Tag: urban plants

Thanks for the memory – it’s pretty wild out there!

The neglected pavement level view outside our flat

It was the Biting Stonecrop – Sedum acre – in flower, that caught my eye first; that’s the very bright green plant with thickened drought proof leaves and yellow flowers in the centre of the picture. We haven’t seen it there before. But when I looked at it on the larger screen at home I saw the Mexican Fleabane; some Canadian Fleabane gathering strength in the background; some unidentifiable out of focus moss at the bottom and above it the most lovely slime mould – which rarely gets this big on an urban pavement and has the gift of moving very very slowly from place to place. We had some on the fire escape once that took a leisurely six months to descend the steps and set up home on a road less trampled by human feet.

On the wall below the raised pavement we’ve got Wall Rue, a fern; Herb Robert, a geranium; then in a narrow crack at the base there’s Sowthistle, Nipplewort, Dandelion (of course) and half a dozen others, surviving historic dowsings with Glyphosate which was replaced by salt crystals and then the road sweeper’s scraper. Around and about the car park (ex builders’ yard), there are over forty species of wildflower – many of them tiny versions of their grander selves which live in less inhospitable environments. It’s often hands and knees botany in these urban settings.

When we talk about nature and wildflowers, insects and mammals our default setting is somewhere green and pleasant; somewhere we usually have to drive miles to get to, armed with expensive kit; GPS units, field guides and binoculars. However, if you were to ask me where you could see otters in Bath, I’d have to say under Sainsbury’s bridge. Red Kite? south of the river. Buzzards – anywhere if you keep your eyes peeled. Peregrine falcons? nesting on the spire of St John’s Church.

The shocking truth is that if you love the wild – and by that I mean the natural world that’s rather the bit neglected by humans than the exhausted and overmanaged bit that we call countryside, then aside from National Trust land, nature reserves and SSSI’s you’re more likely to be able to feast on it in the city these days.

Yesterday we walked over to Widcombe to buy some decent sausages. Our practice is to eat less meat but of better welfare standards and quality. We took the riverside path as usual, and in the process we passed the Bath Quays site which is very slowly taking shape. In the first year either the architects or the local council had specified wildflower borders in the flood control areas. They lasted for a single year, but because they were probably an imported seed mixture an incongruous jumble of flowers that would never normally be seen together in the wild; they died back and were replaced by the usual thugs and vagabonds which just loved the rich imported soil brought in from elsewhere. Ironically, behind the now unimpressive borders was the blighted site of phase two, a demolished car park. This thin, impoverished and fenced off building site is now blessed by a magnificent display of the genuinely wild. My favourite, the Vipers Bugloss has been shuffling from patch to patch as the park area has been “improved” and has now colonized and spread across quite a large area, but as we walked along the 200 metre boundary I gave up counting after I reached 20 species. There was Mugwort; two kinds of Sow thistle, creeping buttercup, Black Medick, Hedge Mustard, Wall Barley, Poppy, Rye grass, False Oat grass, Ragwort, Mallow and Oxeye daisy; and two or three Geranium species, Docks and Sorrels. There were Spear thistles and Creeping thistles and It was all quite overwhelming and I was prompted to wonder whether I should be using a voice recorder and transcription app on my phone to record the sheer variety. The heartbreaking truth is that these will all disappear under a blanket of flats, offices and retail units, leaving a perfect, manicured and expensive view of our grossly polluted river .

So here are some photos of the treasures that live in the most impoverished and sometimes squalid places beneath our feet. We should really value them much more than we do.

Vipers Bugloss.

Bath pavement artist cheats death

 

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Rue leaved saxifrage

I’d never noticed this plant until we moved here – it’s a Saxifraga tridactylides the three fingered or rue leaved saxifrage. I first noticed it growing on our fire escape where, because it was only rooted in about 1 mm of grime, it was a tiny little plant and I thought no more of it until today when I spotted its more fortunate relative growing in a  luxurious crack at the bottom of an old limestone wall. Like most pavement plants it doesn’t exactly draw attention to itself, but unlike many of its posher cousins this saxifrage is an annual, and it survives the yearly baptism of Roundup by flowering and setting seed before the man from the council gets to it. Other pavement artists survive by looking as if they are entitled to be there.  The Mexican fleabane spreads because most people think it’s a daisy and therefore deserves a chance.  The Canadian fleabane plays Russian roulette with the ethnic cleansers (this is a very fertile city) so sometimes it gets hit and sometimes it gets away with it. The sowthistles seem to be resistant to the sprays, so they die back respectfully and then emerge stronger than ever. Ivy leaved toadflax grows on the walls and escapes that way. Let’s be honest, this obsessive tidiness isn’t remotely necessary, and the vagrant plants add a touch of life – even to our hallowed Georgian crescents. I’m just pleased to see anything showing signs of life.

Today started with me feeling a little short of sleep. I seem to be dreaming my entire life in a more or less random manner – my mind is slowly coming to terms with the fact that at last, through the magical surroundings of the Potwell Inn, I’m safe, and so having packed up and moved here four years ago my unconscious is wrapping up the past and packing it away because it (he) knows I don’t need it anymore.

Today’s re-lived experience involved the 8 mm film I once made of the funeral of a gangster who – it was widely thought – had been thrown down a flight of stairs and murdered. The police conducted an unenthusiastic investigation that took best part of a year, but there were no witnesses, no-one was talking and, to be frank, most people thought he had it coming. I was riding behind the horse-drawn hearse when the coffin very nearly slid out on to the road because someone had forgotten to insert the bolts, and the coachman turned to me and said – “he frightened my bloody ‘oss – e’s bin in the freezer for six months”. The surreal picture of a frozen corpse rolling down the hill was an addition to life’s rich tapestry, no doubt, but I spent most of the day in barely suppressed terror. 

So enough of these troubling old memories, I’m wrapping them in newspaper and sticking them in some kind of interior shed – glad to see the back of them.  But there are many more, and I think I’ll be dreaming them for the foreseeable future.

The good news was that on Monday we went to an excellent talk on Giotto’s paintings in the Scrovengni Chapel in Padua – the paintings were in Padua, that is, we were in the inestimable BRLSI. In the days of our pomp, when we had two incomes; most of our half-terms (Madame is an art teacher) were spent in galleries around Europe, sometimes with school parties and sometimes alone.  Now we’re retired our scope is a bit narrower and we haven’t even been to London for years, but the talk reawakened all the old excitement and I suddenly thought – ‘well we live 10 minutes walk from a main line station, why don’t we buy a railcard and book ahead to get cheap train tickets?‘  I mentioned the idea to Madame and she added Glasgow and Edinburgh to the wish  list and after an hour online we had our card and our first ticket – to Cardiff for the National Museum of Wales – great place.  I don’t need to drive, or worry about where to park, and we don’t need to have the obligatory row as we drive in circles when the satnav fails. It’s a win win cultural feast with extra virtue on the side for taking the train. We’re like a couple of kids in a sweet shop when we go to a good gallery.

Back on the allotment (try to keep up – we get around a bit!) I checked the traps and for the first time this week there were no rats.  A little dig around the compost bin suggests that either they have moved out or there were only ever a couple of them. The heap, which has been topped up to the brim three times since October has now rotted down to about 25% of the initial volume and is ready to be turned into the neighbouring bin. Everything looks very dormant apart from the overwintering vegetables which are all doing well.  The garlic that we started in pots about three weeks ago is doing particularly well and even some red onion sets that we’d given up on have thrown up their first shoots. Suddenly I’m very aware that the chilli seeds need to be sown very soon to give them a long ripening season. Next week we’ll be complaining about having no time!

My friend Rose posted to say that she’d been down to Shapwick Heath to see the murmuration of starlings there on the Somerset levels. Lucky her, we’ve not yet been but I’m sure it was awesome.  We used to see murmurations over Redcliffe Church in Bristol when I was there, but I’d be surprised if that still happens now.  We did, however, see a robin on the plot today.  We no-diggers are a bit of a waste of time for a hungry robin, but he he may have just turned up for a chat.