 |
| Quest About Us Articles Plants Gallery Tech Resources Outreach Home |
|
2003: 2002: 2001: 2000:
|
Q U E S T 11/30/00 the monthly bulletin of the Madison Aquatic Gardeners Thanks to Professor Givnish and the UW Botany Department for hosting our meeting at Birge Hall. We had a double header: a tour through the Botany Department greenhouses and a fascinating presentation about the early days of the Dutch Planted Aquarium Movement, presented by Wim van Drongelen. Thank you: Tom, for the tour and Wim, for the presentation. Birge Hall is in heart of the UW campus. Fall colors were still catching our eye as dusk was approaching and as we were entering the atrium of Birge. Soon we were filing down hallways and staircases and coming upon a jungle paradise, the greenhouses. What a sight! And a grand tour through the enveloping matrix of greenery, followed. Professor Givnish put together an account of our safari: Don your pith helmets. "We began with a tour of the research and teaching greenhouses at Birge Hall, led by Professor Tom Givnish of the UW Department of Botany. On display in the rainforest room were a variety of emergent aquatic plants, including sweet flag (Acorus), taro (Calocasia, a fluoride acumulator), papyrus (Cyperus), as well emergent (aerial) forms of pennywort (Hydrocotyle) and Bacopa. We also observed the floating, unattached rosettes of water lettuce (Pistia) and water hyacinth (Eichhornia), the floating attached leaves of waterlilies (Nymphaea), and luxurious underwater growth by Elodea. "After seeing two gigantic, terrestrial tropical herbs - banana (Musa) and the enormous aroid Amorphophallus titanum - we examined the world's smallest flowering plant, the floating genus Wolfia of the duckweed family (Lemnaceae, closely related to the aroids), each plant of which is about the size of a period on this page. Submersed plants on display included quillwort (Isoëtes, a fern ally usually found in clear, extremely infertile water), arrowhead (Sagittaria), various swords (Echinodorus), coontail (Ceratophyllum, a dicot closely related to the monocots), milfoil (Myriophyllum, common in many hardwater lakes in Wisconsin), Madagascar lace plant (Aponogeton), and Cryptocoryne. The floating plant frogbit (Limnobium) grew exuberantly, as did an emergent Cryptocoryne wendtii. "Finally, we saw floating-heart (Nymphoides, a gentian relative remarkably convergent on waterlilies, with deeply cordate, nearly circular leaves) and two floating-leaved ferns, Azolla (with nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae, often used as a green manure in rice paddies) and Ricciocarpus. Tom explained how many aquatic plants are clustered in relatively few groups near the base of the monocots, including the Alismatales (an order containing the arrowheads, mud plantains, lace plants, sea grasses, eelgrasses, pondweeds, naiads, water poppies, and flowering rushes), its sister order Arales (including the mainly tropical aroids and the floating duckweeds), Acorus (basal to the monocots), Ceratophyllum (sister to the monocots), and several buttercup relatives (dicots closely related to the monocots). But aquatic plants have also evolved in several other groups, including the mustards (Brassicaceae), snapdragon relatives (Scrophulariaceae), and daisies (Asteraceae) among the dicots, and the pipeworts (Eriocaulaceae), Mayaca (Mayacaceae), and several grasses and sedges among the higher monocots." After the tour we hiked up to the third floor and assembled in the faculty conference room. It was time for a brief snack, as we settled down for Wim van Drongelen's presentation on Dutch Planted Aquariums. Wim is from Holland. He is a scientist with Nicolet Instruments and does a bit of traveling. The last time he was in Europe he came back with an arm full of old aquarium publications from the Netherlands. They included black and white photographs. The ideas and images he shared with us came from these documents. He included information from other reference materials and alluded to anecdotal accounts of the Dutch aquaria experience, items he picked up from friends and family. This overview presentation spans a time between 1940 and 1960. It reflects the early influence of the NBAT, (Nederlandse Bond Aqua-Terra), the Dutch Association of Aquarium, Terrarium and Insectarium Hobby (http://www.nbat.nl). From their origin, this group has brought attention to the beautiful aquariums of the Netherlands, through the sponsorship of design competitions. Though this was part I of a two part series, Wim showed a couple color slides from part II, also. This dealt with contemporary Dutch aquaria and gave us a chance to see how the early aquariums differ from current ones. Early tanks were low light level venues using incandescent bulbs and unpredictable daylight. And for this reason tanks were not very high. Some of the early arrangements showed a form of dramatic lighting coming from the light sources of several light bulbs. Lighter and darker areas resulted. Fluorescent light was introduced around 1940 and this gave a broader illumination. Generally, the earlier era aquariums were simpler, less formal and in a sense, closer to the feeling of a natural wilderness. Many of us found this quite pleasant. As time went on and approaching the contemporary era, the style appears to become more structurally formal. When taken to a rigid extreme, it can appear as tightly grouped and staged, without allowing interlacing between planted sections. This reminded Tim Brown of the bountiful display of a colorful, fruit and vegetable street stand, with everything bunched together and lined up in perfect order. Tim has a knack for analogies. Earlier was low tech. Today is high tech. Really, we saw some fantastic compositional strategies. Impressive, was the use of principles of compositional geometry and perspective evoking the illusion of visual depth, within a small shape. Artistic staging and a meticulous attention to detail, is the Dutch approach. Much can be learned through a close observation of this style. For those who missed last meeting, get to the November 30th one. I think we might have time for a quick flashback of part I and then spend a great deal of time scrutinizing the twenty contemporary examples. At some point we might want to enter Wim's prepared documents into our web page, We may or may not be able to show the contemporary images, because they are the property of Fran Maas, who provided us the slides for our presentation.
ITEM: Please, bring in some of your good looking, surplus plants for our plant exchange table. Although Annie Stuart won't be able to be at the next meeting, she is donating a gorgeous Red Rubin sword. ITEM: The club has a bulk subscription to The Aquatic Gardeners Magazine. Pick up a copy and share it with a friend. ITEM: Our club web page: http://www.ivwebworks.com/mag/index.html Questions to Victor Marsh at 277-8090 [email protected]
|