On Friday 14 August Roy Vickery will lead a walk  enjoying summer plants in Battersea Rise Cemetery, nearest station Clapham Junction, starting at 11 a.m.  Booking essential, please see http://www.slbi.org.uk/events/ for details.

Report:  Five people, the maximum permitted, joined the leader on a mercifully cool morning in a cemetery which hadn’t been mown, so we had an enjoyable time wandering around and discussing some of the plants, including:

Wild onion, Allium vineale, the flowers of which were replaced by bubils, which we sampled and found to taste surpringly pleasant.

Ash, Fraxinus excelsior, which a participant told us was valued for making making hurling-sticks in Ireland.

Tree-of-heaven, Ailanthus altissima, native to China, cultivated as an ornamental, but suckering and seeding to become invasive.

Image:  tree-of-heaven.