There’s a scrappy little Virginia creeper growing from the crevice below the right rear heel of the giant prairie dog (click on image to view).
I stumbled into urban botany by way of Lucy Corrander’s Street Plant posts (my favorite is this one). I’ve done a few too -- about dandelions and other plants taking back the streets -- so-called weeds. But I’ve mostly ignored our urban flora. Yet every time I read about Lucy’s street plants, I think it would be neat to look at our own. So finally I did.I often bike through downtown Laramie, but totally ignore the plants of cracks and crevices. So I wasn’t sure I would find many suitable subjects. I needn’t have worried. We have tough and tenacious plants, and our streets are not that well kept. In fact, I had to narrow my focus. I decided to limit myself to plants in artistic habitats.
Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus inserta, is well-established at the base of a telephone pole.
Syl Arena wrote recently about the therapeutic value of Instagram, the popular online mobile photo-sharing service with distinctive Instamatic-like square images:“Most of us, who are serious about creating great images, remember a time when making photographs was fun, spontaneous, and easy. Yet, we get all tangled up and photography becomes a stressor rather than a release. ... Now, I reach for my iPhone and take that snap. I try to do this at least once a day–stop my life for a moment and make a photo for the joy of making the photo. ... I find it’s a convenient way to stay connected to the playfulness that brought me into photography way back when.” Syl Arena in My New Photo TherapistIt sounded appealing -- liberating as well as playful -- so I instagrammed the urban plants. Actually, I used the square photo setting on my iPad mini, but the experience was the same. Limited to square photos, with no viewfinder and often bright sunlight, I wasn’t able to obsess over composition. Pretty soon I was “connected to playfulness”.
Prairie Dog Town, by Jeff Hubbell and Lindsay Olson.
Among the most common street plants in Laramie is cheatgrass, Bromus tectorum.Cheatgrass habitat -- a crevice below the Snowy Range.
Close by I found more cheatgrass with dandelions and kochia (left to right).
Occasionally I strayed from the Instagram format for habitat shots. From Escape by Meghan Meier.
Kochia with a bit of dock.
Kochia, or summer cypress, is really common in downtown Laramie ... and most other parts of town. It came to the USA from Eurasia and is one of our tumbleweed species. We city-dwellers think it’s a weed. But it’s very good browse for livestock and wildlife, and after I learned that the seeds are high in protein and great feed for birds, I didn’t feel so bad about all the kochia in my yard. The seeds also have medicinal potential (for humans). The NRCS has put together an excellent Plant Guide for kochia (PDF). Kochia is Kochia scoparia to some and Bassia scoparia to others. It’s a member of the amaranth family.Here’s a much more robust dock plant, Rumex crispus. Plants at the base of phone poles seem to do well. The fence is here because the optical shop burned several months ago and it’s still being repaired.No Parking, with white yarrow and hollyhock.
Mr. Peanut is ...
... watering the tansies!
Much of Mr. Peanut's garden is in hollyhocks, both real and imaginary, with a healthy population of insects. This is Hollyhock Haven by Travis Rhett Ivey.Foxtail, wild aster and yet more kochia, with fallen sign.
... a cottontail popped out of the vegetation (see him?).Saltgrass, Distichlis spicata.
Saltgrass habitat: We Built the Dream by Talal Cockar.
The Laramie Mural Project is a collaboration involving the University of Wyoming Art Museum, local artists and downtown business owners. A brochure is available at the downtown Tourism Office. On the Project website, you can take an “audio tour” narrated by the artists (click on “Mural Tour”).