She retired at age 72 in 1996 as a public health pediatrician and traveled extensively to more than 50 countries. On those journeys, Marjorie Brown would notice the occasional artist sketching a beautiful scene, and she'd think, ``Wouldn't that be fun?''

So when she was not quite 80, Brown took her first art class.

Now 86, she's selling her native plant paintings on cards and posters to benefit the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society.

''I always thought I wanted to paint or draw,'' she said. ``I thought, I'll try, and I ended up in botanical art. It suits my style.''

With vivid blue eyes and short-cropped white hair, she is as delighted at her second career as she can be. ''I feel so fortunate at my stage to have a new interest and new friends,'' says Brown, whom her friends call Marge.

Brown's husband, Harvey Brown, is a rheumatologist who tools around the Veterans Administration hospital and Jackson Memorial in his wheelchair. Medicine is his life, says his wife.

They met at medical school in Milwaukee, then interned together in Richmond, Va. The couple moved to Miami in the mid-1950s, when Harvey took a job at the VA. He was then invited to join the UM Department of Rheumatology. ''He wanted to practice medicine 50 years, and he's done that,'' she says.

``I had the first of our children and then started working in public health because it had better hours. He's a workaholic and somebody had to be at home with the kids.''

They reared five chidren. ``None is a doctor; people always ask. We let them go in their own direction.''

About 10 years ago, she began to volunteer at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. ``I noticed all the art classes and signed up for watercolor. Drawing class [a prerequisite] was on the day I volunteered and I couldn't take it, so I just jumped in.''

Since then, she has taken drawing classes two or three times. ''Some people are born artists, but if you want to draw and are willing to practice, you can become an artist,'' she says.

For painting subjects, Brown heads out to her Kendall yard, which is planted with natives.

''I started being active in the Native Plant Society and realized the importance of using them,'' she says. ``Then I got the idea of making cards and giving some of the proceeds to the society.''

Her drawings have a delicate touch. Two flowering stalks of tropical sage, Salvia coccinea, bear bright red flowers, while the Boston fern, Nephrolepsis exalta, has a network of fragile roots exposed. The berries on wild coffee are shown in stages of ripening, and the Bahama or Mexican senna has buds, flowers, leaves and fruit.

On the back of each card Brown describes the plant, its botanical name, its uses, along with the note that a portion of the sale will go to the society.

Steve Woodmansee, a native plant expert, helped with the plant names. He says, ''She included Asclepias curassavica [a West Indies milkweed, not a Florida native] but liked it too much to leave it out.'' The milkweed, with yellow and orange clusters of flowers, is widely planted for butterflies in South Florida, so Woodmansee said all is forgiven.

''She's a fantastic illustrator, in my opinion,'' he says. ``I think the poster came out super nice.''

Patty Phares, long-time native plant enthusiast, bought one of Brown's original watercolors, the beach sunflower. 'It was already matted with a nice yellow mat. A few weeks ago, I hung it in a dark room, and thought, `That really makes a bright statement.' ''

''I practice by doing,'' Brown says. She's in both the advanced watercolor class and a drawing class at Fairchild, learning to work with charcoal and pastels.

There are botanical illustrators and botanical artists, Brown says. ``I consider myself in the botanical art group. My work isn't fine enough for botanical illustration. You can take more artistic license in the art group.''

Caroline Lewis, director of education at the garden, purchased 75 of the native plant posters to give to teachers participating in the Fairchild Challenge, the environmental competition that includes 60,000 students.

''You kind of have to like a plant before you put it on paper,'' Brown says. ``Certain things I've enjoyed painting, like resurrection fern in all its stages. . . . I like the whole exercise of getting the shape right and the color right . . . it's the challenge.''

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