Minjung Oh

Goodenia ovata
hop goodenia

2018, watercolour on paper
30.5 x 48 cm

Collected 1770: Botany Bay

Observed 2018: Brookfield Nursery Gardens

The artist has vividly expressed the lush green foliage, the plant’s trailing habit and the delightful deep yellow of the flowers, depicting one in detailed dissection. A plant with shiny, slightly sticky, toothed leaves and irregular, yellow, five petalled flowers. Endemic to Australia,

Goodenia ovata grows with either an upright or spreading form. It attracts native butterflies and insects and is a caterpillar food plant for Junonia villida, the meadow argus butterfly.

Grevillea pteridifolia
fern leaved grevillea

2018, watercolour on paper
36 x 28 cm

Collected 1770: Point Lookout, Endeavour River

Observed 2018: Brisbane Botanic Gardens

Grevillea pteridifolia is a widespread species with a number of different forms. Most commonly, the plant is a large shrub or small tree; there is a prostrate form found in eastern Cape York.

The artist has focused on the distinctively large racemes of orange flowers, portraying the singular flower stalks (pedicels) that gradually open along the inflorescence, so that the youngest flowers are nearest the apex. Details reveal this glorious unfurling.

These flowers contain a lot of nectar and are an important food source for birds and animals. Indigenous peoples also use the nectar either taken directly from the flowers or as a sweet drink produced by soaking the flowers in water. The foliage is used for food flavouring and for lining earth ovens.

Pleiogynium timorense
Burdekin plum

2018, watercolour on paper
59 x 46 cm

Collected 1770: Endeavour River, Bustard Bay, Bay of Inlets, Thirsty Sound

Observed 2018: Sherwood Arboretum

This vibrant and intensely detailed watercolour depicts the characteristically glossy leaves which may have up to eleven elliptical leaflets. A cluster of ripening fruit nestles in the centre. The artist has also provided a fascinating and lyrical sequence of the fruit ripening and senescing (dying).

These dark, globular fruit vary in taste. Those that have red purplish flesh are quite tart, those with a pale greenish white flesh are milder but less tasty. Some fruit are half red – half white, and these are reportedly delicious!

Indigenous peoples have been known to bury the fruit underground to assist with the ripening process. Joseph Banks’ journal records that ‘these when gathered off from the tree were very hard and disagreeable but after being kept for a few days became soft and tasted much like indifferent Damsons’.

The fruit can either be eaten raw, cooked into jam or jelly, used to flavour meat, or to make wine or a liquor.