Monday’s Muse: Margaret Mee

Margaret Mee and the Moonflower is a Brazilian documentary celebrating the work and legacy of British botanical artist Margaret Mee. Having moved to Brazil in the 1950s, Mee produced over 400 botanical watercolours and illustrations of Brazilian flora and used her art as a tool to defend and draw attention to the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin. The film draws from the artist’s diaries, interviews, and narratives, revealing a tireless advocate for the preservation of flora.

“The flower opens for the first time soon after dusk and closes at dawn – then it dies”

‘The Moonflower’ refers to a rare cactus, generally known as Selenicereus wittii. Margaret had seen the cactus twice before on her earlier Amazon journeys but only as reddened, flattened stems. On her trip during 1982 she found some flower buds and what seemed to be an opening flower, “We tried to keep them but they were so wilted they never revived”.  Margaret organised an edit of her diaries and set up a filming project to take her to the Amazon in a search of the flowering cactus. “It will have to flower next year” she said “because I need time to recover from my hip operation”.

See Margaret Mee and the Moonflower trailer below.