The weeds of Whitehall Street, Norwich, England
I am working for five weeks at the University of East Anglia, in my home town of Norwich, England. For the period we are staying in a flat on Whitehall Street in the western sector of the city. My work at the UEA concerns climate change in the world's Mediterranean climate regions. It's May in Norwich and plants, trees and weeds are flowering everywhere and the colors are wonderful. However, I have been looking at the weeds growing on my street. There are many I can see in people's front 'gardens' - really just a meter strip between the houses and the front wall that no one seems to bother to care for. However, I only identified the weeds growing between the front wall and the street. Most of these are growing at the base of the front wall. I ignored obvious garden-escapees. Here is what I have found so far.
Herb Robert - great name - is a lovely little pink flower that is very common in Norwich with good examples on the street.
Pellitory-of-the-wall - another great name and predictably growing at the base of the wall.
Petty Spurge - an interesting weed with medicinal use in dealing with abnormal human cell growth and specifically keratosis, a pre-cancerous skin lesion caused by solar exposure.
Purple toadflax - beautiful color and possibly a garden-escapee but seemingly very common.
Round-leaved Crane's-Bill - with delicate little pink flowers.
Nipplewort - its closed flower buds apparently resemble nipples and its leaves can be eaten if you don't mind the hairs.
Fringed willowherb - introduced here from the Americas or Asia.
Cornsalads - can't be more precise than that but there is a lot of it along the bottoms of the garden walls.
Red Valerian - a garden escapee that apparently likes environments like the base of a wall and disturbed urban environments.
Eggleaf spurge - very pretty this one and just found the one plant so far but maybe the only one flowering and making itself known.
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