I had been wanting to do a drawing for my best friend for ages but was waiting for the right kind of flower. I settled on the pink Chrysanthemum. I took a bit of an artist licence to go bolder on the colour, to make more vibrant than the original specimen. We have been friends since primary school and caught the bus together.
This is a dragon fruit flower (Hylocereus undatus), isn't it fabulous! These flowers are their best for one day so it was a very opportunistic collection and being so top heavy on a short stem meant it was very tricky to prop up. Is ended up perched in my desk draw to get the right angle.
This is a flower that one of my friends picked up for me when she was out doing field work. She recognised it as a threatened native species. It's called the Austral cornflower or native thistle. The Australian Department of the Environment and Energy lists it as extinct in NSW and VIC, and vulnerable in QLD.
My arrangement shown above sat on my kitchen bench in a cup of tap water for over a week without showing any sign of wilting, in fact the flowers continued to grow. After a few days the unopened bud (tallest) sprouted the pink hairy anthers. A healthy population of aphids also started multiplying on them.
If any florist wanted something native and different this would be a fantastic candidate for a dried collection. I still have the dry brown heads which opened and closed with the light for many months.
I entered this in a local art competition and it was my first drawing to ever be sold.