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Overview
Nancy Adams was one of New Zealand’s most prolific botanists and a talented artist. She produced a vast number of botanical illustrations, which were included in widely distributed and well-regarded books about New Zealand flora. Her work, celebrated for its beauty and accuracy, includes Mountain Flowers of New Zealand (A.H & A.W. Reed, 1965), Wild Flowers in New Zealand (A.H & A.W. Reed, 1980).
In her introductions to these books, Adams provides beautiful descriptions of several alpine locations around the country – including the Tararua Range, Canterbury, Taranaki, and Fiordland National Park – and suggests where and when mountain flowers might be found in these areas. She encourages readers to explore these ecosystems with care and admiration:
Please remember that in many places the mountain plants are protected and are not to be gathered. To sketch or photograph them is a pleasurable way of recording their beauty.
The watercolour illustrations and line drawings in these books are accompanied by rich and engaging text describing the flowers’ colour variations, habitat preferences, seasonal growth patterns, and how they may have gotten their common names. These descriptions evoke both the precise scientific accuracy and the warm, whimsical accessibility that was also the hallmark of Adams’ illustrative style.
This watercolour can be found on page 18 and 19 of Mountain Flowers of New Zealand (1965) and on page 64 of Mountain Flowers in New Zealand, illustrating a species of koromiko, Hebe tetragona.
In Adams’ description, she writes:
There are many species of Hebe in New Zealand, ranging from small shrubs to trees 20 ft (6m) high. Both in the wild state and in gardens, they have crossed to give a variety of forms of complex parentage. The mountain species are low-growing, neat shrubs, with small flowers clustered together in spires or sprays of white or pink to pale violet. A group of alpine hebes with scale-like leaves are called "whipcords".
Hebe tetragona is one of these from Ruapehu, where it is abundant in the subalpine shrubland.