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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how overlooked forms of urban nature—such as weeds, moss and wildflowers in cracks—become anchors of memory and narrative. By tracing stories around these micro landscapes, we can explore how the ordinary green disrupts and reshapes urban belonging.

Paper long abstract

Urban nature often hides in plain sight: weeds growing through sidewalks, ivy climbing neglected walls or moss softening stone. These modest presences may seem peripheral, yet they hold narrative and mnemonic power, shaping how people relate to the city. This paper explores how everyday encounters with such micro landscapes generate stories that bridge the human and the nonhuman in urban environments. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and personal accounts, I show how weeds and other overlooked plants become markers of resilience, nostalgia, or transformation—reminders of childhood landscapes, signs of ecological change or emblems of persistence against concrete order. These stories complicate the view of cities as purely human-made spaces, instead revealing urban life as co-constituted by natural presences both cultivated and uninvited. By attending to how people speak about plants in cracks and corners, I argue that urban folklore is deeply entangled with ecological perception and affective experience. Weeds, often dismissed as nuisances, act as storytellers in their own right, rooting memory, emotion and place in the crevices of the city. This perspective not only broadens our understanding of narrative ecologies but also highlights how small, unremarkable forms of nature sustain urban imaginations and attachments.