US social scientist Kenneth Boulding : ‘If you believe exponential growth can go on in a finite world, you are either a madman or an economist’.

Saturday 17 July 2010

17/7/10: Southwark's London Bridge back streets

After today's LNHS meeting, I walked from Liverpool Street station to London Bridge, then botanised some of Southwark's back streets hereabouts.

Species on a vacant lot on Newcomen St., opposite Kipling St., included three dead Papaver rhoeas, several young Verbascum - and one in flower, identified as thapsus - Black Horehound, Prickly Lettuce, Buddleia, Great Willowherb, Black Medick and a Tree of Heaven sapling.

Guy Street Park (Guy Street/Weston Street junction) plants included Pellitory-of-the-Wall, Yarrow, Ribwort Plantain, several Buck's-horn Plantain, Common Mallow, Dwarf Mallow, White Clover, White Bryony and Lesser Swine Cress. Adult Rosemary Beetles were on planted Rosemary in a shrub bed.

Those in Leathermarket gardens, a little further down the road, included some of the above, plus 5 Common Stork's-bill, Bristly Ox-tongue, Common Cat's-ear, Pineapple Mayweed, 2 Ox-eye Daisies, Field Bindweed, Mugwort, Knotted Hedge Parsley and Annual Mercury.

There were several Black Nighshade in Tanner Street park, and several Tree of Heaven seedlings.

On Morocco Street were several Shaggy Soldier in the crack between the foot of the wall of newish flats and the pavement, along with the following :-

Eleven Wall Lettuce (above) in a squalid space between buildings

This Nicotiana likewise (garden escape)

This Tomato plant in the street gutter

And this Tagetes (marigold) seedling, also in the crack between the foot of the wall of newish flats and the pavement

A vacant lot car park on St. Thomas St, between Snowsfields and Fenning St, by London Bridge station, yielded the fruiting Deadly Nightshade pictured above, and a small Common Fleabane (which doesn't seem at all common in London) just about in flower - in both cases these were only my second records for the capital. Also Woody Nightshade, 3 Tree of Heaven saplings, Herb Robert and Hoary Willowherb.

The growing Shard looms over London Bridge and its plants.

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