Sphagnum Magellanicum

Painting of a Sphagnum Moss using peat on paper made with recycled paper and bracken collected from the Marches Mosses peat bog on the border between Shropshire and Wales. Peat is 90% water and plays a vital role in protecting against flooding and loss of water quality; peat’s ability to store carbon helps mitigate against climate change. Peatlands are only 8% of UK land area and yet hold vast amounts of carbon, around 36 times more than is stored by all of the UK’s woodlands. Sphagnum moss is the primary component in peat formation, and it creates the low nutrient, acidic conditions that makes the specialised biodiverse peat bog ecosystem. It is the living and dead plants that hold large quantities of water inside their cells; plants may hold 16 to 26 times as much water as their dry weight, depending on the species. The deep red coloured Sphagnum Magellanicum is one of the main peat forming species, rare in the UK but found at the Marches Mosses. The processes of working intimately with materials from the landscape in this artwork offer a way to develop a harmonised relationship with the more-than-human realm in the wetlands and other fragile environments.