August Treasures

or what you can find on an ordinary city walk

I live in a city with quite a lot of green spaces, but I still keep being surprised about all that I find on random walks through town. From wild bushes of sea buckthorn, the “lemon of the north”, over abandoned wetlands and ornithological paradises, to railways abundantly graced by blackberry-hedges.

Just recently, I discovered an area of deserted meadows, well-hid from the nearby busy streets and railways through hedges and trees surrounding it. For most of the year, these meadows are slightly flooded due to their altitude at almost-sea-level, which means that the groundwater is always near the earth’s surface. When the rains start to come in late summer, it gets very difficult to walk the muddy ground. But even if the meadow is not flooded, you can easily tell that this is a rather wet site. It just needs a little botanical knowledge, for the plants growing there, such as the common reed (Phragmites australis) and the meadow soft grass (Holcus lanatus), are indicators of wetlands.

On blackberries…

I was lucky to stumble upon this place in August, following a dry spring and summer period. The blackberry bushes that formed a natural barrier to the bordering railway-station were heavy with ripe berries. In less than an hour, I collected one kilo of these delicious berries. If you can’t consume as much as you collect over the following days, freezing some of the berries is a simple solution which lets you enjoy them even when they are out of season. As an alternative, you can make some delicious jam from them. 

… and other little miracles

Another fascinating thing I found in this place was the abundance of insects there. So many ladybugs were crawling over the plants on this meadow! If you detect many ladybugs in one place, you can be almost certain that you’ll find aphids somewhere nearby, too. When an aphid-population develops well in an ecosystem, ladybug-populations will follow quickly as well, since aphids are the ladybug’s favourite meal. In this way, nature takes care of maintaining a balance of natural life in it.

In the same way, a plant population will maintain its balance by letting many different species grow in one place. These different species help and complement each other, so that stability is given to the ecosystem. For example, if a drought hits a meadow, there will still be certain plants that have deeper roots and will be able to grow even under such conditions. This balance through biodiversity was well illustrated on “my” meadow by the different species growing there. Along with the grass (there are always plenty of different grass species growing on a lawn!), a number of legumes were growing on the meadow. Legumes are plants of the family of Fabaceae which have the unique ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. They do this with the help of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. For that reason, they are essential for any ecosystem, since other plants depend on the nitrogen they provide to the soil. In this way, nature creates a perfect balance whenever we let it do its magic – there is always intention in nature!

Some legumes I found on this meadow were the white clover (Trifolium repens), the red clover (Trifolium pratense), the bird vetch (Vicia cracca) and the bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).

What can help such abundance?

Sadly, the next time I came to pick some blackberries there, the meadow was mown. The mowing had not only cut down a colourful sight of plants of all kinds, but also carried away a home and source of food for the many insects living there – ladybugs, aphids, bees, bumblebees, and many others. This shows how important it is to let lawns and meadows grow for as long as possible so that animals and plants could flourish in them. This is ever more important considering the alarming decline in biodiversity we are experiencing at the moment!

Find some treasures for yourself

If you are searching for such treasure-places around your area, there are websites listing spots in which wild sources of food can be found in the city, from fruit trees and bushes to herbs and nut trees. Check out some of the following links, depending on where you live:

http://mundraub.org/ – mainly Germany and Europe

http://fallingfruit.org/ – a similar concept from the USA

https://na-ovoce.cz/web/ – a map for the Czech Republic and Slovakia mainly