On Saturday 2 September 2017 Roy Vickery will be leading a short, c. 45 minute, stroll around St Leonard’s churchyard, Streatham, London, SW16, as part of the South London Botanical Institute’s contribution to the Lambeth Heritage Festival.  The Institute has been recording plants in the churchyard since 2008; Roy will introduce some of these plants and discuss some of their former uses.  Meet beneath the clock-tower at the church entrance at 11.30 a.m. All welcome; no charge.  Join us when you can and stay for as long as you want.

Report: About 18 people spent about 40 minutes examining plants in the churchyard and discussing some of their uses.  Appropriately for a churchyard we started off looking at a yew (Taxus baccata) tree, about which Roy said a great deal of nonsense has been written, some of it associating the tree with the Druids, about whom next to nothing is known.  Other plants seen and discussed included common mallow (Malva sylvestris), and, inevitably, nettle (Urtica dioica) and elder (Sambucus nigra).

Photo © Carlos Bruzon.