AND THEN THERE ARE STREET PLANTS

No sooner is one task completed than another one is there. Isn't life wonderful?

The trees! So many trees in the February link box. Wonderful posts. Do you find as time goes by it gets interestinger and interestinger?

Next up - Street Plants.

I know it can sometimes feel as if one is lurching from one meme to another; but being aware of urban wild plants is something I would really like you to consider - whether you post about them on your blog or not.

It's astonishing how many there are. Really.

I hitched a lift into Poole last week. 'Hurry, hurry,' said my friends as they got out of their car.

"But. . . look at these!"

"There are only two-and-a-half hours on the ticket and there's lots to do!"

By the time they'd stopped telling me to hurry and locked the car I'd already taken my pictures. I hadn't needed to go anywhere.

Right in front of our noses (or rather, our toes) were plants lined up against the pure white hoarding of a building site where a hotel is being constructed next to a superstore. Front wheels, pavement, plants - all in the shadow-shape of a car-park tree. (Alder?)

You don't need to know what they are. Just see them. There!

So - think about it. The link box for urban wild plants will be open 21st - 25th February.

There's even an Urban Wild Plants Page.

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Tree Following Link Box For February

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STREET PLANTS

Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus) beside downpipe in garage forecourt.

June 12th 2014

Before the post proper - a big thanks to everyone who took part in the June Tree Following update - whether by writing about their own trees or by reading the posts of others. The characters of the trees (and to some extent of those following their progress) is emerging as the year passes - and it's fascinating. Some trees have found their identities or had them revised; it's easier to work out what they are once leaves have opened. Maybe by starting with bare branches we will all find it easier to identify trees in winter? Some trees have run into trouble. Some have burst out of iffy patches. Over the summer months we will need to become even more efficient as detectives - what is happening when nothing seems to be happening between now and autumn? I anticipate our July and August posts will be amongst the most creative and revelatory.

To see the branches of 'my' tree, I have to crane my head back - it's so very tall. So this week I thought I'd look down. The hedgerows seem high at present - with fennel being feathery and the umbeliferous flowers seeming like inside out umbrellas (except prettier). It's all a big green blur, for all the little flowers growing in the big plants' shade.

Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare)
June 15th 2014

So I looked to the streets - or, more particularly, to the car-parks, where plants are more likely to grow separately. Here, they are more distinct. And astonishing. And pretty.

And not just pretty (like the Erigeron (Mexican Fleabane)) above. Resilient and surprising like this Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) behind the bins in a car-park recycling area.

Poppy by building site. See the buddleia to its left? Opportunists both!
June 15th 2014

Where there's a new building, there's often more new building in progress nearby. It's how towns spread! On the edge of the car-park belonging to a three-year-old supermarket, something else is being built. I don't know what. The ground is cleared. Machines are there. And pipes and chain link fences all around. Where flowers grow.

Faded beauty!
There were newly opened poppies too, bright red and with unblemished petals. But in this flower we see the seed pod forming. It's like watching a caterpillar turn into a chrysalis - the old and new entangled. But it's not just that..

Aren't the curls and dents, and wrinkles just as beautiful as the flat blandness of a young flower. (Say yes!) I'd be hard put to it to tell one new poppy from another. But once they begin to die - that's where their individual character creeps in. Or leaps in, in the case of a poppy, because the petal stage doesn't last long! 

For more Loose and Leafy posts about plants about town - click HERE.

For more about Tree Following - click HERE.

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WHAT TO DO IN A CAR-PARK

If you've arrived from Kitchen Garden magazine - a special welcome.

If you'd like to know more about Tree Following - click here.

Hospital car-park.  March 17th 2014

I've spent a lot of time in car-parks recently; waiting . . . waiting while the driver had a dental check-up . . . went into a garden centre . . . bought chips . . .

If it hadn't been raining, I would have taken the opportunity to scout around and look for wild plants in the borders and at the edge of the road . . . and pictures for my other blog, Message in a Milk Bottle. But it seems always to be raining. We had months of rain. Rain seemed to be a perpetual state. And now it's March . . . we're having April showers. There are sunny moments. But, well, whether it's raining or showering I don't like to take my camera outside.

There are special 'seeing' challenges in car-parks. They are not the kind of places people like to linger. They are boring. They are a bit dangerous. There's nothing there except cars . . . or . . . except . . .

Someone decided to put trees in squares cut through tarmac and the idea caught on. Trees (like blobs on sticks) are stuck in the ground in car-parks all over the land. If I'd thought of it, I would have put them bang in the middle of parking spaces so drivers could aim at them and stop just short. It might have made it easier to line up straight. But the fashion is to put them at the corners with the point of each square intruding into the space allocated for each car. This way they are neither trees nor targets but annoying bollards.

Then there are hedges. Hedges aren't universally present in car-parks but they are sometimes used to divide one section from another. (See picture at top of page.) In car-parking-hurrying-to-get-to-an-appointment mode - they are merely barriers. Fences would do just as well. But they are living plants. Once noticed they may not turn out to be very interesting . . . but they are there . . . and if we were to look closely (which we might if it weren't for the rain!) there is bound to be something to see.

Hospital car-park.  March 17th 2014

But because of the rain I've been sitting in the car, front and back, and taking pictures through rain spattered windows instead of taking the camera outside; or opening a door and pointing my lens through the crack.






All of a sudden . . . there are trees!

Garden Centre. Car-park March 25th 2014

Trees stuck in the middle of the garden centre car park. (While we're here . . . don't you think garden centres could make a little more of their land? I expect some do but I know three reasonably well and they might as well sell paint.)

Trees in the car-park outside the chip shop and the hardware store and the newsagent's and . . .. 

Car-park for local shopping centre . . . small shops and doctor's surgery. March 25th 2014

This local shopping centre car-park-tree has a nest in it.

There's so much to see in a car-park, even without leaving the car! (And I suspect hardly anyone notices, we generally just rush by.)

Car-park for superstore. March 25th 2014

Trees outside the superstore. See the catkins?

When summer comes, maybe we'll return and see what plants have sprung up around them.

Do you have un-noticed trees in squares in the car-parks near you?

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