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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) and 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.
Adams first published this watercolour of the native gentian, accompanied by another watercolour of the same species, in Mountain Flowers of New Zealand (1965), on page 13. Her acccompanying text, on page 12, reads:
No native gentians have deep blue flowers. The mainland species are white or creamy-white, lightly veined or striped with violet. In late summer, these white gentians are free-flowering and abundant on the mountain sides and in the tussock grasslands...Gentiana bellidifolia was drawn at Raupehu in March; one form with richly-coloured foliage was growing in cinders at 6,000 feet while the other was amongst the tussock at 5,000 ft. Those from the subantarctic islands are colourful with flowers heavily marked or flushed with rosy-purple.
Adams published this watercolour again later in Mountain Flowers in New Zealand (1980), on page 56. Adams modified her later description; she writes:
No native gentians have deep blue flowers. The mainland species are white or creamy-white, lightly veined or striped with violet. In late summer, these white gentians are free-flowering and abundant in the mountains. Gentiana bellidifolia is widespread and sometimes has richly-coloured foliage, particularly when growing in the scoria on Mt Ruapehu.
Mt Ruapehu; March.