Categories: uncategorized
Tags: naturalhistory
Date: 20 November 2006 16:42:16
Autumn drags on longer than almost ever before. No cold weather yet, though we've had a little wind and rain.
Leaves have started falling at last. In the third week of November.
We've had a little autumn colour for a few weeks now. Not much - the London planes tend to just go dull and wizened, and the limes haven't turned yet. Birches mostly went yellow by the 12th November, and some ashes and sycamores Many horse chestnuts have been bronzed since summer but that's supposed to be disease.
Although there was some leaf litter around on the street this morning but there still seemed to be pretty much a full canopy of leaves wherever a few trees are gathered together.
Flowers too - big flushes of annual mercury coming into flower all over the place south of the river, just last week the railway embankments on the DLR near Poplar still had bindweed in flower, and yarrow, some kind of ragwort, a marigold that looked like a garden escape, maybe some Hierarcum, something that looked like ox-eye daisy, maybe some Galansoga
Daisy relatives are hard enough to identify with a lens. Its not easy doing it from a moving train.