Tracing roots: illustrating Hong Kong’s botanical beauty
It's laborious, time-consuming and often frustrating work, but for botanical artist Sally Grace Bunker, the task of immortalising 100 of Hong Kong's most significant trees - bud, bark, flower and all - in a book collaboration with HKU, is well worth the effort, writes Angharad Hampshire
"I would not inflict this work on anyone else," says Sally Grace Bunker, a Hong Kong-based British botanical artist. "It's taking me six or seven hours a day, every day. And it's work that requires the utmost patience. Luckily, I have a lot of patience and I love detailed work."
Bunker is mid-project, recording the indigenous and significant trees of Hong Kong. She is collaborating with Richard Saunders, professor of plant systematics and phylogenetics at the University of Hong Kong's School of Biological Sciences, and Pang Chun-chiu, a pollination biologist and post-doctoral fellow in Saunders' lab. Together, they hope to produce the first Hong Kong heritage book to cross the boundaries of art and science.
"Trees are the most stable plants there are around," says Bunker. "They give us everything. Without them, we cannot live. Hong Kong is covered in amazing trees."
Today, Hong Kong is home to a verdant landscape but historical records dating back to the 18th century depict the territory as devoid of trees. In 1742, French landscape and botanical painter Jean-Louis Prevost observed that the territory's islands were "sterile and covered in rocks".
Nearly a century later, in 1841, the British colonised Hong Kong. That year, naturalist Richard Brinsley Hinds described it as "wild, dreary, bleak and apparently barren".
The British initiated a huge forestation programme, designed to provide fuel, charcoal and construction materials. By 1938, 70 per cent of Hong Kong Island was covered in tree plantations. But the second world war brought mass destruction to this forest cover. Fuel routes to Hong Kong were destroyed leaving beleaguered residents with no choice but to chop down the trees.
