9 months ago
A garden of sub-visual life-forms …
_We are inclined to overlook the very small that dwell among us; yet, without them we ourselves could not exist; for every one of us is a Garden of sub-visual life forms … Think of them as God’s tiniest angels, doing His unfathomable work in their own way, for these creatures, too, reside in the Eternal Mind, and shine in the Eternal Light, and form part of the polymorphic symphony of Creation._
Margaret Atwood, _The Year of the Flood_ , 2009
I was reading Margaret Atwood’s dystopian _novel The Year of the Flood_ as I finished this painting, and her quotation seemed apposite to the message that I was trying to put across: that Cyanobacteria, far from being a “nuisance”, are one more part of the “polymorphic symphony of Creation”. To push the symphonic metaphor just a little further, Cyanobacteria would provide the dominant themes of the first, second and third movements, and those discords we hear towards the end of the fourth movement are due to the arrival of humans, not malfeasance on the part of Cyanobacteria.
The painting follows on from “Teesdale’s unseen natural history …” back in May, but I had to work through several versions before I was satisfied. In the picture, you can see the hemispherical colonies of _Rivularia biasolettiana_ overgrown (on this occasion) by filaments of _Spirogyra_. Inside the _Rivularia_ colonies you can see crystal of calcite, produced as the uptake of carbon dioxide by the cells disrupts the delicate chemical balance of the water flowing over Teesdale’s sugar limestone, leading to the precipitation of calcium carbonate. The _Rivularia_ filaments, each enclosed in a sheath, have a heterocyst, for nitrogen fixation, at the base, and narrow to a terminal hair, which plays a role in acquiring phosphorus from the environment. I should have included some diatoms (_Encyonopsis, Fragilaria, Ulnaria_) but this was a complication too far. The presence of _Spirogyra_ overgrowing the Rivularia surprised me, but may have been the result of the warm spring we had this year (how I wish I could have discussed this with Brian!).
**_Rivularia_ colony, pastel on paper. 2007/2008. **
One problem, when thinking about _Rivularia_ , is that Cyanobacteria are now the provenance of the scientist rather than the natural historian – a slightly different situation to a hundred years ago when microscopy was a popular hobby of the middle classes. We live in a democratic, rather than a technocratic world and therefore we should not spend money because a scientist tells us to, but because there is a consensus that a particular course of action will fulfil a broader ambition of society at large. How, then, can scientists bring the unique properties of a Cyanobacterium into the popular conversation?
I ended “Teesdale’s unseen natural history …” musing on Baba Dioum’s quotation, “In the end we will only conserve what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught”, and wondering how this applies to the microscopic world. The sad truth is that the microscopic world is unknown to the vast majority of people, so Baba Dioum’s expression quickly becomes strained when applied to any organism that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Yet Margaret Atwood, through “Adam One”, the leader of God’s Gardeners, an ecologically-aware religious sect, does a good job. Her novel, written in 2009, anticipates the broadening sense that human health is dependent upon a healthy microbiome.
Maybe the success of Tim Spector and others at communicating the importance of a healthy gut microbiome should be our starting point? Healthy rivers, too, are dependent upon bacteria and other microbes and organisms such as _Rivularia_ tell a story of how __ these contribute to ecosystem functioning rather than just branding all Cyanobacteria as “nuisance alga”. Cyanobacteria, as I have explained elsewhere (see “As old as the hills …”) have been here much longer than we have. They do what 350 billion years of natural selection have made them extremely efficient at doing and it is humans, who by disrupting nature’s balance, are the nuisances, not them.
**Footnote:** Margaret Atwood’s phrase “God’s tiniest angels” reminded me of a line in the poem _Making a Living_ by Anne Sexton, where she refers to plankton as “God’s littlest lightbulbs”, a reference to the capability of some for luminescence.
Some other highlights from last week:
**Wrote this while listening to:** _The Civil Wars_ , because the music in _The Ballard of Wallis Island_ (see below) reminded me of this (and the two members of _The Civil Wars_ also went their own separate ways too soon).
**Currently reading:** Margaret Atwood’s _The Year of the Flood_
**Cultural highlight:** The very wonderful _The Ballard of Wallis Island_ , my film of the year so far. A low budget story about an eccentric millionaire trying to reunite his favourite folk band for a concert. For me, Sian Clifford’s understated performance was the highlight, but the whole film (along with the soundtrack) is unmissable.
**Culinary highlight:** Zefarelli’s vegetarian Italian restaurant in Ambleside, for the course meal at the end of the 2025 FBA Algae Identification Course.
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