Flore Des Friches Urbaines

A reasoned catalogue of wild grasses: a new, expanded edition of the reference flora, the result of 20 years of studies and floristic surveys on a multitude of urban wastelands, allowing us, through 600 photographs and 800 original drawings, to recognise and name some 300 silent plants that we come across every day.
A methodical herbarium of wastelands that constitutes a true guide to biodiversity, beautiful and entertaining, accessible and rigorous.
This flora exposes the biodiversity of urban wastelands. It documents the landscapes and vegetation; it invites you to recognise and name the 299 most common plants that they shelter; it can act as a game; it leads to a new universe of meaning and knowledge.
The wastelands are a world, a refuge. They provide a home for a prodigious diversity of plant and animal species in an urban environment. Disused post-industrial areas, abandoned orchards, abandoned land along railways or waterways are spaces of sensory experience of an unknown intensity. Jumping over the barriers that separate them, the stroller and the reader plunge into a generous, exuberant, feverish nature. The city is nothing more than a rumour, a background noise.

“This book is for all those who, sitting in the train, let their gaze wander over the plants hanging on the old ballast. To those who, sitting on the back seat of the car, notice from the corner of their eye the greenery of the wastelands. […]
Thanks to botanist Audrey Muratet, photographer Myr Muratet and illustrator Marie Pellaton, this compilation explains the mechanisms of survival, and even prosperity of plants, in these environments that are thought to be inhospitable. The book is the first flora devoted to them, and the only one of its kind. […] A methodical, systematic, scientific and yet poetic work. Sibylle Vincendon, Libération New and expanded edition of the book published by Xavier Barral in 2017.