In a post about the North American Red Oak (Quercus rubra) I wrote in the balmy days of August, I rather flippantly stated that ”… the beauty of this tree in its native New World is surely its fiery autumn colours which in our damper and milder oceanic climate is watered down from a rich […]
Tag: london
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Strawberry trees in Southwark
I was surprised and excited to bump into a row of newly planted Strawberry Trees (Arbutus unedo) in a Southwark street recently. As a child with an interest in native trees, I was fascinated to read about this mysterious tree with a compelling name in my botanical guidebooks. It was described as very rare and […]
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Chequer schnapps update
In my recent post about the Wild Service tree and it’s elusive fruits, I reproduced an English translation of a German recipe for Wild Service vodka, or Chequer schnapps as I now prefer to call it.
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On another Plane
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 […]
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Buddleia – an urban barometer?
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 […]
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Trees of Heaven
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 […]
Not far from Archway tube station, just off the Holloway Road is a street named St. John’s Villas lined with imposing early Victorian houses on one side and a later, more run-of-the-mill terrace on the other. The street is a cut off Holloway Road heading towards Hornsey Road and like many 19th century city streets […]
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Persian Silk in Globe Street
I was transfixed by the charms of a Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) in Southwark today. A most majestic and unusual (for England) street tree, in fact a rarely-planted tree anywhere in the UK, street or otherwise. This is perhaps a cautious test planting to see what happens – the tree has a reputation for […]