British Animal and Plant Life

RESEARCH ON BRITISH PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE FOR BALANCE EXHIBITION PIECE

 

I used this image as a basis to compose my piece, as it was a naturalistic yet diverse colour palette featuring a variety of British wildflowers. Nature has a habit of organically combining colour schemes which are naturally pleasent to the human eye, and I wanted to capture all of the beauty and diversity of the UK ecosystem in my piece.

I found wikipedia had a very comprehensive page containing all of the mammals found in great Britain, and also provided an interesting reason for why the wildlife in England is very focussed and specific.

The Great Britain mammal fauna is somewhat impoverished compared to that of continental Europe due to the short period of time between the last ice age and the flooding of the land bridge between Great Britain and the rest of Europe. Only those land species which crossed before the creation of the English Channel and those introduced by humans exist in Great Britain.

From this I decided to include a few creatures of all sizes, and was actually suprised at the variety of different species living in our hedgerows. The wikipedia article also highlighted the number of rare species of Bat living in the British isles, prompting me to especially include one.

I also used a great yet simple pictoral guide to British Wildflowers to pick which plants I wanted to include, whilst still taking inspiration from my base image for colours. Eventually I settled on a selection of daisies; the most widespread UK wildflower, cornflowers, poppies and cow parsley. As well as the flowers shown here I also wanted to include the Red Campion, for the pink/purple tone. This flower, according to the Woodland Trust, 'is an ancient woodland indicator, so may give a clue to the history of a wood.' I thought, in the spirit of organic Balance and preservation, this would be a nice plant to include. As well as this I also wanted to add oak leaves, blackberries and clover, as other examples of non flowering British plantlife.