Orwell's poem in the prologue:
There, where the tapering cranes sweep round,
And great wheels turn, and trains roar by
Like strong, low-headed brutes of steel -
There is my world, my home; yet why
So alien still? For I can neither
Dwell in that world, not turn again
to scythe and spade, but only loiter
Among the trees the smoke has slain.
Prologue:
Our attitude towards nature is a strangely contradictory blend of romanticism and gloom. We imagine it to 'belong' in those watercolour landscapes where most of us would also like to live. If we are looking for wildlife we turn automatically towards the official countryside, towards the great set-pieces of forest and moor. If the truth is told, the needs of the natural world are more prosaic than this. A crack in the pavement is all a plant needs to put down roots. An old-fashioned lamp-standard makes as good a nesting box for a tit as any hollow oak. Provided it is not actually contaminated there is scarcely a nook or cranny anywhere which does not provide the right living conditions for some plant or creature. Prologue, page 19
Rosebay willowherb, a common weed found on marginal sites:
...rosebay was still a scarce plant inside the built-up areas, and it was not until the Luftwaffe began ploughing up our city centres that conditions were right for its spread. Suddenly there was a vast wilderness of scorched, devastated laid open to the light for perhaps the first time in centuries. The first summer after the Blitz there were rosebays flowering on over three-quarters of the bombed sites in London, defiant sparks of life amongst the desolation. By the end of the war there was scarcely a single piece of waste ground in the City that was not ablaze in August with their purple flowers. Page 35
Weeds:
...the reason we group together this motley collection of opportunists as weeds is precisely because they dog us in this way, nipping in behind our backs to take advantage of conditions we've created for our own purposes. They are real urbanites - fly, mobile, cosmopolitan, unable to persist in most of the places they are found without the assistance (however unwilling) of man. Page 36
Canadian fleebane mentioned on page 37. Erigeron canadensis, a naturalised weed throughout the UK from north America. Found on typical wasteland.
Bramble seeds found in jam can germinate ? Page 37.
Edgelands and marginal spaces:
...it is in those awkward-shaped parcels of ground - left over like a hem when the surrounding areas have been sewn up - often called 'marginal land'. These seem to be multiplying with the piecemeal extension of built-up areas: a sliver of land left over between two strictly rectangular factories, a disused car dump, the surrounds of an electricity substation. Nothing can be done with these patches. They are too small or misshapen to build on, too expensive to landscape. So they are simply ignored - at least until the bushes start shutting out the light from the machine-shop. For that spell of ten or twenty years they form some of the richest and most unpredictable habitats for wildlife to be found in urban areas. Except for the first year or so of their lives, they are truly natural. The only man-made facility being cashed in on is space. Even the trees are bird-sown natives, unplanned and unpruned. page 43
Canals: Clean austere or messy and wild? (Nature vs culture dichotomy). page 65
More on canals:
Canals are really little more than long, thin ponds, yet they're treated as - and expected to behave like - rivers. And their commercial roots can't be ignored. They must be kept serviceable for the pleasure boats that use them now and the commercial traffic that may one day build up in them again. Pages 67 & 68.
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