Of city skips and syringes

Springtime! And now is the time to be in the inner city to greet this most domestic of seasons (writes our urban naturalist, Bin Liner).

Many a rubbish skip has lain in our streets through the winter, waiting for this moment. Those abandoned mattresses and rotting pieces of cardboard may just seem like abandoned mattresses and rotting pieces of cardboard to the untrained eye, but the urban naturalist will see a rich seedbed in them as they become watered with the rain and fed with old McDonald's wrappers.

Already, in the odd skip, you may see the first sycamore seedlings and the first sprouts of the giant hogweed, that most pleasingly poisonous of our urban flora. So don't pass any skip without looking in at the plant life in these little Noah's arks.

The first birds of passage are now to be seen in our city streets, too. Foremost among them is the Saturday Review bird, which nests in the back pages of weekend newspaper supplements under such headings as ``Rare gosprey spotted in Lincolnshire" or ``Crowds gather with binoculars to embarrass pair of purple peregrines breeding on Plynlimmon". Such birds will never be found in Lincolnshire or on Plynlimon, of course, only in the supplements of the weekend papers, hence their names.

They are quite closely related to the crossword puzzle bird, a three- letter bird like roc, which is also found only in newspapers; it nests in small crevices in crossword puzzles which can provide homes for nothing else.

In the weeks following thelocal elections, our urban landscape is brightened by the vivid orange flashes of the Lib Dem poster. This distinctive orange bloom on a 6ft high stem, often offering a simple message such as VOTE LIB DEM, seems to last much longer than the blue Tory and red Labour placards; though the observant naturalist may have noticed this year that there were very few blue placards even before the elections. Like many things in nature, these coloured placards seem to have no function and certainly achieve no perceptible purpose, and are perhaps there just to brighten the lives of their temporary owners.

One recent immigrant to our shores is often seen in this bright and cheery weather, and that is the set of birthday balloons, usually seen bobbing from a pole outside a private house. Ten years ago these were unknown; now they are seen outside almost any urban house where there's a birthday party going on inside.

The purpose of them is not known, as presumably anyone going to the party knows where it is, but it certainly gives gatecrashers a good clue. Like all colourful but essentially useless imports, it probably comes from the United States.

A less welcome urban visitor, which is also thought to have come from the US, is the wild syringe, which can often be seen glinting dangerously in the undergrowth. It looks interesting, harmless even, but should be avoided at all costs, as its defence system is almost perfect and its sting can be lethal. There cannot be many wild objects which, with one sting, can give you Aids, blood poisoning, a nasty jab and a small dose of heroin all at once.

Much more friendly is the aptly named fool's coriander, a frond-like plant which can be found growing on wasteland almost everywhere. It is so called because of its resemblance to dill, coriander, French parsley, basil and all those other herbs which are found so plentifully and expensively in your local Asian corner shop. Fool's coriander does not taste of anything and is no use at all in cooking. Still, at least it is not fattening, so it may well catch on in vegetarian cooking.

Perhaps the most glorious sight of recent weeks has been the outburst of VE Day bunting, that splendid red, white and blue climbing plant which appears spontaneously every 50 years or so on all schools, shops, banks, garages and Royal palaces where it hangs, getting tattier and tattier until it finally fades away. Nobody has ever discovered where it goes to during its 49 years and 11 months of hibernation, or indeed how it knows the exact date to come out again.

Finally, this is the beginning of the new tourist season, so watch out for sightings of fool's change. This is a sudden proliferation of small, round metal objects in the street, all looking like 10p or 50p pieces, but all turning out on inspection to be Japanese small change or French phone tokens.

Urban naturalist Bin Liner will be back again soon with more city nature notes.