small thing

Another little rain on a cool cloud-veiled day… secret moist spaces tucked away enjoy these gifts from the sky.  Thickets, springs, swamps… in these untrammeled pockets where water hangs on, small treasures bask in the shade and dance with gnats that unaware, take on a squirt of pollen-loaded liquid to their backs as they do-si-do into minute triggers on the stigmas.  

Though these plants usually form extensive colonies, Listera convallarioides, also known as the ‘Broad-lipped twayblade’, is one of the least known of the orchids.  That they are elusive and rarely encountered is not surprising when one sees how small and inconspicuous they are, blending with other green vegetation in hidden cool areas. Once the dust-like seeds mature and disperse, if they find their situation hospitable, they grow underground for several years before rising above the ground to produce leaves and engage in photosynthesis.   

The genus Listera is named for the noted seventeenth century English physician and naturalist Martin Lister.  The specific epithet ‘convallarioides’ is from the Latin meaning "Convallaria-like," because the leaves of Listera convallarioides resembled those of the genus Convallaria, the Lily-of-the-Valley.     ~ Mary

Listera convallarioides

From my Native Orchids of North America series – this is an original relief print ~ 6” x 11” ~ printed from multiple hand-cut linoleum blocks, and signed as a numbered edition of 100.  Made using archival ink on Okawara MM neutral pH paper and printed on a Whelan Pro Press at Green Ink Gallery & Studios in the Black Hills near Nemo, South Dakota.

Artist and amateur botanist, Mary Wipf lives and works in the Black Hills of South Dakota creating drawings, collages, fine marbled papers and silks, and original prints.

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment

605 342-2552 • http://www.greeninkgalleryandstudios.com/

Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:

paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

View more posts from the orchid series...

Corallorhiza maculata:  http://greeninkseen.blogspot.com/2010/12/thing-of-beauty.html

Cypripedium parviflorum: http://greeninkseen.blogspot.com/2011/12/amazing-thing.html

Calypso bulbosa: http://greeninkseen.blogspot.com/2014/12/it-takes-forest.html

Listera convallarioides: http://greeninkseen.blogspot.com/2012/06/small-thing.html

hybrid works – acrylic & charcoal on canvas



Down in the Jumpoff  ~  34” x 21”  ~  $1450^.00



Up in Harding County, SD, down in a place called the Jumpoff, there’s a world of sparsely grassed benches, pricklypear, sculpted buttes, cut-banks, rattlesnakes, and dry.  The sediments were laid down in an inland sea and pressed hard by time into soft stone.  Water wore the place out of its ancient beds.  Today, water is mostly sucked up by the gumbo and eaten by the dust; but a wild storm will tumble pounding across the broken space, raining hellishly hard, until the place is running wild and milky with land gone liquid.

Jumpoff Divide  ~  40” x 30”  ~  $1950^.00

You fall off an undulating tableland and discover the Jumpoff – a broken land.  The clean clear air leans down, bending the grasses that top jumbled benches and jagged buttes.  A sheen of fleeting silvery light rolls with the wind over the short dry grasses.  Hold your breath – the burning breath of the world blows steadily into the void. 



Red Butte  ~  40” x 30”  ~  $1950^.00

 You end up revisiting places, in the mind, on the ground… both.  Some are haunting, some inspiring, some quietly powerful.  Except for the wind, the song of the meadowlark if it’s spring or summer, or the cry of a wheeling hawk, Red Butte is on the quiet side.  It’s a place to linger. 

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All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment

605 342-2552 • www.greeninkgalleryandstudios.com

Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:

paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers