Autumn is upon us (by the meteorological calendar, at least) and our street trees are already changing colour. Limes and birches are starting to turn bright yellow and in a short time the hand-shaped leaves of the liquidambars will be showing the full palette of autumn colours - red, orange, yellow and purple, all on the same tree. Watch out for the ginkgos too; they put on a spectacular golden yellow display.
New trees this winter
In the next couple of weeks we should be getting the council’s plans for the November-March planting season, which we’ll share with you so that you can send us any feedback. We’re expecting a substantial number of new trees in Herne Hill, although for the most part these will be replacements for past losses, not trees in new locations.
We’ll make sure Southwark meets its commitments, including planting all those saplings that were scheduled for 2019/20 but postponed because of coronavirus. You may already have noticed pits for new trees marked on the pavement at 1-3 Carver Road, outside 13-15 and 23-25 Elmwood Road and at the corner of Holmdene Avenue where it meets Half Moon Lane.
Watering
All these young trees will need careful nurturing, so come springtime there will be a lot of extra watering to do. For now, unless we have another hot, dry spell, you can ease back on the watering, cutting down from one bagful a week to once a fortnight (or half a bagful per week). Later in autumn you should stop altogether.
Maintenance work
Since the start of August Tree Watch volunteers have been out pruning, removing cages and tidying up dead or broken branches on Holmdene Avenue, Carver Road, Hollingbourne Road, Casino Avenue, Half Moon Lane and Nairne Grove. Thanks to you we’ve now more or less finished the routine maintenance for 2020, although there’s still some work scheduled for Stradella Road during the winter.
We had a go at pruning a little photinia (Photinia × fraseri 'Red Robin') at the top of Hollingbourne Road. These are common as hedges, with their green and red leaves, but unusual as street trees. A few years ago there were four of them on Hollingbourne and this is the only survivor. It was very misshapen, with dieback at the top and an invasive shrub down below robbing it of water.
We’ve cut away the dead wood, taken away the shrub and pruned it so the healthy lower foliage can spread and eventually meet the crown, giving it a much more pleasing shape. Have a look at the before and after pictures below and see what you think.
Reporting problems
You can still contact us in the autumn and winter months if you spot a problem that needs fixing. Alternatively you can fill in a form on the council website and send it straight to the Tree Services department. If the issue is urgent and the tree is causing a danger - if it’s fallen, has been damaged or has hanging branches - call Southwark’s 24-hour hotline on 020 7525 0511 straight away and leave a message. Someone will be round to fix it within hours.
Pruning basal growths
You might have noticed that the London planes we’ve been pruning over recent months have begun sprouting around the base again. While this growth is still green and soft it can easily be snipped off with secateurs before it gets tough and woody. If you’ve been shown how to prune please go ahead and do it yourselves without us having to organise a special work day. But don’t attempt any sawing or lopping.
Remember to always move away for pedestrians, use sharp tools, make a clean cut as close to the trunk as you can and take your cuttings away. Be aware too that working on London planes can make you sneeze and cough, so wear a mask to protect yourselves - particularly if you’re asthmatic.
Street leaders
Three more members have kindly come forward to be street leaders: Anna Gorzkiewicz on Carver Road, Linda Casbolt on Casino Avenue and Sophie Plender on Hollingbourne Road. Street leaders are our main point of contact for each road, but they also keep an eye on all the trees in their patch, help organise watering and get their neighbours’ views about new trees.
So it’s important that they know who else on their street is part of Herne Hill Tree Watch. Please send your street leader your email address and house number if you’re comfortable with that, so that they can get in touch with you.
We’re still looking for more volunteers from Casino Avenue, Red Post Hill, Herne Hill, Sunray Avenue and Nairne Grove, so if you know anyone there who might be interested do please ask them.
Late summer fruit
There are some terrific berries and nuts hanging from our street trees right now. If you like red berries there are a couple of hollies (Ilex) on the green outside 89 Red Post Hill that are putting on a spectacular show, and a common native hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) at 122 Casino that has a great crop of its rather flattened-looking fruit.
For orange, at 42 Stradella we can offer you a bastard service tree (Sorbus hybrida), so named because it’s a hybrid between the rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) and the whitebeam (Sorbus aria). Look beyond the gleaming berries and you’ll see the leaf is ‘pinnate’, with separate leaflets (like the rowan) towards the stalk but is ‘simple’, or undivided (like the whitebeam) further along.
And for yellow, try the two stunning pyracantha trees at the back of the garden square between nos. 81 and 111 Sunray Avenue. They’re not quite street trees (pyrancantha is too twisted and thorny for that) but they provide a bountiful harvest of food for the birds.
More subdued at the moment is the small broad-leaved cockspur thorn (Crataegus prunifolia) outside 37 Half Moon Lane, whose berries, looking like little tomatoes, are slowly edging towards scarlet. It’s a tree that we recently pruned, taking away a mass of basal growths and branches covered in woolly aphids.
Two oaks give us contrasting acorns: the big ones on the English oak (Quercus robur) at 77 Red Post Hill and the tiny ones on the evergreen Holm oak (Quercus ilex) at the junction of Beckwith Road and Half Moon Lane.
At the other end of Beckwith, where it meets Red Post Hill, look out for the nuts on the Turkish hazel (Corylus colurna) before the squirrels take them all. Or you can find Turkish hazels on Holmdene and Danecroft too.
The many sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua) have spiky green fruit hanging alongside last year’s blackened crop.
And finally, a more exotic nut tree at 109 Stradella Road: an Indian horse chestnut (Aesculus indica). Despite the name, the fruit doesn't look anything like our traditional conkers.
Great Trees of Herne Hill
Last month we featured the miniature Persian silk tree (Albizia julibrissin). We’re now looking at a tree that’s genuinely the greatest we have, not just in terms of size but numbers. It’s the amazing London plane (Platanus x hispanica). We’ve identified 158 of them on our streets, plus three that we’ve recently lost (one on Half Moon Lane, one on Elmwood Road and one on Sunray Avenue).
The biggest (and probably oldest) one we’ve spotted is on Sunray, outside no. 15. Measured at chest height (the standard reference point) its diameter is an impressive 48 inches (122 cm).
The Sunray trees were mostly planted in 1896, when the street was laid out, although a few have been replaced over the 120 years since then (thanks to Stephen Lamb for this information). That makes them relative youngsters. Planes first arrived in England in 1680, and there is one still standing in Barnes which dates from then.
Among the features of London planes are their large leaves (like the maple leaf on the Canadian flag) and their bobble-like fruit, but what makes them easily identifiable is the signature peeling bark, which produces a patchwork of colours but usefully absorbs pollution before dropping off. The plane on Red Post Hill pictured below is typical.
In a very hot and dry spell the bark actually sheds in large strips, leaving the trunk naked and a dull yellow colour. That’s what happened to the tree at 67 Half Moon Lane (shown below) in July 2018
Once planes get to an advanced age, like the Sunray veteran, also pictured, the bark stops peeling and becomes gnarled and knobbly.
If you’re interested in the numbers, Sunray Avenue has the most London planes (49), closely followed by Half Moon Lane (47), then Beckwith Road (16), Herne Hill (15), Elmwood Road (12), Ardbeg Road (11), Nairne Grove (5), Red Post Hill (2) and Casino Avenue (1).
Comments