Pontederia cordata · An Obsession
I discovered pickerelweed while researching plants for the third and fourth panels of Unfolding Hope. The more I learned, the more I loved it.
Heart-shaped leaves. Purple and passionate, emerging from the dark water. On so many levels, it belonged in the work — in the story.
Pontederia cordata rises from muddy shallows and still backwaters. It stabilizes shorelines without fanfare. Its rhizomes thread quietly through sediment — whole colonies emerging from a single unseen root network. Pollinators adore it. Ducks eat their seeds. Its stalks are edible. It provides constantly and abundantly, and then it spreads — slowly, inevitably — into something more.
Working on Unfolding Hope, I became obsessed with this plant. In its rhizomes, I found symbolism — drips reaching through sediment, violet pooling like flower heads heavy with rain, cracked gold lines tracing the veins beneath a leaf.
Rooted in muck. Growing toward light. Feeding everything around it.
I wish everyone could obsess on pickerelweed. The world would be better.
