Spring seems to have arrived in earnest in the first week of March, with longer days, bluer skies, temperatures in double figures and the Yoshino cherry buds (Prunus x yedoensis) on Winterbrook Road and Stradella Road about to burst into flower at any moment. It’s easy to forget that barely three weeks ago we were experiencing the strongest of a series of powerful winter storms, all driven by climate change.
Storm Eunice
One of the reasons Herne Hill Tree Watch keeps pressing for as many new street trees as possible is to help mitigate the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As they grow, trees absorb CO2 and store it in their timber. But it will take decades for saplings to become effective tools for carbon capture and storage, so it’s vital in the meantime to protect our mature trees, with their big leaf canopies and carbon sinks.
Unfortunately global heating is already upon us, even if we do manage to stay below the target of a 1.5-degree increase, and increasingly destructive weather is threatening our valuable older trees. The violence of Storm Eunice on February 18 knocked down four of them in the neighbourhood:
a tall silver birch (Betula pendula) at 49/51 Elmwood Road
a large sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) outside the Pynnersmead flats near the foot of Herne Hill
a cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera Pissardii) between 81 Ruskin Walk and the junction of Warmington Road
and a second cherry plum at 1 Elfindale Road.
Separately a younger tree, a Southern nettle tree (Celtis australis) opposite 105 Stradella Road, was partially uprooted in the storm and a mature Princeton elm (Ulmus americana 'Princeton') in front of Pynnersmead had a lower limb torn off. We’ll be pushing for all of these losses to be replaced as soon as possible.
Early spring blossom
Seeing the cherry plums come down was especially distressing since they’d only just started flowering. They’re always the first street trees to blossom in Herne Hill, three or four weeks before the magnolias and Yoshinos, and their cheerful pink or white blossoms reliably signal that spring is just around the corner.
Southwark plants three types of cherry plum and you can see all of them in the course of a short stroll on Burbage Road, starting with the rosy pink tree at no. 8 (a variety called Prunus cerasifera Nigra, or black cherry plum), which has been looking gorgeous since the middle of February:
Further down Burbage at no. 106 is an example of the commoner purple-leaved plum (Prunus cerasifera Pissardii), which has white or pale pink flowers:
And on the other side of the street, in the little patch of land between 85 Burbage and the entrance to the Edward Alleyn sports club, stand three of the final category of cherry plum: the original Prunus cerasifera species, a native of the Balkans and central Asia. This species tree has pure white blossom and green leaves, unlike the two garden varieties, Pissardii and Nigra, where the foliage is dark red.
Strictly speaking these three little white trees (accompanied by a black cherry plum) are off the pavement and aren’t maintained street trees. They may be the remnants of a boundary hedge. But the one at the front does overhang the pavement and passers-by can be seen eating the small, yellow plums that it bears later in the year.
Disappearing cherry plums
These early-flowering cherry plums have been a feature of the planting schemes for many of our residential side streets, but the two latest deaths mean there are now just five of them remaining in the Southwark side of Herne Hill.
To illustrate the extent of the losses this one species has suffered, the TreeTalk map, which is only updated when Southwark Council refreshes its own map data, is still showing 25 cherry plums here, so that means there’s been an 80% loss in just a few years. We know that until recently there were:
Two on Beckwith Road (now only one still alive)
Two on Burbage Road (both still surviving)
Seven on Carver Road (none remaining)
One on Casino Avenue (none remaining)
Two on Danecroft Road (none remaining)
Four on Elfindale Road (just one left)
One on Elmwood Road (none remaining)
Two on Hollingbourne Road (none remaining)
Four on Ruskin Walk (just one left)
These aren’t very long-lived trees at the best of times, and many of them have fallen victim to disease and decay as well as storm damage. Some of the survivors could also be in poor health. The tree at 19 Beckwith still shows the remains of a large bracket fungus that appeared on the trunk last year - a sure sign of internal decay.
The one at 8 Burbage has an old area of damage on the road side, a possible route for infection, while along the same road the tree at no. 106 has two big mushrooms on one of the lower branches and a small one on the trunk. The cherry plum at 52 Ruskin also has fruiting bodies (toadstools or mushrooms) at its base, but the tree still standing at 68 Elfindale luckily has no obvious signs of decay or injury.
Given the rapidly shrinking population and the vulnerability of the remaining cherry plums, it would be reassuring to know that the council had a programme to plant other early spring-flowering trees to recreate at least partly the traditional look of our neighbourhood. We suggest the winter-flowering cherry (Prunus subhirtella Autumnalis Rosea), which produces pink blossom from November until March.
Magnolias opening up
After the cherry plums comes the stunning magnolia blossom of Casino Avenue, Herne Hill’s second spring showcase after Winterbrook Road. The first tree to bloom there this year was at no. 116, a northern Japanese magnolia (Magnolia kobus) bearing flowers up to 10 cm (4 inches) across. They’re pure white apart from a faint pink stripe on the outside of the petals, and in the autumn they’ll produce the extraordinary lumpy red seed pods that we featured in October 2021.
Along the road are two striking magnolias whose big tulip-like flowers are yet to open fully: Magnolia × soulangeana. When they do you should understand why they’re commonly known as saucer magnolias. Only the claret-coloured tepals (the outer part of the flower) are visible in early March, but when they open into saucer-shaped blooms they’ll be mostly white, with a darker base. The soulangeana pictured is outside 93-95 Casino and there’s another at no. 112.
Cleaner Greener Safer Awards 2022-23
We’re hoping to add another dozen magnolias to the flourishing Casino collection thanks to a generous award of £12,000 from Southwark Council’s Cleaner Greener Safer (CGS) scheme. We’re very grateful to our Dulwich Village Ward councillors, Richard Leeming and Margy Newens, who announced the decision at a council meeting on March 7. These new trees, which we’d like to see planted in the forthcoming winter/spring season, will boost the number of magnolias on Casino to 29, green up all the long, bare stretches of pavement there and cement the street’s position on the blossom map.
Off the main street, Casino will also benefit from seven more trees in the garden square in front of the flats at nos. 32 to 86, courtesy of a CGS award of £3,500. That's £500 per tree, half the cost of trees planted on the pavement because there's no need for expensive tree pits in grass.
Unlike most of the homes on Casino, the flats have no individual gardens, so the square is potentially a valuable community resource. It's rather under-used at present, but with more attractive trees and more community involvement it could become much more welcoming for families and children and safer too.
There are already three hornbeams and two holly trees inside the square, plus a ginkgo that's reviving very strongly from a big stump. But none of these are very showy in springtime so residents would like some colour, either from flowering ornamental trees or fruit trees. Their blossom would create a habitat for birds, bees and butterflies, which would in turn encourage other small wildlife.
It would be lovely to think this square could be transformed from its present neglected state and become a place for picnics, children's parties or just a relaxing afternoon on a bench.
Planting delays
Unfortunately we also have to bring you some disappointing news about existing planting plans for Herne Hill. Our project to plant over 30 trees using our £17,000 in CGS awards from previous years has been postponed from the current season to 2022-23. Southwark’s Arboricultural Services Manager, Julian Fowgies, apologised and assured us that these trees will be included in the next planting programme starting in November this year. The council team is scoping out the locations that we’ve proposed and will send us an update shortly.
Julian explained that the delay was caused by resource constraints, but added that he’s hoping to have a dedicated tree planting and ecology officer in place before the autumn who will be able to help with next season’s planning and tree buying. That role will be very useful to us at Herne Hill Tree Watch and we look forward to working with the new team member. We've had a mutually productive relationship with the council for the past three years and we're confident this will continue in future.
This delay is undoubtedly a blow for Herne Hill Tree Watch, of course, but don’t forget that the separate council planting schedule remains on track and planting work should be completed in April. That means there will still be more than 40 new trees for us to look after this coming spring and summer.
Watering time again
If the council’s maintenance contractors don’t visit often enough we should start watering vulnerable young trees this month, as soon as the days get warmer and drier. That means trees planted in the last few months, and those planted the previous year. Your street leaders should be organising watering rotas for their road and there’s a watering guide that you can follow on the website.
We have a small network of outside taps in our members’ front gardens that you can use to fill your watering cans if you’re nearby. Here’s where they’re located:
BURBAGE ROAD - nos. 29 and 70
ELFINDALE ROAD - no. 53
FRANKFURT ROAD - no. 60
HOLLINGBOURNE ROAD - nos. 48, 50 and 51
WARMINGTON ROAD - no. 12
WINTERBROOK ROAD - no. 19.
The manager of the car wash on Herne Hill, between Casino Avenue and Danecroft Road, has told us you can fill up there too if you speak to him first.
The march of the elms
Finally, an update on our campaign to reintroduce the lost elms to the area (see our December 2021 and February 2022 reports). We’re hoping for a second Ulmus ‘Rebona’ in Herne Hill soon, this time outside Pynnersmead flats, near to where the sycamore came down in Storm Eunice.
Rebona, first planted here in January outside the Elmwood Road flats on Half Moon Lane, is a disease-resistant hybrid American elm that’s supposed to most closely resemble the traditional English elm (Ulmus procera) when it’s mature. The council has recently planted another Rebona on Gallery Road in Dulwich Village, just past the Dulwich Orchard, which is a very fitting location.
If you walk a little further along Gallery Road, towards Belair Park, you can see the living remnants of ancient English elms in the old hedgerow. Look out for small trees with distinctive corky ‘wings’ on the bark and the twigs. Sadly they only grow to around 15 feet in height nowadays before they get attacked by the Dutch elm beetle.
Back in the orchard itself Paul helped plant three little elm saplings late last month along the boundary with Burbage Road, near the old Grammar School. They’re from a different hybrid, Ulmus x ‘Wingham’, a new type with very high proven resistance to Dutch elm disease. They were sourced from Elms4London by Jeremy Prescott, the chair of the Dulwich Society Gardens committee and one of our supporters. The photo shows their tiny red flowers.
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