Field Study's Man in E11 is still in the wrong garden
I started visiting this allotment 10 years ago and I still don't know the names of most of the plants growing here. There are plants I have been aware of for these 10 years, which I recognize consistently and am familiar with in various ways. Other plants have appeared more recently which I am a lot less familiar with. The environment is dynamic and in a state of flux to some degree and I expect the inhabitants to change.
I think I should and certainly could have identified more plants in a decade of gardening here. I regard my lack of knowledge of the proper names of the flora and fauna here as a personal failing; that it is indicative of superficial involvement despite the relatively long period I've been visiting the site. This year I have been trying to increase and improve my knowledge of the site's flora and fauna. The effort seems to be involving more struggle and difficulty than I imagined, perhaps because I have not engaged in the task with much, if any, discipline.
Botany is the discipline most obviously appropriate to countering my inadequacies and I imagine that field of study requires a person to learn various botanical skills, techniques and processes in order to acquire knowledge and apply it. I have pretended to myself that I can develop a knowledge of the site auto-didactically although this inclination is frustrated by my dilettantism.
It is not just that I want to know the proper names of the plants, but also know them with some confidence so that I would expect others to have confidence in my plant identification skills. The allotment is a shared site, a communal site and there are implications in the identification of plants because with plant names there are associated properties, characteristics and values which will affect various relationships and interactions on site and further afield. There are psychological implications if e.g. trust in a person's abilities has been misplaced.
There are the names of plants determined by international codes and also names (and attributes) that grow out of more local cultures. That variation in nomenclature (as well as in species) generates other ways of engaging with and understanding the environment as in e.g. the epistemological study of a place and its people; how and why their knowledge is created and shared. Names are key to knowledge and the cultures in which they are a part.
Having reached a decade of being on the allotment site, I think there is some truth in the statement that something meaningful can be achieved without much knowledge of the various intricacies of the place. How meaningful and how sad could that statement be?
Last week I noticed a plant (new to me) in one of the raised beds, (Bed 5/Plot A). What is the name of the plant (with the magenta flower) in the photograph below?
I think I should and certainly could have identified more plants in a decade of gardening here. I regard my lack of knowledge of the proper names of the flora and fauna here as a personal failing; that it is indicative of superficial involvement despite the relatively long period I've been visiting the site. This year I have been trying to increase and improve my knowledge of the site's flora and fauna. The effort seems to be involving more struggle and difficulty than I imagined, perhaps because I have not engaged in the task with much, if any, discipline.
Botany is the discipline most obviously appropriate to countering my inadequacies and I imagine that field of study requires a person to learn various botanical skills, techniques and processes in order to acquire knowledge and apply it. I have pretended to myself that I can develop a knowledge of the site auto-didactically although this inclination is frustrated by my dilettantism.
It is not just that I want to know the proper names of the plants, but also know them with some confidence so that I would expect others to have confidence in my plant identification skills. The allotment is a shared site, a communal site and there are implications in the identification of plants because with plant names there are associated properties, characteristics and values which will affect various relationships and interactions on site and further afield. There are psychological implications if e.g. trust in a person's abilities has been misplaced.
There are the names of plants determined by international codes and also names (and attributes) that grow out of more local cultures. That variation in nomenclature (as well as in species) generates other ways of engaging with and understanding the environment as in e.g. the epistemological study of a place and its people; how and why their knowledge is created and shared. Names are key to knowledge and the cultures in which they are a part.
Having reached a decade of being on the allotment site, I think there is some truth in the statement that something meaningful can be achieved without much knowledge of the various intricacies of the place. How meaningful and how sad could that statement be?
Last week I noticed a plant (new to me) in one of the raised beds, (Bed 5/Plot A). What is the name of the plant (with the magenta flower) in the photograph below?
Unidentified Plant 6th September 2013
Site - Chingford, London. 6th September 2013
The plant appeared to consist of a single stem growing to a height c.60cm. The foliage seemed to be arranged in an alternate form (?) with acuminate (?) shaped leaves. The flower (of the plume or panicle?) is c.10cm long - a soft spike. I could not detect much fragrance from the flower.
I have looked through several books and web sites trying to match or recognise the plants they present with the plant I found. The closest I have come (I think) is, Acalypha.
Here in, The Wrong Garden, where no plant can ever be properly identified, only recognised, we lost ourselves briefly in some of the intricacies of the plant in the enriching light of the setting sun.
I have looked through several books and web sites trying to match or recognise the plants they present with the plant I found. The closest I have come (I think) is, Acalypha.
Here in, The Wrong Garden, where no plant can ever be properly identified, only recognised, we lost ourselves briefly in some of the intricacies of the plant in the enriching light of the setting sun.
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