Roy Vickery will be leading a session on Weird Weeds at the Wimbledon Common Nature Club (for 6-14 year-olds) on Wimbledon Common, London, on Sunday 6 August from 10 a.m. – 12 noon.  Meet at the Information Centre, near the Windmill.  There will also be opportunities to learn how to make plant-presses.  All welcome.  Contact: auriel.glanville@btopenworld.com

Report:  A good number of young people and accompanying adults turned up on a bright and sunny morning, and enjoyed a gentle stroll looking at common plants and discussing how they had been used in the past.  Participants were shown how make ‘granny jump out of bed’, by squeezing a flower of  large bindweed (Calystegia silvatica) so that the white corolla (petals) flew off, and one of the adults demonstrated placing a bindweed flower between a finger and thumb and bringing the other hand down sharply against it, so that the flower burst with a bang.  We also experimented with firing the flowers of ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) and making a ‘whistle’ by blowing a privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium) leaf held between the thumbs.