It’s a strange experience, walking our streets during this frosty January with none of the familiar leaves, fruit or flowers on the trees, but look up and you can still wonder at the beauty of their silhouettes and the genius of their natural engineering. Try taking a stroll at twilight, against a clear sky, with the streetlights twinkling through the bare branches. It’s magical.
Maintenance work kicks off
Winter is the ideal time for pruning most trees, while they’re still dormant, and we’ve started this year’s programme of minor maintenance with visits to Half Moon Lane, Beckwith Road, Ardbeg Road, Howletts Road, Warmington Road, Elmwood Road and Stradella Road. Next up are Herne Hill and Sunray Avenue.
We’ve been cutting off suckers, cleaning up injuries and removing untidy shoots on the trunk. These epicormic growths grow thick and fast whenever plane trees are lopped high up in the crown and they need trimming back every year or two.
We last worked on this London plane on Ardbeg in March 2020, just a couple of days before the first lockdown. The fresh round cut on the left of the picture is from a sharp little pruning saw. The big grey wound in the centre is the remains of a big two-year-old saw cut. It clearly shows how the tree is healing itself, growing rolls of new bark around the edges of the wound which will eventually close up completely. Arborists used to routinely paint tar over cuts like this to stop infection, but it did no good at all. Best to leave the recovery to the tree.
Free trees from Extinction Rebellion
One of our supporters, Adam on Herne Hill, is offering free saplings to local residents. He's running this scheme for Extinction Rebellion in an effort to further increase tree cover in our area. If anyone would like one, please contact Adam at adam@mrblueski.com.
He has 10 different species to give away. They're what's known as whips: very small, nursery-grown plants without side branches. They're ideal for using as hedging or for growing on into full-sized trees. The saplings are free but should anyone wish to make a donation, let Adam know and he can supply bank details for his local XR group.
The trees and shrubs he’s got are:
Bird cherry (Prunus padus)
Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
Downy birch (Betula pubescens)
Common hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)
Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)
Dog rose (Rosa canina)
Field maple (Acer campestre)
Common hazel (Corylus avellana)
Goat willow (Salix caprea)
Grey willow (Salix cinerea).
Planting progress
We haven't heard anything yet from the council about further planting plans this winter/spring season, but we’ll update you as soon as we do. The one street where planting was due to go ahead this month was Winterbrook Road. The 10 Yoshino cherries (Prunus x yedoensis) earmarked for Winterbrook arrived at the council's depot in mid-January, but when the highways crew arrived on site to prepare the tree pits they ran into problems.
Only five of the 10 locations planned proved suitable, but in the others they found obstructions, particularly broadband cables, just below the surface. Our street leader, David Langley, has checked alternative sites with the contractor and has come up with four possibilities.
Here's where we currently stand (locations listed by house number):
Five completed pits ready for planting: 11, 45, plus three opposite the Baptist church
Five pits abandoned and backfilled: 1a/2, 7, 18, 20/22, 35
Four suggested alternative pits: 6, 41, 61, 63.
Tree recognition in winter - Part 1
How can you tell trees apart in winter when they seem to be featureless and colourless? What do you do when there’s no foliage, no blossom and no fruit? The answer is to use the material at hand. Start by looking at the tree’s ‘habit’: its size, shape, growth form, branching pattern and the nature of its stem, or trunk. All these elements are more visible at this time of year than any other. And if they’re within reach, check out the buds too.
Here are a few tips and some pictures that will help you identify some of our commonest mature street trees while we’re waiting for them to burst into life in early spring. This month we focus on cherries, apples, pears, hawthorns, birches, hazels, magnolias and tulip trees. In February it’s the turn of sweet gums, ginkgos, pagoda trees, limes, London planes, whitebeams, hornbeams and horse chestnuts. In the meantime you might want to look at this Woodland Trust guide to identification and try their quiz.
Cherries
We’ll start with fruit trees, which make up a significant proportion of our smaller stock. Cherries are especially abundant in Herne Hill, and there are a few pointers to help you single them out. First, they’re usually upright, with their branches sweeping skywards. Even veterans like this pair of ‘Pink Perfection’ cherries (Prunus ‘Pink Perfection’) at 95-97 Stradella Road have maintained their youthful form.
Secondly, the bark is often dark brown, with a shiny touch. And third, If you look closely at the bark you’ll see one of the features that make cherries really stand out from the crowd: the prominent rings of open pores known as lenticels, which allow them to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.
If you spot a tree round here that’s clearly a cherry from its lenticels, but its branches are spreading rather than upswept, that will almost certainly be a Yoshino cherry, like the ones lining Winterbrook Road.
And finally, there are cherry buds to confirm the ID. These grow in characteristic clusters, particularly at the tips of twigs, as you can see on this Yoshino twig at 46 Winterbrook.
Apples and pears
Virtually all Britain’s fruit trees, including cherries, apples and pears, belong to the Rose family of trees and shrubs, (Rosaceae). So do hawthorns, rowans and whitebeams. You can easily distinguish apples like the native crab (Malus sylvestris) pictured below by their craggy, unruly crown, their short stature, their brown bark cracked into small squares and the stubby wrinkled spurs - the parts that flower and produce the fruit - along the branches.
The one in the first photo below is outside 89 Burbage Road, a street where a number of crab apples grow. One of those is a species that looks quite different from most: it’s a Tschonoskii apple (Malus tschonoskii) at no. 11. There’s another Tschonoskii outside 68 Frankfurt Road, shown here. It’s tall, not short like the native tree, and rather than having a domed crown it’s shaped like a giant ice cream cone.
At first glance the Tschonoskii could be taken for one of the dozens of Chanticleer pears (Pyrus calleryana Chanticleer) planted around Herne Hill, like the tree below at 31 Hollingbourne Road. Pears carry the same fruiting spurs as apples. But the sinuous branches of the pear rise to a point like the letter A and the crown is more graceful. Another ID clue is that the Chanticleer is often surrounded by very thorny suckers at the base - although its branches have no thorns at all.
Hawthorns and birches
The hawthorn, the last member of the Rose family that we’re looking at, is genuinely thorn-bearing - although you’d have to get up close to spot them, unless they’re sprouting from the trunk.
From a distance though, it’s easy to mistake a hawthorn for a crab apple in winter: both have tangled crowns, both are small. And if you prune either of them carelessly or pollard them (lop the end off a branch) both will produce ‘water shoots’, clumps of thick, ugly, near-vertical shoots.
But unlike the crab, the greyish-brown bark of a mature hawthorn is deeply fissured into rectangles that look like they’re almost peeling off. The hawthorn pictured here is a hybrid, a Grignon's thorn (Crataegus x grignonensis) at 40 Ruskin Walk. Amazingly there are three of these rare trees planted on Ruskin, and equally amazingly they were still bearing a heavy crop of scarlet berries (or ‘haws’) in mid-January.
There’s another hawthorn at the bottom of Ruskin, a Paul’s Scarlet (Crataegus laevigata ‘Paul’s Scarlet’) with a dense crown like a mop head, and two others nearby with a quite different outline. One is a broad-leaved cockspur thorn (Crataegus persimilis 'Prunifolia') at 35 Half Moon Lane, which has neat, layered, spreading branches; the other is a hybrid cockspur thorn (Crataegus × lavalleei) at 19 Hollingbourne, with fewer thorns and a much more upright profile.
One of the trees you’ll most frequently encounter in the neighbourhood is the birch. We have a few unusual species, like the downy birches (Betula pubescens) and paperbark birches (Betula papyrifera) on Elfindale Road and an Erman’s birch (Betula ermanii) at 84 Frankfurt Road. But by far the most widespread are silver birches, many of them getting old, and Himalayan birches, very commonly planted in recent years.
When it’s fully grown the silver birch (Betula pendula) is pretty unmistakable. Healthy and well maintained specimens like the one below at 9-12 Royston Court, Burbage Road, can look exquisite. As they age their white bark develops pale grey bands and later big black diamonds, while their tall, domed crown carries long, weeping twigs in delicate clusters that wave in the wind.
The Himalayan birch (Betula utilis jacquemontii), like the one shown here outside 73/75 Ruskin, is shorter and broader than its silver cousin and the bark is a much more reliable pure, bright white. At this time of year you’ll see the branches dotted with little brown papery cones, the remnants of last year’s female catkins. And if you look carefully you’ll also see, at the ends of many twigs, this season’s green male catkins, either in a v-shaped pair or a w-shaped threesome.
All birches grow both male and female flowers (the catkins) on the same tree. The thinner male catkins form in the autumn and remain on the tree until they open in spring. The fatter female catkins form in the spring, release their seeds in September and October and stay in place until the new crop appears.
Hazels and magnolias
If you want to see really spectacular winter catkins take a walk over to the Turkish hazel (Corylus colurna) on the pavement build-out where Elmwood Road and Beckwith Road meet Red Post Hill. They’re very attractive trees with rugged bark and gently ascending, almost parallel branches and their green and brown catkins can grow up to seven centimetres long, unlike anything else in the area.
There are other Turkish hazels you can visit at 29 Holmdene Avenue, 45 Danecroft Road and on the corner outside 7 Casino Avenue.
And if you’re anywhere near Casino do have a look at the rows of magnolias further down the road. Like this one at 118 Casino, they’re looking very fine with their little furry buds swelling and getting ready to bloom in a few weeks time. It’s another tree that really can’t be confused with any other in wintertime.
Tulip trees
Finally, a relative of the magnolia: the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera). This lovely big tree, a member of the Magnolia family (Magnoliaceae), is great value all year round. It has pale yellow and orange tulip-like flowers in early summer, uniquely shaped leaves that glow gold in autumn, and three features that make it stand out in the winter months.
The first is the tulip tree’s handsome, delicate silhouette, unusual in such a large tree. The second is its pale grey bark, divided into a mosaic of irregular-sized tiles bordered in black. And the third is the curious flower-like growths high in the bare branches, each shaped like a starburst.
These are actually dried-out fruits, clusters of what are known as samaras, or winged seeds. There’s a good graphic of a tulip tree fruit here which helps explain the botany. The wing helps the seed fly on the breeze and disperse far from the tree. You get samaras like this on ash trees and sycamores too, but they look nothing like the tulip tree version.
You can find two tulip trees on Holmdene and one each on Beckwith Road, Burbage, Hollingbourne, Howletts Road and Stradella Road - a total of seven. The silhouette in the photos belongs to the one at 46/48 Hollingbourne; the samaras and bark are from the tree on Howletts, just before it turns into Warmington.
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