Lei culture, plant culture, in Hawaii and Germany

Sorry so silent! I’ve been busy arranging flowers in Honolulu, Beacon (where another Urban Plant Researcher recently wed!) and the German countryside, sometimes into bouquets and more often into lei.

Mahalo to the Hui Hana Lei Ladies who taught me to make haku lei in my last month in Hawaii. If you’re on Oahu, please visit their annual lei-making class this Thursday. I just posted about my experience making lei with the lei ladies, and more about their class, here on my other blog, Local Color.

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The Giant Thistle of Neuruppin, Germany

Looking down into the vacant lot from the roof of the relative we were visiting in Neuruppin, we were all amazed to spot a breathtakingly enormous thistle plant towering in one corner. After doing some research, we decided it could be a Scotch thistle.

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Pappenheim, Germany: Martin meets wallflowers

Our friend Martin Hill is a Lichtenberg native, so we were glad he came out to our urban plants discussion at the Lichtenberg Studios last month with his wife Steffi. Over the weekend, they sent in their first contribution to the project: a small plant growing out of a crack in an ancient stone wall in the small Bavarian town of Pappenheim. It looks like an ivy-leaved toadflax, aka Kenilworth ivy, to me — Zimbelkraut or Zimbel-Mauerkraut in German — which often makes its home in stony gaps and cracks.

Photograph courtesy of Martin Hill.

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Lichtenberg: Village plant research

Spent the weekend in a village in the countryside. No urban plants there, but lots of plants in general, summer weather, birds and bugs…

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Germany: the fate of Christmas trees in January

What’s this? Could it really be a polar bear getting ready to eat a discarded Christmas tree? Indeed, our friend and faithful Urban Plants reader Phyllis alerted us to a strange and amazing January urban plant tradition that takes place each year in zoos all around Germany.

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Lichtenberg: Fallen fruit, or rather, walnuts

From the neighbor’s tree.

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Cologne: plants-only balconies

Visiting Cologne yesterday, I spotted a wonderful modernist building near Barbarossaplatz that was surrounded by little balconies just for plants! The balconies appear to be too narrow for people to use, more like catwalks, and are well stocked by the residents with geraniums, potted trees and other thriving plants.

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Call for Artists: Art on an Urban Island

Hello, urban plant detectives! We are coming out of our long hiatus to pass along an intriguting Call for Artists that we received from Laura Raber of the annual MS Dockville summer festival, which is held on an urban island in Hamburg.

Now in its fifth year, the festival will cover two months of events, plus an ARTCAMP, an open-air / open process exhibition. ARTCAMP is seeking proposals from artists of all disciplines, emerging and established.

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Ailanthus-stories: Reader photos from Karlsruhe, Germany

We recently received correspondence from Maz, one of our readers in Germany, who sent us photographs of ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven. He had previously commented on Leslie’s post about the infamous tree, excitedly mentioning that it was his favorite tree and that he had written an article on it a few years ago for his university magazine!

He commented, “Somehow it always reminds me that it doesn’t matter how bad we treat the environment, there are always plants and animals which can deal with that and will even survive mankind.” But he added: “Still I think treating the environment in a good way is the better option.”

I love this photograph above, with the tree of heaven sapling looking so happily squished into its tiny nook. As I wrote in my followup post to Leslie’s, this tree almost seems to prefer growing out of the most restrictive spaces.

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