When I walk across the Wakefield Avenue Bridge, high above the Bronx River, the Metro-North Railroad tracks and a long-abandoned patch of woods, I always stop to marvel. Fifty feet from the ground, the skeleton of a child’s bicycle hangs, its frame embedded deep in the tree trunk. Once upon a time, some little boy left his bike in the weeds and a seedling tree on its way skyward simply absorbed it. There’s a technical name for this: edaphoecotropism. It turns out the omnivorous tree beneath the Wakefield Bridge is not alone. A website devoted to “Trees Eating Things” – road signs mostly, but junked cars and even a rifle – serves a “community” of people who celebrate this diet.

New York, like most cities, is built on the remnants of its past. Sometimes these are rescued and celebrated. The Museum of the City of New York is exhibiting 16 murals that once enlivened the children’s ward of Lower Manhattan’s Gouverneur Hospital. Abram Champanier (1896-1960) scored a Works Progress Administration grant in 1938 to paint a fantasy in which Alice and her numerous acquaintances from Wonderland visit New York. They have their own Virgil, named Fabzio, who shows them the town by steamer, subway and airplane. They swarm Coney........

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