The days are finally getting longer and - although it might not feel like it - spring is definitely around the corner. Tree buds are swelling everywhere and the cherry plum blossom will be out very soon. The pink-flowered purple cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardii') is always the first street tree to flower, but sadly there are few of them left in Herne Hill after so many succumbed to disease and decay in recent years.
The TreeTalk map still shows about two dozen cherry plums in the neighbourhood, but last year we counted only seven in flower: two on Ruskin Walk (at nos. 52 and 81), two on Elfindale Road (1 and 68), two on Burbage Road (at 106 and 8) and one on Beckwith Road (19). Perhaps we should think about planting pink winter-flowering cherries (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’) as a substitute for the cherry plums. There are some lovely specimens blooming in front gardens on Burbage right now.
Yoshino time
Straight after the cherry plums, the next trees in the blossom calendar are the famous Yoshino cherries (Prunus x yedoensis) on Winterbrook Road and Stradella Road. They’re becoming something of a signature tree for Herne Hill, and this year we should have at least 14 more to admire than in 2021. Two Yoshinos were planted last spring on Hollingbourne Road (at 3/5 and 25), two on Stradella (opposite no. 1 and outside no. 50) and one at 28/30 Winterbrook. It will be interesting to see how much of a show these youngsters put on.
There are also nine new Yoshinos waiting to fill the remaining gaps along Winterbrook, all donated by Japanese businesses in the UK under the Sakura Cherry Tree Project. There have been a few changes in the exact planting sites after the contractors ran into sub-surface obstacles, but there are now pits ready at nos. 6,11, 41, 45, 61 and 63 Winterbrook, plus another three opposite the Baptist Church. With the council, we’re trying to identify viable sites for a 10th Yoshino that was part of the same batch.
The Great Elm Revival
Here at Herne Hill Tree Watch we’re very keen on bringing elm trees back to Herne Hill after the ravages of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s. Magnificent English elms (Ulmus procera) and Wych elms (Ulmus glabra) had been a feature of the British landscape for hundreds of years, but now only pockets remain. They thrived in city streets and parks too, and in December we wrote about the towering elm which once stood at 50 Half Moon Lane and which probably gave its name to Elmwood Road.
In recent years a big international research effort has been underway to develop disease-resistant elms, and one of these - an American hybrid called Ulmus ‘Rebona’ - is our newest tree in the neighbourhood. We’d been hoping it could be planted at the crossroads between Half Moon Lane, Village Way, Beckwith Road and Elmwood, but the pavements there were either too narrow or had too many cables and pipes underground.
Instead, and very appropriately, it now stands in a lawn outside the Elmwood Road flats, just behind the privet hedge that runs from the Dial-a-Curry takeaway up to the junction. As the photo shows, it’s dwarfed now by two big sycamores, but you can still make out the very upright, symmetrical silhouette of the elm. It’s tolerant of heat, wind and flooding, which should make it resilient to climate change.
In fact the Rebona isn’t the first modern elm in the grounds of the Elmwood flats. Just around the corner, between the council noticeboard and the brick gatepost, you’ll see an Ulmus 'Sapporo Autumn Gold', a cross between Japanese and Siberian elms that was first cloned about 40 years ago. It’s now a decent-sized tree with a neat conical form.
Not far away on Half Moon Lane, on the pavement at the front of the Baptist Church, stands another elm, this time an Ulmus carpinifolia, or smooth leaved-elm. This is a species that’s been around for centuries in southern England, not a recent cultivar, but it’s doing extremely well and is tall and shapely. Finally, at the bottom end of Herne Hill, just behind the low brick wall in front of the Pynnersmead flats, is our fourth local elm, another resistant variety called Ulmus americana 'Princeton'.
But we’re not stopping at four. Under our plans for spending the £17,000 we were awarded by Southwark in Cleaner Greener Safer funds we’ve asked the council for three new elms on local estates: one each outside Pynnersmead and the neighbouring Denesmead, which have ample space for large trees, and another on the lawn in front of the Delawyk estate, directly opposite Budgens at the corner of Half Moon Lane and the access road.
Back at the Baptist Church, there’s a spot right next to the smooth-leaved elm which looks ideal for yet another elm: an old tree pit facing the red bench in front of the church. We’ve listed this site with the council and will be pressing for a replacement. And we’d like to see a fifth new elm in the small grassy area outside Sunray Gardens where the telephone box used to stand, just by the pedestrian crossing to Charter School.
Tidying up
Our street teams have been out and about again doing winter maintenance. Since we last reported we’ve covered Herne Hill, Hollingbourne, Holmdene Avenue, Stradella, Ruskin and Carver Road. We’ve cut holes in new tree cages so that we can resume watering in the spring, cleaned up minor injuries on trees, informed the council about more serious damage caused by vans and lorries and pruned the troublesome basal growths on the five big silver maples (Acer saccharinum) on Stradella.
The numerous Chanticleer pears (Pyrus calleryana 'Chanticleer') also need frequent pruning of suckers arising from the roots, not just because they can create quite a thicket around the trunk but because they can be very thorny, like these pictured at 68 Ruskin Walk. Chanticleers don’t themselves carry any thorns in the crown, but they’re bred in the nursery as grafts on rootstock from common pears (Pyrus communis), which do. So it’s the common pear roots that are producing those prickly suckers.
Tree recognition in winter - Part 2
This is the second part of our series on identifying our commoner street trees when there are no leaves or flowers to tell them apart. Part 1 was in our January 2022 newsletter.
London planes
Let's start with the commonest tree in Herne Hill: the London plane (Platanus x hispanica). Big planes are one of the easiest species to recognise, with their year-round, camouflage-coloured peeling bark in shades of grey, brown and yellow. The ones lining Half Moon Lane are pollarded annually to let the 37 bus go by so their upper limbs look bristly, while the planes along Sunray Avenue are left to grow naturally.
It's not quite so easy to pick out a young plane since its bark will be plain grey, but you might find one still bearing its characteristic round, prickly fruit like Christmas baubles. The tree in the middle photo stands outside 28 Half Moon Lane.
If you can get close enough the plane's shiny, reddish-brown winter buds are also distinctive, shaped a bit like a canine tooth. We collected these in the photo while we were pruning old planes on Ardbeg Road. They produce vigorous suckers from their roots and epicormic shoots on their trunks after they've been pollarded. It's the way they regenerate after an injury.
Limes
The lime is another frequently seen tree, although probably less now than in its heyday around 100 years ago when streets like Stradella and Winterbrook had pleached limes in every front garden. Lime trees have a noticeably upright habit, as you can see from the picture of the small-leaved lime (Tilia cordata) at 66 Burbage Road. But the real giveaway is their red buds, a feature of most of the limes grown around here, often growing on twigs that are red too. The bright little common lime below (Tilia x europaea), planted last April in the grounds of Carterscroft, on Red Post Hill, has both.
There are many other limes there and outside the neighbouring Cassinghurst flats near the junction with Sunray Avenue. Most of them are old trees that have been so severely pollarded that all that's left is the trunk. To see mature common limes that have been left to grow naturally it's worth a visit to Winterbrook Road, where they tower over the columns of Yoshino cherries.
Sweet gums
In recent years sweet gums (Liquidambar styraciflua) have been planted widely in the neighbourhood, and their three-, five- or seven-pointed leaves turn stunning colours every autumn. Once the foliage has gone, though, there are still a number of ways you can identify them. First, the silhouette: gracefully upswept branches in a teardrop shape that narrows to a point at the top of the tree. The sweet gum at 84 Burbage is an elegant example.
The second feature to look out for is the bark. Most of the trees in Herne Hill are what's known as 'the species' - in other words, the plain Liquidambar styraciflua, a native of the eastern and southern United States introduced into Britain as long ago as 1681. The species tree has very distinctive corky grey bark, like the one below at 48-50 Burbage, and corky 'wings' along its branches. But variants of the species, like the lovely Liquidambar styraciflua 'Worplesdon' that we featured last November, don't share this rugged bark.
The third visual clue, something all the sweet gums have in common, is their spiky cylindrical or round fruit, green in the spring and summer but turning black in the winter. It can persist throughout the cold months on some trees, like the mature sweet gum at 63 Half Moon Lane, until the following year's new crop comes through.
Ginkgos and pagoda trees
Two big trees that have also become popular - at least in streets that are wide enough to accommodate them - are the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) and the Japanese pagoda tree (Sophora japonica, now officially renamed Styphnolobium japonicum). The ginkgo, an ancient Chinese tree that's quite distinct from any other, is seriously unmistakeable in winter: tall and narrow; rough, pale brown bark; a single leader (the vertical stem at the top of the trunk) that's as straight as a telegraph pole; and short, sparse, evenly spaced branches ascending at about 30 degrees. The big one in the first photo is at 47 Burbage.
If you need any more confirmation, look at the buds on a ginkgo that's still young enough to get close to, like the ones at the top of Frankfurt Road. You’ll see they grow on stubby little spurs, evenly spaced either side of the pole-like branches.
A large tree that's got similar bark to the ginkgo is the pagoda tree - although there the similarities end. It's a graceful, domed tree, with a twisting, spreading outline. You'll come across six mature specimens (and one planted last year) on Holmdene, including the one below at no. 58.
Hornbeams and horse chestnuts
After all these imports, we at last get to an important native tree: the common hornbeam (Carpinus betulus). Once pollarded in forests and harvested for its fine, hard timber, the hornbeam has made a welcome return to Herne Hill and Dulwich. Its bark is smooth, grey-green in colour, and the trunk in older trees, like this one on the grass verge outside 40 Sunray, is often deeply fluted.
The buds are brown, narrow and sharply pointed like a beech, although not as long. And again, like a beech a hornbeam's leaves can stay on the tree all through the winter. You'll see this on the two mature trees in the garden square between the flats at 36-86 Casino, close to the bend in the road.
Horse chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum) - the ones with the spiky conker shells - aren't actually native, although since being introduced to Britain 400 years ago they've become naturalised, which means they've successfully established themselves in the wild. Herne Hill and Dulwich used to have many very large horse chestnuts, but they're threatened by a range of serious diseases and many of them have had to be felled.
Southwark now plants two other Aesculus species that are more resistant: the Indian horse chestnut (Aesculus indica), originally from the Himalayas, and the hybrid red horse chestnut (Aesculus x carnea). There's a small red horse chestnut at the Carterscroft flats on Red Post Hill, just to the left of the bus stop, which was planted in April 2021. You can get near enough to this one so you can see two of the features that make any horse chestnut easily identified in winter.
The first is the big, sticky, gleaming, reddish-brown terminal bud (the one at the end of the shoot). If you find a large horse chestnut with low-hanging branches try touching the fat buds gently and feel for yourself how tacky they are.
The second is the way the buds (and later the leaves, shoots and twigs) grow in side-by-side pairs. Among our common trees ash and maples (including sycamores) have also got 'opposite' leaves, although most are 'alternate', meaning the leaves are arranged in a staggered pattern around the stem.
Whitebeams, service trees and rowans
These three groups of related species - all British natives - make up the genus Sorbus, often overlooked when we think of our street trees. That might be because the rowan or mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia) doesn't thrive on our pavements and nowadays can only be found locally in front gardens. The only remaining street rowan that we could find lives - or lived - in a beech hedge outside 83 Casino Avenue. It's now dead and waiting to be removed. Another that was felled last October at 15 Wyneham Road has already been cleared and is due to be replaced.
The common whitebeam (Sorbus aria) is also a bit of a rarity in Herne Hill, although there are three outside the Milkwood Road entrance to Sainsbury's Local. We do have one hopeful little whitebeam of our own, though, dating back to May last year, planted outside Bessemer Grange school next to 17 Nairne Grove. You'll see from the left-hand photo that it's got hairy buds, which is something you find on all whitebeams and rowans. This one has white hairs; other species can be grey.
You won't be able to see the buds on the tall hybrid Swedish whitebeam (Sorbus intermedia) opposite 131 Casino, but it does have the characteristic grey-brown bark and domed crown of other whitebeams.
There's still one Sorbus in the area that's holding on to its bright red berries: the bastard service tree (Sorbus hybrida or Sorbus x thuringiaca) at 17 Burbage. The fruit is rather shrivelled by now, but the white-tipped hairy buds confirm that it's a member of the team. There's another much younger one at 42 Stradella.
Finally...
One common Herne Hill tree that we haven't pictured is the magnolia. If you stroll over to Casino Avenue you won't have any problem identifying them, even before the flowers come out in a few weeks. Just look for a small- to medium-sized tree bedecked with furry green buds. You can't miss them - they're planted all along the road.
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