This large-leafed plant, native to Europe but brought to the North American continent by colonists hundreds of years ago, is called Burdock. It has nicknames like Beggars Buttons and Burweed. Vasily Polenov painted this picture about 1875, when he would have been thirty-one years of age.
The Alderleaf Wilderness College in Monroe, WA, maintains a very informative website with extensive articles on North American plants, native and imported. Burdock is a biennial plant, which means its sprouting, maturing, flowering/fruiting and dying takes place over two years. The plant grows with an aggressive, carrot-like tap root. Some people consider it to be an invasive weed, while others recognize it as a food source and having medicinal properties . Each plant can produce up to 15,000 seeds each year, seeds that can last up to three years in soil before sprouting. Hence Burdock is thought of as a symbol of abundance.
But I have a feeling this isn't what's most important to Vasily Polenov. I suspect he was more simply taken by the vigor and beauty of the plant. Notice he situates his Burdock plant in the autumn when tree leaves have changed color, fallen and been blown around a bit — these having landed under and around the Burdock's sheltering leaves.
There's a well known Medieval painting of a Carthusian monk who appears to be standing at a window. The artist has painted a stationary fly on the window ledge. One art critic asks, "Is the artist just showing off or trying to tell us something?" I never thought of that, an artist showing off. But I don't think Vasily Polenov is showing off here at all, capturing the complexity of these fluted leaves — so undulated we are able to see not only the top of the leaf on the left, but something of the underneath (which is said to be wooly or fuzzy). I think this painting suggests the long, hard look.
A friend wrote to say, "Since my open heart surgery, nothing bothers me anymore." He is more thoughtful, patient, observant, tolerant, less reactive now. Too bad so many of us have to wait for our variation of "open heart surgery" before we slow down enough to ponder the amazing structure and beauty of leaves, clouds, birds. When speaking of the American lifestyle, my barber said recently, "We work too much and play too hard." My doctor said years ago, "Physiologically, we weren't made for this kind of obsessive work and activity — it's making us unwell."
Thomas Merton wrote in his journal: "The wrens built their nest last week. The linden leaves are beginning to come out and this week we will see beech leaves, which are the loveliest things in creation when they are just unfolding."
Would I notice?
