Fruit of moon trefoil (Medicago arboreal), 2013.

Texture and shade give a solidity to the dramatic hook shape of the seed pod that gives Medical arboreal its common name, the moon trefoil. The fruit is distinctive, with its flattened spiral husk that remains hanging on the bush throughout the Summer. The Spanish photographer Albert Lleal Moya places the magnified pod against a dramatic black background. In eighteenth century Germany such an approach was characteristic of a school of natural history cabinet painting, as distinct from using local darkening to make pale colours stand out more. Lleal Maya once observed that, growing up in the large urban sprawl of Barcelona, 'curiosity taught me to discover wildlife under flower pots and large oceans in a drop of water.'