Limestone Pavement

Limestone Pavement is an original illustration set in Northern England Limestone Uplands. It lies in mid-latitudes, where the climate is oceanic — mild, wet through the year.

Flat limestone slabs are divided by deep intersecting fissures into a giant irregular grid. Ferns and small flowers grow only down inside the dark clefts, never on the open rock. A thin wet sheen lies on some slab tops. The upland is treeless under a dull overcast.

Why is the limestone split into a grid of blocks?

The grid follows joints in the bedrock, widened by rainwater dissolving the limestone along them. Plants survive only in the fissures because that is the sole place with soil, moisture and shelter from grazing — a botanical record of what the surface would look like if nothing ate it. Bare pavement on ground wet enough to grow trees means the soil was stripped, most likely by ice.

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