Shush! I’m almost embarrassed to admit it but, as an urban botanist in learning, the smaller numbers of weeds in flower this month is welcome. It gives me some time to take my relationship with some of our most common London weeds to the next level. Total standing-on-my-head with-my-eyes-closed familiarity is my ambition. I’m only […]

Last week it became clear that our dozy prime minister doesn’t understand the concept of ‘local’. But then what does local mean if you live in a city? An urban development organisation based in Germany promote the idea of “the five minute city” in which everything a person needs in their daily life can be […]

The parks, green spaces and streets of south east London become instantly full whenever the winter sun emerges as it has this morning. I find myself idly wondering what London would look like if everyone who lived here came outside at the same time. And it makes me feel a bit faint. I’m trying to […]

The Thames is sketched in greyscale this morning. At Blackfriars Bridge, the low-tide rocks and gunge whiff of hydrogen sulphide and even the fairground paint of Southwark Bridge is muted. Despite the gloomy prospect I’m on a mission to find colour. Today, the first one of the year, is special for botanists. All over the […]

We’re proud of ourselves setting off in the tail-end of Storm Bella, and in very little time we are soaked but jogging just fast enough to keep warm. It’s crunchy under foot again, not from leaves this time but all the lichen daubed twigs decorating the pavements. On our way back we cut through the […]

I really do love trees but seeing that the forecast for Thursday was spectacularly good on the coast, the thought of seeing some colour was more than I could resist. Following the advice from a friendly Sussex botanist I set off east from Brighton pier and tracked the top of the chalk cliffs as far […]

The landscape of Kipling’s “whale-backed” South Downs causes mixed emotions. On the one hand there’s the relief of rolling green hills after weeks of walking the London suburbs. On the other hand, the vast featureless flinty fields are a depressing reminder of the desperate and precarious state of British farming. A state that’s likely to […]

I’ve been distracting myself from short gloomy days with trees. Today I go back to visit my favourite tree in Gipsy Hill, this Foxglove-tree, Paulownia tormentosa. Why do I care about this tree? Well, it’s next to an Indian Bean Tree, Catalpa bignonioides, and both the London Tree Map (https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green-spaces-and-biodiversity/trees-and-woodlands/london-tree-map) and the Tree Talk map […]