About this Blog

This blog reflects our twin interests in walking and natural history, especially botany.



"Ich wandle unter Blumen

Und blühe selber mit ..."

Heinrich Heine





Walking is important to us as a way of being in direct touch with the environment, experiencing species and habitats in their ecological and historical context. By walking between different flower sites we experience the character of the general countryside, getting to know as much where flowers are not as where they are. Walking allows for the serendipitous - chance encounters with animals, meetings with local people, unexpected species - which enrich the experience.

We set up this blog to share a variety of mainly day-long walks centred on "iconic" flower sites and locations of rare plants, where these are publicly accessible. The accounts include descriptions of the routes taken, key plants seen, other wildlife encountered, and anything of general environmental or historical interest. All the walks allow time for looking around (some flowers need searching for), photography etc, and usually include a half-way stop for refreshment at some suitable establishment. The walks are seasonal, depending on the flowering/fruiting times of different species, although one cannot hit the peak time for all species seen on one walk, and the best timings will vary from year to year. Lengths vary but the walks may be anything up to 12 miles or more, so an early start is recommended.



A certain knowledge of our flora is assumed, but those less familiar should be able to identify most of the plants mentioned with the help of one of the good field guides - Blamey, Fitter and Fitter Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland (A&C Black) or Francis Rose The Wild Flower Key (Warne) - although occasionally recourse may be needed to more technical tomes such as Clive Stace New Flora of the British Isles (Cambridge) or the specialist volumes published by BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) on grasses, sedges, umbellifers etc.



While examining plants it is interesting to note the galls, leaf-mines and fungi (rusts etc) that are often specific to particular taxa. For galls we use Redfern and Shirley British Plant Galls, for leaf-mines http://www.ukflymines.co.uk/ (which also includes lepidopteran and other mines), and for fungi Ellis and Ellis Microfungi on Land Plants, although this is a technical tome rather than a field guide.

Our completed walk around the coast and borders of England is described on http://www.coastwalking.blogspot.co.uk/ and our current walk around the coast of Wales is on http://www.coastwalkwales.blogspot.co.uk/




Sunday 26 May 2013

Berkshire: Windsor Great Park


7 May 2013                                                OS 175: Reading & Windsor
Length: half day.
We visited two sites - Savill Gardens for its naturalised daffodils, and Cranborne Chase and the open park for its veteran trees.  It is possible to walk between the two, although we drove separately to each, saving repetition of the walk back.
          The car park at Savill Gardens is signed from the main roads at SU977706.  There is an entrance fee, but the car park is free for the first 90 minutes.  We found we could walk round it in an hour.  In front of the Savill Building where the entrance and shop stand is a welcoming "Sedum roof" that at this time was carpeted with flowering stems of meadow saxifrage Saxifraga granulata.
Meadow saxifrage amongst small Sedum leaves
After entry we descended the grass slope towards the lake.  On this slope a group of daffodils with 1-3 flowers per stem, of medium size, appeared to be the cultivar 'Sweetness' (see picture). 
'Sweetness' daffodil
 By the bridge over the lake we visited a bank with cuckoo-flowers Cardamine pratensis being visited at the same time by orange-tip butterflies, while dark alder flies emerged from the lake that had been the home of their larvae.  Here among field woodrush Luzula campestris and the leaves of common spotted orchid Dactylorrhiza fuchsii, there were plants of a pale purple form of wood anemone Anemone nemorosa, which can occur naturally, but may have been selected for this horticultural situation.  There were also many well-naturalised specimens of the miniature species Narcissus bulbocodium with its distinctive megaphone-shaped flowers, also known as the "hoop-petticoat daffodil".  These were scattered all across this bank and we were to find them similarly naturalised in many other grasslands in the gardens, particularly in the area beyond the lake called The Glades.  It appears that they seed and germinate readily, although native to SW Europe.  The Glades consist of a large meadow on both sides of a small stream where N. bulbocodium is rife, along with a few specimens of another miniature Narcissus minor.  It was pleasing to see a formal garden like this allow these species to spread and acclimatise, looking as though they were in their natural meadow habitat instead of a garden-bed, and this as a matter of policy.
 
Pale purple form of wood anemone
Narcissus bulbocodium
 In the lake below flowered bogbean Menyanthese trifoliata and marsh marigold Caltha palustris, which may have been native to these waters.
Bogbean in the lake
In The Glades the N. bulbocodium was accompanied by bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta, cowslip Primula veris, and fritillaries Fritillaria meleagris, a good many the white form that hints that these, like the daffodils, were introduced, as the white form constitutes only a very small percentage of "native" or at least long-established populations.  Other introductions in this meadow are Erythronium revolutum, a lily with marbled leaves, and Asian skunk-cabbage Lysichiton camtschatcensis in the brook.  St Georges Mushroom Calocybe gambosa also grew here.
 
Narcissus bulbocodium in The Glades with a couple of Narcissus minor
Fritillaries by the brook in The Glades
Erythonium revolutum
Asian skunk-cabbage
The other species daffodil long-naturalised in the Gardens is the cyclamen daffodil Narcissus cyclamineus, so named for its swept-back petals.  There is a large plot of this beyond the Glades as you approach the Spring Garden.  Unfortunately this plant had flowered much earlier and it took a diligent search to find one last fading bloom to photograph.
Narcissus cyclameneus
We completed the tour of the garden past the Queen Elizabeth Temperate House and back to the river and its lakes.  Striking plants included the following.
Rhododendrons augustinii cv 'Electra' (upper)
& 'Baden Baden' hybrid 'Essex Scarlet' x forrestii 'Repens' (lower)
Lily of the valley
Acer palmatum 'Dissectum'
'Salome' daffodil with pink trumpet
'Coleman Hybrid' daffodil
'Baby Moon' daffodil
'Toto' daffodil
 
Inside the warm Temperate House mossy clubmoss Selaginella kraussiana was spreading like a weed, although we did not see it escaped, as it does occasionally in the south-west.
Mossy Clubmoss inside the Temperate House
By the stream American skunk-cabbage Lysichiton americanus is well naturalised, and we saw one small patch of blinks Montia fontana, quite possibly native.
American skunk-cabbage
As we returned to the entrance we noticed a fenced grass plot where another species daffodil was being naturalised, this time the multi-flowered creamy Narcissus triandrus from the Iberian peninsula.
 
Narcissus triandrus
We then drove to the car-park on the A332 at SU948727, opposite a pink lodge called Cranbourne Gate.  This provides access to a small part of the old woodland of Cranbourne Chase.  Immediately by the entrance to the car-park is one venerable pollard oak Quercus robur, over 700 metres girth, which is split but apparently in good condition.
 
 
There are similar pollard oaks all along this part of the A332, easily seen from a car.
Old pollard oak by A332
Also near the entrance was shining cranesbill Geranium lucidum, but the ground flora in this area is generally poor with thin acid soils and improved grassland.
 
Shining cranesbill
To the south more old oaks in various states of disrepair were visible in cow pasture.


In the semi-open woodland west of the car-park roamed cattle that looked very like the Chillingham breed, closest to the original wild cattle.  We also saw roe deer.
 
Chillingham? bull, Cranbourne Chase
We followed a sandy riding track (there seem to be no footpaths) through the woodland, past a fine display of bluebells.
Cranbourne Chase
Most of the veteran trees here are oak, but we did see the odd beech Fagus sylvatica, hosting the common willow bracket Phellinus igniarius.
 
Old beech, Cranbourne Chase
Willow brackets on old beech
Another old oak, Cranbourne Chase
While the veterans are oak and beech, the younger growth trees are mainly sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus with hawthorn Crataegus monogyna scrub, while ash seedlings Fraxinus excelsior dominate the ground layer, showing a very different wood developing.  There were also some tall old apple trees, but Malus domestica, not the true crab apple.
Apple blossom
The riding track bent back round to the road opposite Rangers Gate.  We crossed the A332 here and found by the gate some clumps of early scurvy-grass Cochlearia danica, a sign of road-salting.  By the lodge was another impressive old oak.
Early scurvy-grass, Rangers Gate
Old oak by Lodge, Rangers Gate
We entered the main part of Windsor Great Park, an odd artificial landscape of straight hedgerows, wide grass rides with vistas and statues, improved grassland and intensively farmed fields, where the vegetation is very low in diversity, a landscape for riding and hunting rather than walking.  The main flowers in the low grass were dandelions Taraxacum officinale agg and the introduced slender speedwell Veronica filiformis.
 
Vista towards Windsor Castle along Queen Anne's Ride
We took the path to Queen Anne's Ride and up there to The Village, where grotesque lime-trees Tilia x europaea, much lopped and pruned against their natural growth, were festooned with large clumps of mistletoe Viscum album.  They stand near the Millstone statue commemorating the planting of 1000 trees along this ride in 1992, replacing veterans that were taken down because they looked decrepit, not recognising they were invaluable for invertebrates and fungi in that state, and even have a certain Gothic scenic value.
Mistletoe limes by The Village and the Millstone
We went east from this spot towards the 1829 copper statue of George III on Snow Hill.  We passed an excellent large veteran oak which was not far under 10 metres in girth.  The emergence holes in some of the dead wood showed that it was being well used by beetles.
Ancient oak with girth of nearly 10 metres
Bark of the veteran oak
This route also passed some old hornbeams Carpinus betulus and some fragments of wood stained blue by the Green Elfcup fungus.  There was another long vista to Windsor Castle from the top by the statue.  We walked south from here and circled around the other side of The Village, sometimes with ring-necked parakeets flying over with their harsh cries, and occasional views of brown hare, pheasant and red-legged partridge.  From here it is just a short walk back to Cranbourne Gate.

 
 
 
 


 

 

 
 
 

 


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