To follow Boris Presseq on his walks around town, sometimes with your nose in the air, sometimes with your eyes glued to the ground, it is better to walk slowly. For several years, this botanist from the Natural History Museum of Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) has been striving to raise awareness of the richness of wild flora in urban areas. On roofs, at the foot of a gutter or a wall, at the corner of a cornice or in an abandoned planter, his trained eye spots the slightest growth.
Names in chalk on the sidewalk
And if, during his wanderings, a rare or unusual plant catches his attention, he writes its name in chalk on the sidewalk, to attract the attention of passers-by. Nothing escapes him, neither the little fig tree growing on rue Cujas, nor the asarine lying down, a mountain plant which has strangely taken up residence on a wall, between numbers 32 and 34 rue Gambetta.
Fascinating, Boris Presseq's botanical walks highlight little-known varieties, wrongly considered invasive plants or unfairly relegated to the rank of “weeds”. We often encounter Judas parietaria there, nicknamed wall spinach or glazier's grass, remarkable for its nutritional and healing properties.
Very poetic, these city explorations also reveal the presence of the navel of Venus, recognizable by its rounded leaves delicately hollowed out in the center and succulent in salads, or even the Canadian fleabane, powerful in taste and diuretic. The streets of Toulouse that Boris Presseq walks are also the territory of the shaggy cardamine, the dandelion leaf crepid or the wall cymbalaria. A perennial plant with purple or white flowers, it is fond of rock gardens and the coatings of old monuments, hence its vernacular name of ruine-de-Rome. Like its neighbors, this “small inhabitant of walls and sidewalks” takes advantage of the slightest gap, the slightest crack or crevice to survive, swarm and ensure its descendants, explains the naturalist, admiring “the capacity for adaptation and resilience” of this wild flora.
Solicited by both municipal structures and associations, Boris Presseq operates all year round in the four corners of the city. Its next outings are planned for April 19, in the Chalets district with a departure at 5:30 p.m. from Place de la Concorde and on April 23, at 5:30 p.m., in Saint-Cyprien, from Quai Viguerie. Another date, June 8, as part of the Museum's programming. On this occasion, the botanist will explore the Terre-Cabade cemetery in duo with the Toulouse photographer Guillaume Rivière.