Pavement Plants, Witney

19th July 2026

Anyone parking in Waitrose’s car park in Witney at 9.30am on 19 July might have wondered what we were doing, earnestly peering into the undergrowth.

The answer, of course, is that we were looking for interesting plants growing out of – or near to – the pavement, and the car park was as good a place as any to start. In fact, it turned out to be an excellent place, as very shortly after starting our walk an eagle-eyed member of our group spotted some Little Robin (geranium purpureum), which is a scarce native plant, originally coastal but now moving inland.

We walked slowly in a loop around the town centre, eyes fixed on the ground, causing a minor obstruction in places, while Brenda identified as many as she could, although some of the brown and crispy ones defeated even her.

Many of the plants in Brenda’s list have been introduced, and where possible she has given details of when this occurred, which gives the list a different slant to usual. She also noted down the condition of the plants that we found, which varied from “in flower” to “dead”, hardly surprising given the exceptionally hot dry weather that we have had this summer. Plants that are found growing out of cracks in pavements are pretty tough as a rule, but the weather has been too much for some of them. You can view the list of plants identified on this very interesting walk,with notes on their status, here.

Many thanks to Brenda for leading this walk and for compiling such an informative list.

Sue Morton