London: the Southern Commons, Richmond to Tooting Bec

11 September 2015

We started from Richmond tube station and had to walk a number of streets south to the Richmond Gate entrance to Richmond Park before we could begin.  Following the road east we first visited Bishop's Pond, not a pond at all but a grove of Sweet Chestnut Castanea sativa, quite old, the oldest probably planted in the early 19thC.  These trees were covered with fruit, like many other trees this year, which may have found the early warmth and mild wet August to their liking.

Sweet chestnut at Bishop's Pond

Plentiful fruit

Dead wood was left on the ground as a habitat for saproxylic insects for which the Park is a good site.

          One of our intentions on this walk was to find and identify Rubus londinensis, not uncommon in this region, with Tooting Bec and Wimbledon Commons among its known sites.  The micro-species of bramble are difficult to identify and we are novices, but the BSBI referee Rob Randall kindly commented on some of our photographs and helped us identify those we found.  We found several patches of bramble in the NW corner of Richmond Park where we began that seemed to have some characteristics of londinensis, but these turned out to be Rubus leucostachys, restricted in its distribution in this country to the south-east.

Rubus leucostachys Richmond Park

Nearby was a parasol mushroom, appearing to be typical Macrolepiota procera, the commonest one.

There were many veteran oaks Quercus robur scattered around, many of them old pollards, and also herds of red deer.  The butterflies included, most typically, small heath.

Old pollard oak

Red deer stag

We walked down the west side towards Pembroke Lodge and the gardens there, where, on a sheltered slope around a young tulip tree Liriodendron tulipifera, clumps of Meadow Saffron Colchicum autumnale were flowering in good condition, not flattened by storms as most often seen.

Meadow saffron

King Henry's Mound provided a good viewpoint to the west, although to the east the view of St. Paul's, ten miles away, although focussed along a narrow avenue through the trees, was very hazy on this particular day.

View from King Henry's Mound

South of Pembroke Lodge, currently hosting two different wedding receptions, we found Hornbeam Walk.  This unusual avenue of hornbeams includes a few old specimens, but most are young, presumably replacing ones that died.  Like the chestnuts these had fruited abundantly, so much that the ground was thickly carpeted.

Hornbeam Walk

Hornbeam seeds carpeting the ground

We then walked to the south of the park to Isabella Gardens.  Just inside the entrance was a pond with a large Weeping Willow Salix x sepulchralis and common waterside plants - Gypsywort Lycopus europaeus, Water Mint Mentha aquatica, Hemp Agrimony Eupatorium cannabinum, Purple Loosestrife Lythrum salicaria, Reed Phragmites australis and Water Figwort Scrophularia aquatica.  Nearby a spindle bush was already in full red autumn colour.

Weeping willow

Spindle

We followed a stream from them pond through the centre of the gardens.  This stream has abundant Royal Fern Osmunda regalis.  Young Judas trees Cercis siliquastrum, emulating the spindle, were just turning red.

Royal ferns along stream

Judas tree

We left the gardens by Broomfield Hill Gate and proceeded to the centre of the park past more old oaks and sweet chestnuts, stopping at a wooden bench briefly for a snack, while the sky presented a fascinating tableau of cirrus, cumulus and altostratus, in addition to the usual contrails in the flight path from Heathrow.

We skirted Spankers Hill Wood heading SE towards Robin Hood Gate.

Spankers Hill Wood

Straight across the road was an entrance to Wimbledon Common.  This has a completely different aspect from Richmond Park, being largely overgrown with secondary woodland, except from large incursions made by an expanding golf course, and with little in the way of botanical interest.  Here, however, we did find the Rubus londinensis we had been seeking, the bramble celebrating London in its name and strongly associated with this particular part.

Rubus londinensis leaflets long-stalked, cuspidate

Rubus londinensis stem blunt-angled, hardly pubescent, prickles slender, patent, some in pairs

Rubus londinensis panicle hairy, prickles sparse and small

It was difficult to navigate through the overgrown common (a compass would be useful) and we could not follow the route we meant to, but at least managed to end up in the SE corner as intended, where there is the open grassland of Wimbledon Green and a large (but bare) expanse of water, Rushmere Pond.  The margins of the pond were unfortunately dominated by the invasive New Zealand pigmyweed Crassula helmsii, although native rushes - Toad Juncus bufonius, Sharp-flowered J. acutiflorus and Jointed J. articulatus - survived and in the drier pathside above was Lesser Sea-spurrey Spergularia marina.

Rushmere Pond

New Zealand pigmyweed

We then had urban streets to negotiate to get to Tooting Bec Common.  Coming out on the High Street and going NE along Church Road we were traversing the upper echelon of Wimbledon, distinguished as Wimbledon "Village", with large houses and discrete estates.  Just beyond the corner with Burghley Road there was a group of newly-built houses with an old footpath Dairy Walk preserved beside them.  This was pleasant and colourful with a large mix of garden plants and shrubs at the side, but hardly a weed was allowed to survive, the exception being a little Pellitory-of-the-wall Parietaria judaica.

Dairy Walk

We now headed east through well-cared-for streets, London's warm mini-climate showing in the thriving Passion-flowers Passiflora caerulea climbing over walls and fences.

Passion-flower

At the bottom of Church Hill, where we turned left (NE), a large old oak survived as a pavement tree.

Old oak at bottom of Church Hill, Wimbledon

Past a school we bore right and east again along Leopold Road, over the railway and into Gap Road and eventually Plough Lane.  We were then in a different, more urban, culturally-mixed part of Wimbledon, and passed the Greyhound Racing Stadium.  At the roadside there were generally few adventives of interest, but extensive groups of Shaggy Soldier Galinsoga quadriradiata and a small clump of Hairy Finger-grass Digitaria sanguinalis, the first time we had seen this alien grass (probably from birdseed).

Hairy finger-grass

We eventually came out on Garratt Lane and continued east beside Streatham Cemetery to the main entrance leading to the central chapel.  Here stood a Deodar Cedar Cedrus deodara but no other plants of interest.

We left on the east side and walked more streets, including Fishponds Road, where a street sycamore had Girdled Knight Tricholoma cingulatum at its base, to Tooting Bec tube station and Tooting Bed Road, which brought us to the corner of Tooting Bec Common.  We entered past a largely dried-out pond area with many introduced plants such as Forrest's Tutsan Hypericum forrestii, Confused Michaelmas-daisy Aster novi-belgii, and a robust rampant bramble that turned out also to be an alien, Rubus armeniacus.

Forrest's tutsan

Confused Michaelmas-daisy

Rubus armeniacus with its thick grooved stems and stout prickles

Native plants at the pond included Perennial Wall-rocket Diplotaxis tenuifolia, Burnet rose Rosa pimpinellifolia (presumably planted, but spreading as a wild shrub), and Hawkweed Oxtongue Picris hieracioides, with its bristly stems and curled back flower-bracts, also thriving.

Hawkweed oxtongue

Again we saw a Brown Rat, a creature we usually see in the wilder London areas where there is some water.  There must be well-established populations.  Subsequent hedgerows along the west side of the common (which is mostly playing-fields) had Hop Humulus lupulus and Many-flowered Rose Rosa multiflora, and we eventually found a thicket of more Rubus londinensis.

Many-flowered rose with its large sprays of small hips

At the north end of the common, beside a railway, we went westwards to Balham tube station, near which was this mural by Tod Hansen.

Lamberts Restaurant near the station provided a chance of good food before catching the tube for the journey home.