SCHUMACHER COLLEGE
An International Centre for Ecological Studies
Holistic Science MSc 1999/2000, module:
Introduction to Holistic Science
Experiential Process of Plant Observation: Cow Parsley
by Heather Thoma
“We can’t see the stunning complexity and drama when we operate in broad standard categories. One way to elude the categories is to come face to face
with the physical world.”
Hannah Hinchman, The Illuminated Journal
“I know that people read this and they think that it’s all put down in one even uninterrupted flow. They don’t realize that 20 weeks separated the 32nd and 33rd paragraph of this book…”
Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God
To the reader: The process presented here is not an attempt to follow a predetermined methodology of observation and recording of my experience with cow parsley plants. But it does reflect careful observation and resulting sketches from those experiences. I at first randomly, then later intentionally, did not go back to refresh my memory about the specifics of Goethean method after the first day of these 6 weeks of observations and reflections, because each time I went out, to my surprise (and satisfaction) a relatively huge realization about the plants and my relationship with them (and/or with the world) would come to me. So I figured I must be doing something right. And I continued on. The endnote will let you know where I’ve come to, but hopefully you’ll already know, when you get there, because you’ll be there too.
The first section of the paper traces the understandings made in my first session of plant observation. The second looks at the relationship between location and different types of observation, the third reveals an overall sense I got from the plant, and the final part gives a sense of some of the elements on which I have not fully elaborated, as well as some I will pursue in my future observations.
Folding and unfolding
I first noticed the common cow parsley flower along the side of the Dartington Hall road near the entrance to Schumacher College, because of its bright white constellation of blossoms on top of a tall green stalk. In the green and brown of nettle, bracken, and dying bramble on a rainy November day, the white flowers caught my eye. My intent was to spend a few hours practicing Goethean method of observation, the day before a 3-day lecture series on Goethe by Henri Bortoft. I wanted to actively engage in seeing in a deliberate way (“see what I could see”), before spending time discussing perception and Goethe’s way of seeing with Bortoft. This plant seemed to offer a place to start.
The second thing I noticed about the cow parsley after the blossoms, was a bending and folding phenomenon. On many of the plants, whole stems had fallen over, while other stems on the same plant continued growing seemingly healthily. These plants are scattered along the roadside and the footpath between Schumacher and the Cider Press center, and many of the plants had a stem that had folded and fallen (shown roughly in sketch 1). I came to realize that folding and unfolding seems to be a common expression in these plants (sketch 7, drawn two weeks into the inquiry).
I have never really drawn before, so was not expecting to do a lot other than have a bit of practice this one day. It was as much a notetaking as sketching that day, but I was amazed at how my process unfolded. I actually began looking at a dead plant, rather than a living one, simply because it was in a more convenient place off the roadside than the other cow parsley plants I had seen next to the tarmac, so I could sit and draw. There was a delicacy to the dead ones (this and others that I noticed on subsequent days). The papery fragility of their skin, the spare thin fineness of the smallest stems, and the subtle shades of browns they expressed all impressed me as I started to see, and as I started to draw. As I started to draw I saw differently… Noticing details I never would have paused with otherwise. The seeds on this plant (as there were a few left still attached) were also a shade of brown, but lighter, a dingy straw color. Flat, seeming empty, and dried, they had faint lines in rays coming down from the top center on each face, in rust-colored dark red. (Left of sketch 6, in sketch 1, and sketch 3). The seeds seemed so beautiful and simple to me. The drawing/sketch page did as well, I thought, as I walked back down to one of the other flowers to find one that was living. I wanted to see and draw the blossoms that had first attracted me.
I began by drawing two individual blossoms, then really felt they needed to be drawn together in their groups. One didn’t make enough sense on its own. My eyes saw them together, so I had to draw them in their togetherness (top right of sketch 2). [Just today, 6 weeks later, I came to call these groups of blossoms “constellations” (See also sketch 9 on the right). Today writing this was the first time I’d needed a word to express that grouping. Up until then I’d just been seeing and drawing each time I went out, and if writing, then articulating my experiences more than the plant terminology.]
After drawing the blossoms, I looked from underneath to get closer to a neighboring stem which had the full living green seeds. I wanted to look at the living counterparts of the brown ones I’d drawn earlier. Looking under, I noticed two things. The first was a small brown single stem, with blossoms that had died and folded down [more folding phenomena…]. It had the tiny brown papery delicacy that the whole previous plant I’d been looking at had possessed, but this little one was hanging here underneath the green full-growing life expression of an otherwise thriving plant (noted in sketch 2). It had stunted blossom pods still attached, and in its lightness it blew slightly in the breeze.
The other more amazing realization here, was that at the center of the constellation I’d been drawing all the blossoms from, a blade of brown grass was woven and winding all in and out of the bases of the flower stems!! (See bottom of sketch 2). How in the world could it have come to be there!?!? I wished I could have gone back in time to know what had transpired, to allow the grass to come to be wrapped and wound so intricately through those stems. Beautiful, and mystifying. Fiber art.
So as I went back to the other radia with green seeds I’d originally intended to draw, I saw that in fact, the blade of now dead grass had grown up between the stems of this neighboring radia, and then come somehow to rest and entangle itself in the upper radia where I initially saw it. [I use “radia” here to describe the larger groupings of medium-sized stems that consist of many constellations of blossoms. There are generally 11-18 constellations composing a radia. Most of my radia are not drawn in their fullness, with all their stems and blossoms, but just with enough to give what I thought was a general sense of the composition. Time, factoring itself into the process, limited my detail. (See sketch 10 at top right for most detail of radia, with 11 constellations.)] [—Interesting—these are vocabulary words that I am creating to describe the parts of the plant, intentionally letting them be called by the words that seem most natural to me for them, before looking up the scientific definitions. I have only now needed these distinguishing words, as I go to write. Letting language emerge is an awakening experience. Makes me smile in amazement. —Yesterday in my presentation given for the individual module, I questioned Paul Pearsall’s doing exactly the same thing, not understanding it. Now I do. The learning continues….]
Now I go back to the green seeds, and have a realization about the way these plants grow: Each radia is at a different stage in its growth process on the same plant, which offers a distinct sense of the metamorphosis process even within a single plant. In sketch 13, you see the seeds at top center, blossoms at top right, and newer buds at bottom left. (All rough sketches.) Looking at the seeds on this one, however (rough sketch at bottom of sketch 2, or sketch 3) I called them “the brown seed pods but still alive as green casings”: It is interesting to be framing my observation from the reference point of the dead plant, but that is where my observations began. The way the light can pass through the slight translucence of the seeds, they look rubbery, but don’t feel that way.
These seeds provided very powerful learning experiences for me. First, I came to understand another connection between Time and my process (and maybe all of science): I studied the green seed pods, to determine how the white blossoms emerged one from each pod. I could not see evidence in the morphology of a process through which the blossoms would have formed. The question hung there, stopping me. So, (quoting from my journal) “I spent a few minutes looking, and then my urge was to pull off a green [pod], and open it up! [To] see what it looked like inside, whether there’s a closer relationship to the flower stage!?!? Yikes! Frustration at not knowing, and wanting to understand more, is what moves me to that!? Man…where Cartesian science comes from!” (sketch 3). This may seem confusing to the reader, and it did happen very quickly to me, thoughts flashing through my mind… but for me it was a huge realization. In the watching and waiting and dealing with not knowing how something had come into being, I felt so clearly a brief but critical “choice point” (to use a term of biological researcher Francoise Wemelsfelder) where, had I not been paying attention to my experience, I would have torn off a pod, opened it up, and gone on my way (i.e. learned something different). But having been so sensitized to methodologies and possible pathways of knowing from discussing history of science with Jordi Pigem in philosophy lectures, and having an introduction to Goethean methods with Margaret Colquhoun, I noticed the point where one can “make that move”, as Brian Goodwin phrases it, and go one direction or the other with the science. With a plant pod it seems a bit dramatic to express it, but imagining working on human physiological science, or with animals, there are what would seem to be more “universally significant” choices that come up at each step of the “scientific process”. This gives me new understanding of the term “approach”: Goethean approach, Newtonian approach, there is actually a movement, a path you are walking down, and you constantly have choices, but only if you can see them, which I never had before. I didn’t take the pod off, I stayed with the not knowing, looking more closely at the seed pods from the outside (sketch 3). There seemed to be a denser darker strip along the edges, and a slight break in their smoothness in the center of a few, so I imagined that that might indicate buds forming inside. And I left that question for the time being.
The next thing the seed pods led me to see was the sheaths, or cocoon-like wrappings which are the most unique thing I have ever seen (in real life, not photos) on any plant. I was again amazed. We learned from Margaret Colquhoun that the “eye of the leaf” is the point on the stem of infinite potential. Where in the language of complexity theory, you have symmetry-breaking, or a bifurcation point. It’s where a new smaller stem grows out, or a new leaf begins to form. The sheaths, or loose wrappings of leaf that grow out from the stem at each point where the differentiation happens, enfold and unfold around the eye (first rough sketch in 5, slightly more detail in 6, and most in 13). This literal manifestation of “unfolding” in the plant astonishes me. “Unfolds” is a term I use regularly and thoughtfully to express my individual life process, and also what I see as the “bigger than me” forces of life being revealed, so it is powerful to see it manifest in the cow parsley, the plant I “happened to choose” to be with to draw. The other aspect of the sheath/cocoon elements, is that they really seem to show Goethe’s statement that “All is leaf”. They clearly reveal how they transform, but remain still leaf. They are leaf texture, leaf weight and thickness and substance, everything about this part of the plant is absolute “leafness”, just not the shape.
That noticing of the sheaths led me to the first detailed noticing (and sketching) of the leaves themselves (sketch 5, then all the others). When I went to look up this plant today in Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, there were many plants in the carrot family which resembled this one (Mabey, pp.282-298). I had begun it calling cow parsley in my head, because that’s what Marian Detray, a long-time local resident told me just last week that its family was called. But because I knew the leaf shape so well from drawing it and watching it, I knew that although obviously all the plants pictured in Mabey’s chapter were very closely related to this one, none were it exactly. The blossoms were all very similar, but none had this shape to their leaf. So, I will continue to call it cow parsley if I need a name for it, but knowing that it is something else, related also to Queen Anne’s lace, shepherd’s needle, sweet cicely, coriander, alexanders, ground elder, fennel, and hemlock.
Location, Location, Location
These plants are ubiquitous in Dartington, which makes for a constantly surprising observation process. I see them when I go for a walk, or to the post office, or when I choose a different path to stroll on because I want to go somewhere new in the neighborhood; they are everywhere, always along paths and roadsides. In this way, I notice them differently than if I only saw them when I wanted to do a formal observation session. I see them at different times of day, and when I am in different moods, not necessarily focusing on them directly.
It is one of these casual observations that led me to an understanding about the question of the seed pods that I had struggled with earlier. Two days after that first observation, noticing a plant, I saw green pods on one radia, and blossoms on another. Some of the blossoms had only 2 or three out of four petals still on the flower (See sketch 9, medium single flower, for a rough sketch). This comparative perspective between the two radia on a plant let me see the small stems differently, and realize that although both the green pod and the blossom emerge from the same point on the small stem, it’s the blossom that comes first, and then as the petals fall off, a small central hub is left, which grows up into being the green seed pod (sketch 6). So my thought about the process had been completely backwards!
On another day’s casual observation, the early morning light was coming from the opposite direction than during my afternoon drawing sessions, and there was frost glittering on the side of the path. These illuminating factors helped me to notice a small young plant I hadn’t seen before along the Cider Press path close to the ground (sketch 8). The leaves were jagged, differentiated and folded, close to the stem. Until this point I’d focused mainly on grown plants, looking at flowering and new leaf development further up the tall stems. In those cases, a single leaf seems to begin as long and thin, with the slight expression of enfolding, and then gradually develops differentiation (sketch 10, top two plants, new leaves coming from stem). On this small new plant coming straight from the ground, however, a series of three pairs of leaves seemed to be together at a similar stage of unfolding, broad with numerous shallow differentiations at the edges (sketch 8). They hadn’t flattened yet, the faces were very much vertically folded. No smoothness at all. This contrasts with new leaves as they develop at the top of a mature plant, in simple smooth narrow tongue shapes.
The lower drawing on sketch 10 shows a second example of early main stem development. In this young plant (colored bright yellow green, vs. the slightly darker green with red tones or red spots that the older plants have) the smaller left hand stem developing is a second main stem growing from just near the ground at the base of the plant. Its leaves are at an earlier stage than the plant in sketch 8 was, but they are beginning the same metamorphosis and unfolding process. At this early point they seem to be a group of three leaves as well, but it is difficult to tell yet. They are huddled up together, very vertically standing, but rounded, nestled together and all soft-edged and curved in, very different than the jagged-edged feeling of the stage that # 8 is at, but it seems that that differentiation will come not so much later.
It is very hairy, this plant (sketch 10, lower picture). This is something I noticed on each plant I observed, even slightly on sketch 1. There seems to be more fur near the “eye of the leaf” areas in general, ringed around below the spot where the sheaths fold out. On all the mature stems there is a fine consistent presence of silver-white fuzz throughout the stem (sketches 6 and 10 show this most clearly). Seeing this one with so dramatically much fur makes it seem that it must play a protectionary role (when plants are young, and where they are differentiating at the bifurcation points: critical times and places). This is something to look into further, to understand the plant further.
The Practical Limitations
As stated earlier, time is a factor that affected the observations and drawing, limiting some of the detail in illustration, forcing me to choose where to include most detail, or what parts of a plant to draw. Three other factors had sharp influence as well. The cold shortened more than one of my sessions—I drew until I literally couldn’t feel my fingers, and the ink wasn’t flowing well in the pen. This limited some detail in illustrations that I thought I might get back to finish, but as with an engaging conversation, if you take a few days off and intend to pick it up again, it’s never the same. When I’d go out to the next session, something else would draw my attention and I’d begin there and follow that where it led instead. ...Learning the pros and cons of my own observation process…
On one day when I was struggling with the cold and wind, a woman who saw me as she walked by on the footpath said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to take it home with you?” Well, maybe. In the same way that it would have been “easier”, I would have thought a few weeks before, to just pull off one of the green pods and open it up to learn how the blossoms emerge. I suppose I’d just learn a different lesson, taking a different path. I hadn’t crossed my mind to pick one of the flowers.
A second limitation was access. These plants are omnipresent, which means that there are ones I can see to study temporarily, but can’t get close enough to draw. In some cases what seemed like inaccessible locations at first (like the top of a hedgerow) just took a little clambering and adjustment to find a comfortable seat. In other cases where I couldn’t get through the bramble to be close enough, I began to understand how technology must sometimes develop: If this were a different sort of project, with a different sort of intent, and budget and timeline, I might take the opportunity offered by a particularly stubborn hedgerow, to design a raised platform with adjustable leg heights and platform width, that I could use to get myself in close to a plant that I wanted to observe. Or design a large and stable umbrella that I could wear as a backpack and not have to hold, to shelter me and a plant when I wanted to draw if it were raining. Maybe when I’m rich and famous…me and David Attenborough…
That leads to the third limitation with the process at this point—skill and confidence. Although I LOVE color, and would love to have created more color illustrations for this process, the simple pen drawings were the only way to really keep the focus on actually seeing the plants. Learning to get comfortable with the pen on paper was challenge enough, and the joining of that process with the expression of the flower was already constantly emergent. So just a few simple pastel sketches give an idea of the colors (sketches 11 and 12).
My confidence flux was amazing as well, expressing its own unpredictable nature. The first day I went out, the sketches were minimal, not focused on detail at all. The process of pen to paper in drawing rather than writing was something that seemed to help my eye to see in new ways, and that simple practice of attention was what I intended that afternoon. In that respect, I was satisfied with those first sketches, especially not having drawn much before. Now, I look at those and wonder what in the world I saw there!? As my eye and my hand have become a bit more synchronized, and my seeing of the cow parsley evolves, so do the drawings. But on November 19 (sketch 6), only the second day of observing, the experience of beginning to draw presented an important lesson. The commitment of sitting down with my first large empty piece of paper was very different than simply heading out to make some notes in my journal on the first day.
In sketch 6, beginning with the left sketch, the stem and tiny blossoms were not too difficult, and the small leaf seemed to come out fairly well. But shifting over to the larger stem and larger leaves (actually a lower section of that same plant) felt SO intimidating. There seemed to be no way to draw that, without ruining it. It seemed far too difficult, with the detail of the large leaves…But I just began, with a bit of the stem, then started drawing the unfolding sheath, then the line of leaf. THAT was an amazing process. Just keeping my eye almost solely on the leaf, letting the pen move lightly on the page, and staying with what I saw, somehow the outline of the outer edges of the leaf came together. Absolutely to my surprise.
My experience was that it had nothing to do with my “thinking”. It was my eye and hand, the pen and the leaf, being expressed on the paper. My thinking was actually filled with fear and doubting before I began, and if I’d have let it in, I don’t think I could have drawn. It seems that instead there was a direct kinaesthetic experience, between the plant and my body, linked through my eyes. I know intellectually, now considering it, that thinking is supposed to have to come into it, but I know that my thoughts that day were ready to sabotage the whole process, so it seemed like somehow I didn’t let them in. Staying “with the phenomenon” in what I was seeing, the process could continue, which it couldn’t have if I’d been distracted into my own head. It’s difficult to explain, but definitely what I went through, and how it felt again on two other occasions as well. In the moments before first beginning to draw, my mind thinks it wants to lead the process, but as soon as I can begin to move my pen on the paper, it’s my body’s connection in the moment that takes over. Sketch 8 of the new leaves is from my journal, drawn on small scale, rather than on a large sheet of paper, because my mind’s subtle panic wouldn’t let me take on a big space that day. Doing a smaller drawing felt manageable instead. The bending and folding stem drawing (sketch 7) is in the journal for the same reason…The learning happens in unexpected ways!! This understanding gives me a stronger foundational approach for myself with science in general—a reminder for the times when my mind doesn’t think it is really ready to take on the detail of new information. I now have this experience of my body working through it on a different level, staying directly with the reality, not thinking so much. If I don’t let my head get distracted I can work in a different way, experientially moving through the process. Not knowing, but not being put off. ...Paradoxes.
Rhythm of the Larger Whole
Walking today (December 10), to see where I’d end up observing and drawing from, looking at different plants, thinking about aspects that hadn’t come up yet or come out yet in my previous observations and sketches, I thought about the “bending and folding” aspect—although I remembered having drawn that concept, I couldn’t find it in the sketches, so since it was central to my observations of the plant, I was going to draw it again. But as I walked along the plants, I couldn’t see any that were living and folded. So I kept walking just seeing what was there. A tall plant near the football field drew me over, and as I looked at it, I realized that all the drawings I had so far were only of segments and pieces of plants, I had no wider picture of a whole one on paper. So that’s what I drew (sketch 13). The relationship between the constellation of the flowers and the radia of the stems was what I sensed wanting to get a handle on [not that I could have verbalized that at the time, it’s just where my intention felt centered, toward the upper, wider-spread, most differentiated elements, wanting to understand their “togetherness” (to use my term from earlier)].
As I began, I intended to be very general, almost stylized, just getting the barest lines to give general indications of the flow between stem and leaf, sheath and stem, flower to stem to flower to seed….the movement and progress of growth. So at the very bottom I managed to stay spare, not filling in the “leaf only” stem there, just drawing simple lines, but as I moved up through the center, it was hard to leave things out. At that point all the detail was coming out onto the page. But it was super windy, which made detail actually very challenging to see, the stems blowing all around. That pushed me back to drawing general images toward the top. Having the “bottom to top” process, though, and being able to follow the balancing that happens—-unfolding…narrowing…unfolding… narrowing…expanding out…coming back…growing up…This was important. Even without all the details, the feeling comes through, and I got a different picture, a fuller view, the movement of the process of the plant.
The Learning Left to Come
As stated at the outset, this has been a process of acknowledging my process, learning from my learning, drawing out my drawing. Having worked with Margaret Colquhoun in October, and Henri Bortoft in November, and read Isis Brook’s work on Goethean approach to landscape, the knowledge of Goethean processes are in me at a preliminary level. And what I understand to be one of the essences of the Goethean method, is that it is experienced directly. The phenomenon is the theory.
This doing without trying to know too much, is what brought me through this process, the seeing what was there to be seen on a day, not so guided by following a methodology, but watching what I watch depending on the day I’ve had, letting an interaction happen between me and the plants. For example, on the day we had watched a film on embryology and the metamorphosis of the human fetus, I noticed clearly for the first time in the plants the tiny buds, not yet become flowers at all, but just beginning to take shape, gain color of deep fuschia amidst green, and emerge…Upon having a hand lens to see more closely their detail, I’ll draw as much of their essence as I can, but it was an experience of meeting them that day, not so much an image. Learning to express that experience through pen on paper will be a lesson in itself.
Similarly, when I noticed the tiny sepals about three weeks into my observations, I was amazed I hadn’t seen them before—couldn’t imagine that they hadn’t been there, couldn’t imagine that I’d been so blind. Either way, noticing them December 10 (sketch 10), revealed another expression of “All is leaf” because they too had a slightly folded modified leaf look to them. This also reminded me that I’d always be seeing new things in these plants, even when constantly seeing them.
The roots I haven’t ventured into yet either, but I know they will be interesting when I do. And finally, now having gone through under my own best guidance, I will go to the books again, read the “real names” for the parts I’ve had experience of creating language for, look at the history, the habitat, in which the cow parsley is said to live, and see how the texts compare with what I have experienced. This will offer me the next platform to step from, a different path to take, in the next phase of meeting with a plant.
Sources Cited
Hinchman, Hannah. The Illuminated Journal. Salt Lake City:
Peregrine Smith Books. 1991.
Mabey, Richard. Flora Britannica. London: Chatto and Windus. 1996.
Walsch, Neale Donald. Conversations with God, book 2. Charlottesville, Va:
Hampton Roads Publishing Company. 1997.
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