched a lone great egret wade the shallows, feathery breeding plumes dancing in the wind.

Near the lake, a nearly barren firebush offers abundant sprays of berries to darting songbirds.  Further along the boardwalk, and into the older wetlands dominated by cypress, laurel oak, red maple, and pond apple trees, I spotted a single raccoon digging in the mud.  As I started to sketch, it spotted me and ambled off behind the ferns.

A few more quick sketches, and then back to my warm car.  Not cold compared to my northern friend's and family's climates, but 60 degrees F (and dropping) combined with a drizzly rain and a steady wind signaled a good time to end the day of sketching!



We received some wonderful publicity from our local paper, the Naples Daily News; you can see the photo gallery here.  You can also view the Flickr SketchCrawl group of sketches from all over the world here. 

A Florida Walk

A Florida Walk, originally uploaded by Elizabeth Smith.

I took a walk this morning, down our neighborhood bicycle path and sidewalk. It’s probably not that much different from your neighborhood – filled with trees, plants, birds, and butterflies of one sort or another. It always amazes me the amount of life that abounds in even small areas.

When I got home from my walk I did a memory sketch – a composite of those things that I most vividly remembered, but believe me there was so much more left out! For example, I didn’t see any birds, but they were singing and calling and fussing all around me: crows in the pines, blue jays in someone’s backyard, mockingbirds in the cabbage palms, and somewhere… the “chip, chip” of a cardinal.

My drawing is a bit off in some areas, but free-sketching like this helps strengthen my observation and drawing skills. My snake is pretty symbolic, and the Virginia Creeper leaf is really not shaped like that. By the time I added that, all I could remember was “five lobes.”

Anyway, I hope you enjoy a vicarious outing in Southwest Florida. At least with a virtual walk there is no heat and humidity!

You can click on the image above to view it larger on my Flickr photostream.