For nearly a decade, Nick Bertrand, has been leading a walk on the first day of winter – 1st December – in search of wild plants in flower in Deptford. I first joined one of these urban botany walks two years ago and really enjoyed the plant hunting and sociability.

Last Friday we met as usual by Deptford Station and first climbed up onto the rail platform to explore a rough patch of grass between the platform and a wall. The group of around 13 was of mixed experience – there were some folks new to wild plants as well as some experienced botanists – but there was a healthy level of mixing and chatting. As we found plants we called out the names – usually the Latin ones but tried to remember to call the common names too – and Nick kept an ongoing list. It was more or less as we descended from the platform that it started snowing, but that didn’t last too long. I was pleased though that I had seven layers on even if it did make kneeling down to look at small plants a challenge.

It’s inevitable on walks like these that botanists collect some samples as we go along so we can look more closely at them for identification purposes. We’d only do this if there was more than one flower stalk. This time, one of the plant hunters turned these into an urban botany bouquet.

Over lunch in a good caff, Nick told us we were up to 60 plants in flower, and then by the time dusk started to fall it was 83. Not bad compared with the 85 we had last year. Highlights for me were the Sand Lucerne with its amazing swirling pods, Kangaroo-apple (a leaf rosette rather than a flower) and Finger-grass which I hadn’t seen on a pavement before.

With the sprinkling of snow and a mince pie in my hand back at the Creekside Trust Centre where Nick works, it felt like winter had really begun.