MEMES ON THE MOVE

To find the link box for Street Plant Posts go to Urban Plants, Urban Rocks.

(The Box has Moved!)

Shepherd's Purse by concrete wall.

With Loose and Leafy going into mothballs (blame a conking out laptop) - Tree Following and Street Plants are moving elsewhere.

First up - Street Plants.

If you've seen plants growing wild in the streets near you - and are posting about them . . . pop over to Urban Plants, Urban Rocks where Hollis will welcome you with a link box - just like here. (Not sure of the grammar but can't think how else to put it.)

Unlike me, Hollis knows what she's talking about. She's a proper plant and rock person. (See here.)

Oh. A spider's just walked across my desk. Spiders are generally welcome in my house at this time of year, even if the joints between walls and ceilings end up draped with webs and cobwebs in a thoroughly gothic way. (Harvestmen too.) But this year . . . something has happened and masses of very, very large and sturdy spiders have come to take up residence. Not only are they disconcerting because of their size, I lost tolerance when one ran across my bed in the dark and up my sleeve when I turned the light on to see what my eye had caught scuttling along in the half-awake gloom. Since then I've had a glass and a piece of card at hand and they're all getting chucked out as fast as they arrive. Even small ones are getting the heave-ho in case they grow to be large. (By 'large' I mean a leg span of two inches - that's why you can see them in the dark. And they don't creep along either. They walk tall.)

Not that spiders have anything to do with street plants. It's just that one can't help but be distracted when one hurries by.

Back to Street Plants.

Remember - On October 21st there will be a box for Street Plant Posts on Hollis' blog Urban Plants, Urban Rocks. 

Urban Plants, Urban Rocks is the new Street Plant Home.

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STREET PLANTS - AUGUST

So here I am - or, rather, - there I was, drinking coffee and thinking what a blight recycling bins are on the country and wondering how come a dropped cigarette counts as litter while thousands upon thousands of whacking great plastic containers on wheels don't . . . when I noticed this pretty pattern made by the shadow of lavender in a little vase on the table at which I was drinking coffee.

You may have noticed I've been somewhat AWOL recently and one of the places I've been AWOL in has been Oxford.

Oxford is a funny place. If you are a student you can flit through pleasant courtyards and quads on your way to concerts and plays and lectures on mind-bendingly interesting subjects. But if you aren't . . . it's a busy, dusty, noisy, not entirely pleasant place. I am biased. I don't like crowds and I don't like traffic. Oxford is pretty well made from both so I'm sunk.

But there I was, none the less, drinking coffee outside a second-hand bookshop (which also sold cake) admiring lavender shadows and wondering about wheelie bins . . .  

. . . . when my eye fell on this little plant against the bookshop step. It even has a seed plopped up against it.

Urban wild plants don't always get a good press. But I'll tell you what, they're a million times prettier than the millions of wheelie bins with which we are supposed to be saving the world. A bin is plastic. This little plant is alive. Ultimately the bins will disintegrate. They will leave no offspring. (And no-one will mourn them. Surely no-one will mourn them?) Whereas the future snuggles gently against this little plant while the world walks by.

Do you have a post about Street Plants? If so, do join me and leave a link to it in the box below. (It'll stay open till the 25th.)

And as for posts . . . they will continue erratic or invisible (?) for a while longer. And Loose and Leafy will grow tatty and somewhat un-tended until my AWOLing ends in the middle of October - by which time we'll all be getting old and full of sleep and looking forward to burning the leaves. (I like Autumn!)

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On Twitter use #urbanwildplants
Find out more about Street Plant Blogging.

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STREET PLANTS IN JUNE

Black Medick (Medicago lupulina)

There's a street I know where nothing ever changes. Of course, it must change. Indeed, I know it does because I went looking for prickly lettuce against a wall and it wasn't there.

But somehow the seasons get left behind. There's very little rubbish but there are always autumn leaves. How can there be leaves when other things are swept away?

Small Petty Spurge (Euphorbia peplus)

It makes it a pleasant place to walk. The houses are strong and practical but not necessarily beautiful. There are pensioners' bungalows along one side; council houses on the other. Close by there's a well-kept green with a post-box. Around the corner there are lock-up garages.

This is the street where the horse chestnut grows that went with the list of Tree Following posts for June. It's a plain and ordinary residential street - where leaves always stay in the kerb. Some must be taken away or the place would have silted up long ago and no-one would be able to pass in and out through their garden gates.

And for whatever the reason, it's a sure fire place for street plants. Maybe they are protected by the leaves? But it seems more the other way round. The leaves are caught among the stems of the plants which grow there in profusion and variety.

It's not as if there's something special about this street compared with the ones around. There are more pensioner's bungalows than in others but why would that make leaves stay? And it's not that older people are less likely to have cars to squash plants in the kerb. There are cars. What's more, some other streets have fewer because the houses there are provided with their own parking places.

Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

I can't fathom it. But what I do know is that I could have filled post after post after post with plants which grow in this one, ordinary, residential street where the wind and sweepers leave eaves and the elements provide the best place possible for an abundance of plants in the kerbs.

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You know the tree in a drain we visit from time to time? It's thriving still. This year it's filled the hole beneath the grid with leaves. Here's a new sprouting.

Sycamore tree with new, scrumpled leaves

Are there plants in the streets where you live? Or where you travel around? 

Do join us by putting your post in the Loose and Leafy Urban Wild Plant link box which will open tomorrow (21st June) and close June till 7pm on the 25th.

For more info. go to the Street Plant Bloggers Page.

Do you know the Nature Gate site? 

I really do recommend it. It's elegant and informative. It's based in Finland but many of the plants and creatures on it can be found in other countries too.

Here are it's entries for plants in this post.

Black Medick

Shepherd's Purse

Petty Spurge 

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BACK TO BLOG - APRIL STREET PLANTS

People who leave dandelions to grow
outside their houses instead of weeding them away
are right to appreciate such beauty.

My laptop has come back from the menders with a new vocation.

While away it was sent back to factory settings so it's decided to dedicate its life now to incessant up-dating. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.

Still. It's pleasant to have a new keyboard; and for the mouse pad to work; and not to need to press the same buttons over and over before anything happens.

There are, of course, masses of things to catch up with so I'm only partly here. There are on-line bills to check, emails to send and a general gearing up. Over this non-computer period I've been doing different things and it's odd how odd it feels to be returning to normal. It's that funny kind of feeling at the end of the long summer break from school. It means you will be seeing your friends again - but affection for being on holiday lingers on.

The sun has come out to celebrate so I've been on a quick look around for plants growing in the streets.

Where playgrounds meet pavements - that's a good place to look.

Dandelions come at the top of my list of favourites and, all of a sudden, there are loads of them.

Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) with its tiny white flowers and heart-shaped seed pods also comes pretty high on my street-plant list.

Then there are the leaves of an up-and-growing Smooth Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) with a purple so astonishing it doesn't see quite 'right'. Such a colour would be a surprise in petals. But these are leaves! Leaves! (It will grow greener as it grows taller.)

And then there is grass in its many states and varieties. I really do like the single plants which pop up through tarmac, grow beside bench legs and establish themselves between paving stones. This little lawn has already dried out and gone to seed.

Have you been noticing new plants in the streets near you?

If so, why  not post about them and put a link in the box below?

It will be good to see what you see too.

The box will be open till 7pm on the 25th April.

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Apologies to everyone who's been waiting for me to reply to emails or for their trees to be added to the Tree-Following list. I'll be catching up gradually.)

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