I’ve been working up to the inevitable London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) post for some time but this, you may be pleased to know, is not it. Instead I’d like to compare notes on one of it’s parents, the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis). Two examples of these relatives of the acerifolia (Maple-leaved) tree inhabit Brunswick […]
In the eastern United States, the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) is known as the Ghetto Palm. It’s a name I like, at once descriptive and ironic – I love the effortless way Americans do that with language… Since I wrote about the ToH a couple of weeks ago, I have started photographing them where […]
In an imagined summer of 1946 as war-weary Londoners began to repair their bombed and broken city, Buddleia’s (Buddleja davidii) striking purple flower spikes were a common sight among the jagged ruins of former buildings and streets. Since the darkest nights of the Blitz this pioneering plant had quickly colonised the newly created acres of […]
London Open House is a much anticipated annual opportunity for the nosey, the obsessive and the interested to experience good quality buildings. Every year I make notes to self that I will book a look at the Foreign Office or snoop round a City bank vault, but every year I leave it too late. This […]
That tenacious suckerer, the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) has been at it all over London. Since my last post on the Tree of Heaven, I have been seeing them everywhere. They are invasive and potentially damaging, but they appear to be tolerated, even encouraged by Londoners. It’s not just in the privacy of domestic […]