Fireweed
This project began as a desire to record wild flowers growing surreptitiously on the Golden Lane Estate, EC1. It developed into a project to record and map wild flora growing in the City of London.
The installation includes seeds, pressed flowers, identification of plants, map.
Research for installation: wild flower pressings made for archive with advice from botanist, Mark Spencer and assistant biologist Liz Jellinek, of the Natural History Museum. Flower collection made with Liz Davies and Susanna Jacobs. Wild London flora blog: http://wildlondonflora.blogspot.co.uk/
Exhibited 2010: Fireweed, Exhibit Golden Lane, EC1 http://www.exhibit-goldenlane.com/gallery/?tag=clare-gerrard
With photos by Kathryn Faulkner and Fred Scott
Fireweed
This project began as a desire to record wild flowers growing surreptitiously on the Golden Lane Estate, EC1. It developed into a project to record and map wild flora growing in the City of London.
The installation includes seeds, pressed flowers, identification of plants, map.
Research for installation: wild flower pressings made for archive with advice from botanist, Mark Spencer and assistant biologist Liz Jellinek, of the Natural History Museum. Flower collection made with Liz Davies and Susanna Jacobs. Wild London flora blog: http://wildlondonflora.blogspot.co.uk/
Exhibited 2010: Fireweed, Exhibit Golden Lane, EC1 http://www.exhibit-goldenlane.com/gallery/?tag=clare-gerrard
With photos by Kathryn Faulkner and Fred Scott
In the late 1940s and 1950s the site of the Golden Lane Estate was a bombsite and a wilderness. Fireweed, otherwise known as Rosebay Willowherb/ Chamerion angustifolium, grew everywhere. It is a flower that grows easily on earth that has been burnt.
In the 1960s the Golden Lane Estate was built. Beautiful, much needed new homes were built but the paving slabs covered the open spaces and the wilderness was gone.
Fireweed at Exhibit, Golden Lane Estate, EC1
Today, wild and self-seeded flowers grow up between the cracks in the paving slabs.
In the City, nature flourishes in abandoned corners…
…and beside derelict buildings, sites waiting to be developed…
and on the old City walls
and on the old City walls
The micro landscape of the City is in constant flux, changing with the season, the changing climate, with the increasing numbers of imported non-native plants…
…and as sites are disturbed and buried seeds uncovered.
The botanists at the Natural history Museum plan to update their 1960s record of flora in the City.
We collected samples and learnt about pressing.
Starting a new archive in 2010
Seeds and seed heads from various sites
Seeds and seed heads from various sites
Wild City map
Seeds & plants from the Square Mile, 2010
Wild City map
Seeds & plants from the Square Mile, 2010
