FLOWER POWER ON HILLSBOROUGH STREET
This spring, Artsplosure is bringing wildflowers to the streets of Raleigh! We’ve partnered with artist Kat Lanser, botanist Greg Wilson, and Live It Up! Hillsborough Street to adorn power boxes along Hillsborough Street with artistic wildflower illustrations to showcase North Carolina’s flora and fauna.
Read on to learn more about the vision behind the art and the wildflowers themselves.
meet artist kat lanser
Hatemail is run by Kat Lanser, who is an Illustrator from Savannah College of Art and Design, who focuses on marketing her work towards a younger female audience, with themes of beauty, sadness, love and feminism. She has been selected to be published nationally in the American Illustration Annual, as well as smaller publications out of San Francisco, New York City, Raleigh and Savannah. She also held a position as an illustrator at the southern regional headquarters for the American Diabetes Association. She's exhibited work throughout Savannah, New York and Raleigh and currently works as a Senior Studio Artist for a Hopsitality Art Vendor in North Carolina.
meet botanist GREG WILSON
Greg Wilson is an Amateur Naturalist who studied Botany, Wildlife, and Agricultural Education at NC State University. In his spare time, he enjoys growing native wildflowers and planting little pocket prairies for folks. He lives in Southwest Raleigh with his wife, Corinne, and Aussie, Tupelo, in their home that, over the past 7 years, they have been converting into a haven for biodiversity by planting native wildflowers, trees, and shrubs. They are excited to be new parents this summer and to begin teaching their little one about the beautiful diversity of life on earth and how to foster that diversity through curiosity, kindness, and love.
Smooth Purple Coneflower - Echinacea laevigata
Family: Asteraceae, The Sunflower Family
Power Box Location: Hillsborough St. & Faircloth St.
Photo by Greg Wilson
Artwork by Kat Lanser
Smooth Purple Coneflower, a member of the Sunflower Family, Asteraceae, is Federally Listed as an Endangered Species, with its largest population found in the Piedmont of North Carolina in Granville County. It is a denizen of, now remnant, glades and prairies. Prior to European colonization, a patchwork of prairies and glades were thought to have composed a much larger portion of the Southeast. Indigenous use of fire to clear land for hunting, agriculture, and trade paths was an important ecological component that maintained a more open landscape. As colonists destroyed indigenous culture in North America, fire was suppressed, and over time massive swaths of land were claimed for agriculture and development and prairie ecosystems in the southeast became more and more rare; as did many prairie plants including the Smooth Purple Coneflower.
Fire Pink - Silene virginica
Family: Caryophyllaceae, The Pink or Carnation Family
Power Box Location: Hillsborough St. and Gardner St.
Photo by Greg Wilson
Artwork by Kat Lanser
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are the primary pollinators for Fire Pink. The elongated beak of the hummingbird enables ruby-throats to reach the nectaries in the tubular flower of Fire Pink. The term “pink” refers not to the color of the flower which is bright red, rather to the “fringe” at the tips of the flower petals that is characteristic of many members of this family.
Appalachian Blazingstar - Liatris squarrulosa
Family: Asteraceae; The Sunflower Family
Power Box Location: Hillsborough St. & Ashe Ave.
Photo by Greg Wilson
Artwork by Kat Lanser
A plant native to the Southeastern U.S. that is rare throughout North Carolina. It is another one of North Carolina’s heliophytic, or sun-loving, plants that is found in glades and other open areas. It is a fall-blooming sunflower that has many heads born on a long spike blooming first at the top and moving downward.
Yellow Pitcher Plant - Sarracenia flava
Family: Sarraceniaceae
Power Box Location: Hillsborough St. & Chamberlain St.
Photo by Greg Wilson
Artwork by Kat Lanser
North Carolina’s Largest pitcher plant found primarily in the coastal plain and sandhills regions of the state. It blooms in the spring time but is more characterized by its tall yellow pitchers, a modified leaf in the shape of a tube, that light up coastal plains savannah’s. Pitcher plants are one of several carnivorous plant species in North Carolina. Pitcher plants feed passively trap insects that are attracted to the tubes. Insects are guided downward by stiff hairs to a concoction of digestive secretions that they can’t escape due to the slippery nature of the inside of the tube. The hood over the tube opening of the yellow trumpet blocks rain from getting in the tube and diluting the digestive secretions.
Common Milkweed - Asclepias syriaca
Family: Apocynaceae; The Dogbane Family
Power Box Location: Hillsborough St. & Oberlin Rd.
Photo by Greg Wilson
Artwork by Kat Lanser
Common Milkweed is a robust plant with a striking globe-shaped cluster of flowers. It is one of many types of milkweed in North America that serve as an important larval host plant for the Monarch Butterfly. Milkweeds, aside from providing critical nourishment to the development of monarch caterpillars, produce a latex like substance that contains toxic chemical compounds. When ingested by the monarch caterpillars, the chemicals become part of their defense against predation, making them poisonous to their potential predators. The decline of milkweed due to human development is one of the major reasons for the overall decline of Monarch Butterflies.
Special thanks to Kat, Greg, and the Live It Up! Hillsborough team for bringing some flower power to life on Hillsborough Street. Snap a photo and tag @artsplosure and @liveitupraleigh on social media for a chance to be reposted!