Perspectives: "Spiny Thistle"

Margaret Stones may have been raised on the other side of the world, but the Australian-born botanical artist likely understood Louisiana’s natural, native landscape better than many of its own inhabitants. Though Stones passed away in 2018, a local group of friends and supporters is ensuring that her legacy lives on. On exhibit at LSU’s Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana’s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist reflects Stones’ contributions to the fields of botany and botanical art in Louisiana.

In 1976, LSU Chancellor Paul Murrill commissioned Stones to render six watercolor drawings of Louisiana wildflowers to commemorate the U.S. bicentennial, as well as the campus’s fiftieth anniversary. The works were so popular with the campus community that Murrill commissioned her to create two hundred more over the next ten years, a project that would eventually result in the Native Flora of Louisiana Collection. Considered one of the most stunning and scientifically accurate state catalogs of botanical art, Stones’ precise, painstaking illustrations capture the complex detail and beauty of Louisiana’s flora. However, the accomplishment was not Stones’ alone. The lengthy endeavor was made possible through the collective efforts of hundreds of people, from private donors and botany professors to plant collectors and university administrators.

“She did for flowers what Audubon did for birds,” Hawkins mused. Harelson agreed. “She’ll be as famous as John James Audubon in two hundred years.”

“Every time I look at them, I’m struck with awe,” said Gresdna Doty, the now-retired LSU theatre professor who first set the Louisiana-Stones connection in motion. Doty met Stones while on sabbatical in London, where Stones was working as an artist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Upon her return to LSU, Doty encouraged Murrill to commission Stones’ talents for the original six drawings, and she remained close friends with Stones for forty years. Doty saw many of the same works that now hang framed and on exhibit in the Main Gallery as they were first being rendered by Stones in their live form and stored in a water-filled bucket in her bathtub.

Compiled from the extensive archives of LSU Libraries Special Collections, the exhibit includes selections from the Louisiana Flora collection, sketches and working drawings, photographs, project correspondences, and even specimen shipping receipts. Stones only drew from live, original specimens, rather than hybrids, which meant that LSU botanists would embark on collecting expeditions around the state to gather and transport the plants back to the university, where Stones would have just a few days to complete her rendering within her studio at the LSU Faculty Club. She traveled to Louisiana for six weeks each year throughout the project’s duration, developing close ties to the university community, and Louisiana itself, in the process.

“It’s more accurate than any photograph could ever be,” said Randy Harelson, a retired horticulturalist who led the fundraising efforts to publish the 2018 LSU Press folio edition of Native Flora of Louisiana. Harelson helped raise $200,000 over two years, far exceeding the $50,000 goal needed to publish the works in full color large format. It was published a month before Stones passed. “One of the best things about this was knowing she saw the book before she died.”

“I’m just so happy they’re being appreciated like they should be,” said Julia Hawkins, who collected many of the plants used for the project and enjoyed a close friendship with Stones. During one particularly memorable collection trip with Stones to Lake Maurepas in 1982, Hawkins collected a yellow lotus flower between a pair of alligator carcasses.

“She did for flowers what Audubon did for birds,” Hawkins mused. Harelson agreed. “She’ll be as famous as John James Audubon in two hundred years.”

Louisiana’s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist is on exhibit at Hill Memorial Library through June 27. The full Native Flora of Louisiana collection is available to view online through the Louisiana Digital Library at louisianadigitallibrary.org.