With the long & loud hurray from a second hand cheapskate I welcomed the arrival of the 1984 book 'Wild plants of Utrecht'. It's old and the data it uses is as much as five years older but it suits my needs perfectly. Not only does it give good descriptions and drawings of 119 common wild plants in the Province (the City of Utrecht names the much larger province of Utrecht) it also has an extensive section on the geological past of the province with explanations on how this effects plant communities. #psychogeophysics
The above four images show how the plant data was collected. The 1st image shows a grid section of one square kilometre. The 2nd and 3rd image show the route and the location of plants and vegetation. The 4th image shows the presence of one plant per grid section for the entire province. It's a good reminder how things were done before locative media, virtual augmentation reality avant la lettre. A section took two and a half days to map and you can imagine how this works very well to get a deep sense of the place. #psychogeography
It's interesting to speculate about the meaning of "wild" in "wild plants". For example the "weegbree" (plantago, plantain) is so much a plant of the city that one could doubt if it's not a tame culture follower. Just like the ducks that eat your bread, cloud these still be considered "wild". Great find, interesting book!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenBTW: I ordered "Scarp" by Nick Papadimitriou, I can't wait, the samples are promising:
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/New-Voices-Scarp
That book looks astonishing. It always intrigues me that highly detailed records of discreet facts seem to take on a visionary quality.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenNickP