During the month of October 2015, Linda Ellis from our Master Naturalist chapter will be showing A Botanical Year in the Ozarks at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center. It will display 25 of her botanical watercolors with vignettes of the Ozarks native plants. The species she has chosen span the Missouri growing season.
Linda has been a botanical illustrator since the early 1980s and has drawn for Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri Botanical Garden, the U. S. Forest Service, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and University of Arkansas. She specializes in illustrations of new plant species which can be seen on her web site at www.lindasellis.com.
One of the watercolors is the royal catchfly (Silene regia) above. It is a very showy prairie plant in the carnation family which gets its name from the heavy coat of sticky, glandular hairs which can trap insects.