Why dune plants deserve a page of their own

There is something about a coastal dune that resists a quick glance. The plants living there — marram grass, sea holly, sea spurge, sand sedge, bloody cranesbill — are shaped by wind, salt and moving sand, and they reward the time you spend looking. A photograph captures them in a fraction of a second. A field sketch forces you to slow down, and in that slowing down you begin to notice the things that actually identify a plant: the roll of a leaf, the angle at which a stem leans away from the prevailing wind, the way a rhizome runs just beneath the surface.

You do not need to be a confident artist. A soft pencil, a small watercolour pan set, a putty rubber and a sketchbook you are not afraid to ruin are plenty. What matters is the attention you bring.

Read the dune before you open the book

Dunes are zoned, and knowing where you are standing helps enormously. Walk from the strandline up towards the fixed grassland and you pass through distinct plant communities, each with its own character and its own drawing challenges.

• Strandline: sea rocket, orache and the occasional sea holly seedling, often half-buried and ragged.
• Yellow dunes (foredunes): marram grass in dense tussocks, with sea couch and sea spurge.
• Grey dunes: lichens, mosses, restharrow, wild thyme and bloody cranesbill, lower and more intricate.
• Dune slacks: damper hollows with creeping willow, sedges and orchids in early summer.

Before you draw anything, note the wind direction and the light. A plant on the seaward face of a dune will look quite different from the same species in a sheltered slack behind it. That difference is worth recording.

Leaf shape: the honest line

Start with a single leaf, drawn large. Draw its silhouette first, in one continuous line, without lifting the pencil. Then go back and add the internal structure — the midrib, the veins, the way the blade folds.

Marram grass is the great teacher here. Its leaves are tightly rolled, almost needle-like, with a sharp tip that can draw blood. Draw the roll as a narrow ellipse with a darker line along one edge to suggest the overlap. Sea holly is the opposite: stiff, waxy, blue-grey, and armed with spines along every lobe. Draw the outline as a series of sharp points, then soften it with a lighter tone. Sea spurge has narrow, upright leaves arranged in pairs along the stem; restharrow has small, trefoil-like leaves in a looser arrangement.

Measure the length-to-width ratio of a leaf with your pencil and mark it in the margin. That single number will keep you honest when you get home.

Stem angle and posture

Dune plants are sculpted by wind, and their posture is diagnostic. Begin each sketch by drawing a faint vertical line down the page — a plumb line. Then measure the angle of the main stem against it.

Sea holly holds itself stiffly upright, its branching stems forming near-perfect right angles. Marram bends and arches, its leaves sweeping in the direction of the prevailing wind. Sea bindweed and restharrow lie almost flat, their stems trailing across the sand. Sand sedge sends up a triangular stem that leans slightly, rarely straight.

Record the angle in words as well as lines: "main stem 30° from vertical, leaning east". It sounds pedantic. It is not. When you look back at the page in February, those words will bring the whole plant back.

Roots, rhizomes and what lies beneath

This is where a field sketchbook beats a photograph completely. The most interesting part of a dune plant is usually buried.

If you find a plant already exposed by wind erosion — common on the seaward edge of a blowout — take the chance to draw the underground structure. Sand sedge produces long, creeping rhizomes that run for metres, sending up shoots at intervals. Marram grass has deep, wiry roots and rhizomes that bind the sand together; this is precisely why dunes hold their shape. Sea holly develops a long taproot, sometimes as deep as a metre.

Draw a small cutaway section in the corner of your page. Mark the depth in centimetres with a scale bar, and note how much sand has built up around the base of the plant. That accumulation is the dune growing.

Finishing the page: notes, colour and timing

Leave room around your drawings for notes. Date, location, weather, wind direction, tide state, and the colour of the sand itself — which varies from almost white to a warm ochre depending on the beach. Add a few small colour swatches mixed on the spot, before your memory of the light fades.

Practical points worth remembering:

• Draw in pencil first; add watercolour only once the line is settled.
• Avoid picking plants in protected sites — sketch what is already broken or exposed.
• Return to the same clump across the seasons; marram in flower in July, marram in seed in September are two different drawings.
• Keep the sketch loose. An expressive, slightly inaccurate page tells you far more than a timid, tidy one.

Go out on a breezy, overcast day if you can. The light is even, the shadows are soft, and the plants are moving — which will teach you more about their structure in an hour than any still afternoon ever could.