Many people wrinkle their noses in disgust (or frustration, if they’re gardeners), when they think about slugs, but these little gastropods play a very important role in the boreal forest ecosystem. This piece has two species of slug- the showy banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus, and the smaller dromedary jumping slugs, Hemphillia dromedarius, which wriggle, leap and writhe violently if attacked, unlike most of their slower moving relatives, and are threatened.

Slugs are highly important decomposers, and will eat a wide variety of food found strewn about the forest floor including fresh and rotting plant matter, animal droppings, moss, carrion, and mushrooms, which are their favourite. Slugs eat a wide variety of mushrooms, including the morels and turkey tails portrayed in this piece. They have a keen sense of smell that leads them to patches all over the forest, and are able to devour mushrooms that are fatally poisonous to other wildlife and humans with ease. But slugs don’t just eat the mushrooms- they also help spread spores throughout the forest by excreting them in their fecal strings. After digesting the wide variety of food they have cleaned up off the forest floor, they excrete nutrient dense feces (often with mushroom spores in it), which fertilizes healthy soil and sets the next growth of mushrooms and plants up for success.

Slugs are also famous for their slime, which does not leave their bodies as mucus as many might think, but as tiny crystals which expand to 100 times their volume the moment they come into contact with water. Their slime is considered a liquid crystal, a substance somewhere between a solid and a liquid, and can be both lubricating and adhesive to match the slugs needs. When the forest is particularly dry, the slugs are in danger of drying up, so roll into a ball and wrap themselves in leaves in order to conserve moisture until the next rain comes.

This 11x14” watercolour and pen and ink original comes framed in a white, sustainably sourced, handmade oak frame with plexiglass. The framed piece is 16x20”.