London is in bloom. Nature, in fact, is being a real flirt right now and, more importantly, lockdown has given us ample chance to notice its charms.
On my road alone, a North American honey locust, a lime and a plane tree (expert at shedding its bark and thereby flaking off pollutants absorbed from the city air) are among my nearest and dearest neighbours putting on a display.
This was all news to me until I discovered Tree Talk, an exhaustive but easy-to-use website with which to discover more about the flora in your borough.
Every London tree, from Barnet to Croydon, has been mapped — enter your postcode, and the site will map out a guided nature walk through your area, letting you know what trees are there, how rare they are, and their genealogy (no family tree jokes, please). Branch out at treetalk.co.uk
You may also need a hand identifying your common-or-garden wallflowers. Obviously, there’s an app for that — indeed there are several. PlantSnap, which works a little like Shazam for plants, uses photo-recognition software to identify any plant you may wish to learn more about (up to 25 a day on the free version), from alliums to zinnias (along with information on biology and morphology).
Leafsnap, developed by the Smithsonian Institution and Columbia University, also has an excellent strike rate at identifying species in the UK. PlantSnap tried manfully to convince me that a friend lying on a strip of Astroturf was a darjeeling banana plant (Musa sikkimensis).
Wannabe naturalists can also turn to OPAL Bugs Count Pocket ID Guide, a useful app from the Natural History Museum with which to identify common groups of insects. You might also enjoy Chirp!, which claims to carry the largest number of British and European bird calls on the app store.
Just don’t be disappointed when you learn that no, it wasn’t a hoopoe, penduline tit or golden oriole you heard on the dawn chorus. It was, as it always is, a pigeon.
