mountain plants

This is a plant found amongst other places, in the mountains in Norway. It is one of the reasons For my next RHS exhibit – probably in 2019, I decided to paint Norwegian mountain plants that provide food for us mere mortals. Its scientific name is Rubys chamaemorus, but the common name in Norwegians is ‘Multe’, and in English, ‘Cloudberrry’.

Why is it called ‘mountain gold’? Apart from its very special taste, it is not always easy to find. It likes boggy areas and generally you will find that Norwegians will not tell anyone else where ‘their’ patch can be found. I know one or two places because I used to live in the mountains in Norway. I also found some whilst staying in a friend’s cottage this summer (Tusen takk Eva og Jon for låne av din nydelig hytte Thank you Eva and Jon for lending us your beautiful cottage). I was in the mountains specifically to sketch these and other plants I had decided to include in my exhibit.

If you travel to Norway and ask someone where cloudberries can be found, unless you know your host well, it is unlikely that you will be told.

The picture on the right is an unripe Cloudberry. There are very strict laws governing this plant, therefore it is illegal to pick them before they are fully ripe. At that stage they are a beautiful golden orange colour. Unfortunately I have no pictures of a ripe fruit as this happens in the autumn, that is why I need to travel back again next year to sketch the ripe fruit.

Over the years I have picked a lot of Cloudberries and thought I knew them! I also found that Norwegians are as un-knowledgeable as I am. Because I am now studying the plants to paint I decided to delve deeper. But I also needed to find the flowers and the unripe fruit to draw. This year, there were few fruit ripening, but an awful lot of flowers. On closer examination and with the help of a very good series of old botanical books borrowed from the Eggedal Library (Tusen takk Jorunn. Thank you Jorunn), I discovered that Cloudberries are dioecious, either male or female plants. Each plant has a huge underground root system travelling for some distance and that is why I found difficulty when looking for the unripe fruit.

The large patches of flowers were mostly all male, but we were soon able to distinguish these patches at a distance. They had a lot of beautiful white flowers, but also many red sepals where the petals had fallen off.

The female plants seemed to be few and far between – less than last year. The flowers were fewer and smaller, but with several immature fruits at different stages of development.

Like so many of the plants I have painted, I study them first then become completely intrigued by them. This of course helps me portray them as best I can.

Before I show you the sketches, this is a picture of a small female cloudberry patch in quite a boggy/Sphagnum moss area, together with nearly all of the plants I had chosen to do and which I will talk about in other blogs.The picture also includes Robin’s boots, Vaccinium oxycoccus(which I didn’t think I would find as its so tiny),Vaccinium myrtillus (small blueberry),Empetrum nigrum (crowberry),Vaccinium uliginosum (bog blueberry) and Andromeda pilifolia (a heather I won’t be including in the series).

So what is the difference between male and female flowers? It should be obvious, but I’m afraid I never looked and saw previously. I just took things for granted.

**Male Cloudberry flower – larger than female.**

**Longitudinal section of Male Cloudberry flower.**

The male flower contains stamens in a ring round the inside of the outer whorl.

**Longitudinal section of female cloudberry flower.**

The female flower is slightly smaller than the male flower, has several styles and stigma in the centre – one to each ovary, but round the edge is a ring of white, sterile stamens.

**Cloudberry plant with developing fruit.**

I have been in Norway sketching mountain plants that I will be painting for my next RHS exhibit in 2019. A long time in the future you might think, but in actual fact I now have my time cut out to get it all done in time. Not made easier by the views from the winter cottage where we were staying.

On the way up to the cottage we were kindly put up by some friends who also made sure we were able to celebrate St Hans in the Norwegian tradition. Our journey continued up to the valley where I used to live, called Sigdal and then further up into Eggedal where some dear friends have the winter cottage they allowed us to use for the duration. This was at 830 metres over sea level and a 5ºC difference in temperature from the village down in the valley.

The temperature difference and the incredible invasion of gnats notwithstanding, we had a really super two-week period. I found all the plants that I had chosen to include – which I will come back to in a later blog. But my main distraction was the two ‘bird’ houses just outside the cottage, one of them directly outside the kitchen window where I was working. The pictures are just some of the animals and birds that were constantly at the table.

It was just as lucky that it was nearly 24 hour light. I think that the sky was darkish for about two hours, but the horizon was very light – at least when the sky was clear. The light allowed me to work long hours and the last evening I worked until 23:00 without extra light!