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Every year I enter our local agricultural show: Hesket Newmarket Agricultural show. Its a family 'tradition' as it were and we have a fantastic weekend, after weeks of stress and hard work to create entries for the industrial tent. This year was no different.
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| Hesket Newmarket show-ground overlooking Carrock Fell and the Northern Fells of the Lake District. |
I often push the boundaries with entries, from woven willow crab traps to sea-glass joined by copper within the cracks of driftwood. I occasionally 'dable' in the floral art section (not really my strongest area) for a challenge, usually the floating flowers. This year however, the floating flowers category had been taken out, so I looked at what else I could enter. I decided to enter 'funky foliage'... with a geological twist.
NB: the 'funky foliage' category had limits of only allowing foliage (ie. no flowers) and being within the 2ft/60cm size constraint.
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| Alethopteris |
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| Alethopteris, Neuropteris and other remains. |
Late Carboniferous plant fossils have become a bit of a specialty for me, as the fossils can be found a stone's throw from my house (like those above). Inspired by these I decided to create a display of foliage, only using the modern day relatives of the classic Late Carboniferous flora; of which many I had found their fossil counterparts.
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| Some detail of the arrangement. |
The display was a challenge, the main concern with any shown arrangement is wilting, especially in late summer heat. So, to try and minimise this, I chose to hard fern (Struthiopteris spicant), heart's tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) among others as well as field horsetail (Equisetum arvense).
Somewhat limiting was access to a range of foliage, most of which came from the roadside or local ghyll (the same ghyll where the fossils can be found). Additionally while I would love to have included a contemporary analogue to Lepidodendron and Lycopod trees, it would be irresponsible to have gone out onto the fells or nearby montane environment to collect species, such as the fir clubmoss (Huperzia selago), due to their rarity.
In terms of practicality, the arrangement would have benefited from being based in floral foam or oasis, however, I was constrained to a transparent vase. Also I collected the plants over 24 hours before display, resulting in sadly, a large amount of wilting (particularly of the heart's tongue fern).
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| The arrangement on show-day. |
One species that I included that I had not found represented in the fossil assemblage was yew (Taxus baccata). I included it, however, for variation and structure. Although, it is accurate as it represented conifers, which evolved in the Late Devonian.
Although I did not place in 'funky foliage' I enjoyed collecting, arranging and showing my attempts.
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| The winning arrangement. |
I was planning on using some giant horsetail (Equisetum telmateia), but on pre-show day I didn't have time to collect some from a population nearby. Interestingly it was featured on the winning arrangement to add height, creating a rather spectacular display.
I did, however, not go home empty handed- among others- a geologically inspired ring claimed a first in 'handmade article in a hard craft'. The ring was one that I had started to make sometime ago, from locally sourced malachite on a copper ring, so I was pleased to finish and enter the piece.
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I also placed 3rd with my Rhizodopsis linocut print, which was featured in my first blog post. To see the piece and details on its inspiration and creation - click here -. I was particularly pleased with this as it was entered against a beautiful linocut in the same category.
For more on Late Carboniferous/Coal Measures plant remains, I cannot highly enough recommend Plant Fossils of the British Coal Measures (Palaentology FG Fossils) (1996) by Cleal and Thomas, with particular reference to identification.
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