Houseleek (Sempervivum) by Hugo Sommers
Although he’s a fine artist rather than a botanical specialist, the Australian painter and print-maker Hugo Sommers depicts floral minutiae with all the fidelity of a camera, but then expands micro- into macrocosm, filling large canvases with a single detail that would normally be only a small part of the story. Here he looks into the rosette of a houseleek (Sempervivum), the diminutive hardy succulent that Britons have encouraged to grow on their roofs — and in containers, dry and gravel gardens, and rockeries — for centuries. Mark Griffiths