Pioneer plants arrive in nowhere – out of nowhere. Like a miracle. Like the miracle of life.
I dare say that they are a perfect synthesis of life – of the victory of life over death.
Veronica Gugnali taught me what pioneer plants are.
Veronica also led our walk in the historic center to discover all the plant life that lives in the walls of Castel Sismondo – inaugural event of ALTISSIME VOCI – Music Festival between Earth and Sky.
There are many and they are different, the pioneers. They are capable of surprising you, because they are unexpected and unpredictable.
A concentration of poetry in the heart of a city street, which would continue to be one of the many city streets and which instead becomes, thanks to them, like a widespread oasis of plant biodiversity, with all that this presence entails in terms of animal life, I am thinking above all of insects and birds.
I have been keeping an eye on the traffic islands in the main arteries of the city for some time: only in the last few days have I seen goldfinches and white wagtails, birds of a beauty that I would define as magical and that goes unnoticed by those who do not grasp the treasure of wild nature that lies within those small scraps of urban greenery that cyclically suffer indiscriminate and senseless mowing.
In via Matteotti for example, in addition to the mallow blooming, there are curbs where life has blossomed from nothing. In fact, for months – after the felling of the pine trees, and after all the mixing of roots done this winter – there was nothing left inside those curbs, everything seemed dead, it seemed like nothingness.
Then at a certain point, out of nowhere, they arrived, the pioneers. Beautiful, she lives in joyful freedom.
“Why not at least spare them?” I asked the workers, who were mowing this afternoon. Why not put a nice sign in front of that curb instead, saying: “island of biodiversity”? Stop depriving ourselves of poetry, no more senseless gestures! Let’s look, listen and value the wild nature inside the city! The time is ripe to change mentality!
The fact is that the very kind worker, given my insistence, took a photo of the courtyard and promised me he would send it to his boss, asking to be able to save it.
When I returned, a few hours later, the pioneers were still there.
But who knows until when.
CHAPTER 2:
JUNE 18 MORNING
THE PIONEER PLANTS OF VIA MATTEOTTI HAVE BEEN EXTERMINATED:
THEY USED HEAVY ARTILLERY FOR THEM.
Yesterday in the early afternoon the Anthea worker had done me the favor of taking a photo and sending it to his boss, asking to spare from mowing at least the beautiful pioneer plants that had grown in the void of a curb where in December they cut down a pine tree and mixed it all up. the earth and the roots.
After a few hours I went back and found them all still there. This morning at 7am yellow flowers had bloomed that weren’t there yesterday. It was a marvel.
But at 7.15 the heavy artillery arrived: I just had time to take a few last photos, and to move the bees – there were many of them around the reseda, they would have cut them off too, I made them fly away.
“I can’t not cut, my boss says it’s bad, we have to cut everything, I can’t do anything other than take a photo and send it!” the worker with whom I had spoken for a long time yesterday shouted at me.
Anthea decides that pioneers are ugly and should be cut.
And to think that Carlotta Frenquelluci, Sole Director of Anthea, spoke of a “mission” linked to sustainability at the presentation of Rimini’s new green plan.
So I ask myself:
What is sustainable in such “care” of urban greenery?
And above all: is this a cure?
Arianna Lanci
Press
