Follow my journey through the natural world! You will find blog posts, notes on biodiversity and exploring and many other resources I hope will be of interest and of use for those who want to deepen the connection between humanity and nature.

Ever since I was a young child I found nature fascinating. It is an endless source of learning as one can never run out of new things to discover. My love of botany in particular will hopefully come across through this website including the photgraphs I have used throughout the design where I try to capture the essence of plants. To me they are like plant portraits, not merely a rendering of the appearance, but of the beauty and soul of the gifts of Flora.

Background

I chose the term "Wild Type" as I learned about it when I was working in a medical research lab in the University of Oxford. I heard the term used and read about it but I wasn't sure what it meant. Prompted to ask the question I was informed by the researchers who work there that "Wild Type" refers to the kinds of organisms found in nature which are related to the ones used in the lab which have been bred or genetically modified to give a strain with the required characteristics. The "Wild Type" is therefore the precursor to organisms which are then altered deliberately in some way by humans.

I find this whole concept really intriguing because it brings with it a lot of questions like "When did humanity start to modify nature?" and "When did we start to view ourselves as separate to nature, and therefore capable of creating post-"Wild Type" living organisms?"

These are the sorts of questions I will be exploring as well as many others and I will be sharing my thoughts through the blog posts you will be able to find below. I hope to provide a "link" back to nature through other resources that I will point to via pages that can be found here also. Check the menu above.

If you find yourself inspired by what you discover here then I would also be very happy to have collaborators. If you want to write a post I will feature you as an author in the section at the bottom of this page. The more the merrier!