Join Project
Urban botanizing in the age of COVID-19Since most of my botanizing these days is while walking the woofer in a heavily urbanized part of Chicago, I thought I would see how many of these urban, sidewalk-phile plants I could observe in 2020. Want to join along? Join The Sidewalk Botanist Scavenger Hunt 2020 project on iNaturalist. If you observe something on the species list, it’ll automatically be added to the project.
Many of the species on the iNaturalist project list can actually be commonly found in urban areas around the world (urban species homogenization is a whole academic subfield!). Some are only found in Europe, others are only found in warmer climates like Texas and southern California. Know a common “sidewalk plant” that’s not on the project list? Leave a comment here.
Here’s a guide that shows a photo, snippet from Wikipedia, and map of observations of the Common Sidewalk Flora of the Chicago Region.
happy botanizing, fellow sidewalk botanists!
—cassi