Acacia pycnantha - Golden Wattle POSTER
- hub of biodiversity -
"The core importance of insects to humanity ... does not reside alone in their diversity, but in the roles that they play in structuring networks of ecological interactions and freshwater ecosystems throughout the biosphere." (Waldbauer 2003, Bascompte and Jordano 2007, Ings et al. 2009, Scudder 2009).
This is a poster I made up to celebrate Acacia pycnantha and the integral role it plays in our bushland.
My hope is to use it to educate folks (the general community) about the fact that relationships between every part of the 'whole' we call 'nature', are extraordinarily complex, beautiful and fragile.
Most particularly I wish to highlight the fact that insects underpin a flourishing and healthy ecosystem, and leaves and plants are meant to be eaten and 'used'. The notions of 'a perfect leaf' and 'all bugs are pests and must be killed' are really really sticky ones. Insects run this world. They need to eat.
If you look closely at the poster you can see galls, spiders, ants, lepidoptera, beetles, cockroaches, sawflies, scale, flies, wasps, leafhoppers etc.
I've also celebrated the various parts of the plant itself, from new growth, to dead wood, to blossoms, seed pods etc.
I tried to come up with a heading that conveyed all this in a simple way and found this quite difficult. This is my best effort so far. I'm open to any further ideas.
The 25MB digital file for this poster for a one-off printing is available for $10. Please contact me. This works for up to a very large poster.
It is also available without the heading and makes an impressive artwork.
I also have a table available that describes describes what is going on in each square. This is FREE upon request.
Please contact me.