Berkshire: Maidenhead Thicket & Few-flowered Leek

3 May 2013                                                OS 175: Reading & Windsor

Length: 1 hour.

 
We started from the car-park by the northern arm of Maidenhead Thicket (National Trust) at SU855816.  Across the road was an open access field carpeted with cowslips Primula veris, one of the best cowslip meadows we have seen, thick with vigorous plants.  This is Pinkneys Green Common, managed by the National Trust.

Cowslips, Pinkneys Green Common

 Having drunk in this spectacle - which is likely to be full of more flowers in the summer - we walked NW through the thicket to the north end and then followed the west edge southwards.  The wood is largely of young trees with occasional mature beech.  Plants common here are red currant Ribes rubrum, ramsons Allium ursinum in large masses but still only in bud, wood anemone Anemone nemorosa, woodruff Galium odoratum, spindle Euonymus europaeus, gooseberry Ribes uva-crispa, bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta, lesser celandine Ficaria verna, sanicle Sanicula europaea and our target few-flowered garlic Allium paradoxum. 

Wood anemones, Maidenhead Thicket

Ramsons, Maidenhead Thicket

 The few-flowered garlic, which happened to be in peak condition on this date, was concentrated down the western edge, sometimes spilling out of the wood into the grassland.  This must be one of the best places to see this plant in all its glory.  Most plants consisted of a head of bulbils with several white papery bracts, from which emerged one or two slender stalks with single small white bell-shaped flowers - few-flowered indeed.

Few-flowered garlic flower-head

Dense patch of few-flowered garlic

Few-flowered garlic with cowslips just outside wood

Some plants of hybrid bluebell Hyacinthoides x massartiana near the car-park made us wonder about the origins of the flora in this wood.  The few-flowered garlic is certainly an introduction and can spread rapidly, ramsons is native but also occurs widely as a garden escape, and the same applies to many other plants here, such as red currant and gooseberry.  Others like sanicle and woodruff are almost certainly native.  However it got to be this way, it is still a great spectacle in spring.

 

Afterwards a brief drive took us to Burchetts Green SP840815 (walking there is awkward because of the intervening motorway).  Here an old American red oak Quercus rubra stands at the crossroads opposite the Crown pub.  It was just opening its bright yellow leaves at our visit.

Red oak, Burchetts Green

New leaves on red oak

 We walked up Hall Place Lane from the oak, leading to a path through playing fields to Hall Place College.  On the crest ahead stretches a line of limes Tilia x europaea with large bunches of mistletoe Viscum album, standing out dramatically against the sky.  They border the eastern road into Hall Place and were originally planted in the C17th, although many have been replaced since.  The usual bush of shoots at their base is kept cut, unusually revealing the trunk. 

Hall Place limes from south

 

Mistletoe

The former mansion is now a further education facility teaching a huge range of work skills from farming to hairdressing to dog-handling and the park makes a very pleasant milieu.  A range of daffodils has been planted along the road verges.  We did not stop to identify most, but we were struck by the cultivar 'High Society', which has a trumpet which is pink, white, yellow, then green inside.

'High Society' daffodil