Anther Dust, Sheet Nineteen

This is the moment before dispersal, frozen under a century of pressure — a single stamen head from a herbarium specimen, magnified until the pollen grains read almost as topography. I was drawn to the way the anther had split along its dehiscence line and then dried mid-open, the two lobes curling back like pages. The ochre of aged mounting paper bleeds into the watercolor ground, and I've let the ink hatching describe each grain with the same care the original collector gave to the label in the corner — a name, a date, a hillside in 1923 that no longer looks like that.