Buckinghamshire: Burnham Beeches & Stoke Common (Southern Heathlands)

7 June 2011                         OS  Explorer 172 Chiltern Hills East

Length: All day

This is a comfortable trip, almost all on the level, focussing on the old oaks and beeches of Burnham Beeches and the heathlands of Stoke Common, all on acid soils.  The walk follows, more or less, part of the long-distance trail “The Beeches Way”.

          Comprising 220 hectares, Burnham Beeches is classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a National Nature Reserve.  It is also designated as an internationally important Special Area of Conservation (SAC).  Stoke Common covers 80 hectares and contains the largest remnant of Buckinghamshire’s once extensive heathland. It is also designated as an SSSI.  Both are owned and managed by the City of London and funded almost exclusively through the City’s private funds.  (See http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/ for more information, maps etc.)

We parked at the car-park across the road (Hawthorn Lane) from the Burnham Beeches offices, just east of “Lord Mayor’s Drive” (SU946844).  We walked up to Lord Mayor’s Drive and along it straight into Burnham Beeches, having an immediate encounter with wood ants Formica rufa thronging on the tarmac, a species that was with us for much of the day in the grasslands, on the woodland floor and up and down the trees.  They immediately deter any idea of a country picnic!

Wood ants

On the right hand side we soon came to a small enclosure with what remains of the Druid’s Oak Quercus robur, the oldest tree in Burnham Beeches, a former pollard at least 800 years old, thus having germinated a hundred years or so after the Norman Conquest.  It is looking a little sorry for itself now, having lost much of its former height, but the girth of its trunk is still impressively large. 

Druid’s Oak

A dead stump of another tree in the enclosure carried the bracket-fungus split-gill Schizophyllum commune.   In the grassland by the enclosure is much slender parsley-piert Aphanes australis.

          We now left the Drive behind and took a path from behind the enclosure through the woods (with more old oaks and some beeches Fagus sylvatica) going down towards the valley bottom.  A glade on the left had another old pollard oak approaching 5 metres in girth. 

Old pollard oak

There were also some recently planted beeches here, part of the tradition involving the Lord Mayor of London planting one tree in the reserve every year.  The track led to a stream and the south end of Middle Pond, a large body of water with yellow water-lily Nuphar lutea, yellow iris Iris pseudacorus and water horsetail Equisetum fluviatile. 

Middle Pond

Yellow Water-lily

Yellow iris

A large crane-fly with brown markings on the wings, Tipula maxima, was trapped in the water, but flew away immediately on being rescued.  Mallards with ducklings were making quite a fuss over some altercation, while moorhens busily crossed the lily-pads selecting morsels for their youngsters, and a female mandarin duck (a drab brown compared with the splendid male, but still with noticeable eye-spectacles) was protecting an almost fully grown chick. 

Mandarin duck with duckling

At the side of the pond were hard fern Blechnum spicant, remote sedge Carex remota, and many wispy rushes with long bracts some 50cm tall which we eventually realised were toad rushes Juncus bufonius, growing much taller than we were used to them in more trampled agricultural habitats. 

Tall toad rush

The wet edges of the pond were covered with marsh pennywort Hydrocotyle vulgaris and water forgetmenot Myosotis scorpioides. 

Rushes ,water, light: impression

This is a good habitat for dragonflies, although they were too active to identify them all as we walked by.  They included broad-bodied chasers Libellula depressa, common darters Sympetrum striolatum, azure damselflies Coenagrion puella, and large red damselflies Pyrrhosoma nymphula, but we were sure there were more.  Up the slope beneath the trees was cow-wheat Melampyrum pratense, a plant we were to see in several places during the walk.

Cow-wheat

A path follows the west side of the pond and the stream between it and another large body of water, Top Pond, which was in this case dominated by white water-lily Nymphaea alba and bogbean Menyanthes trifoliata. 

Stream between the ponds

White water-lily

Alder Alnus glutinosa borders it.  Beyond is a large area of bog dominated by Sphagnum mosses, with a little cross-leaved heath Erica tetralix.  Round-leaved sundew Drosera rotundifolia has been found in the bogs at Burnham Beeches very recently, a very rare plant in Bucks.  Adders are also common in the more open areas, as they are also at Stoke Common later, worth looking out for on a sunnier day.

          The path passes some wood sculptures as it skirts the north side of the bog and rises uphill to rejoin the Lord Mayor’s Drive, just at the point that the Beeches Way joins from the NW.  

Wood sculpture

Following the roadway east from here you pass a café, toilets and information centre on the right, where the low-energy buildings have “turf roofs”. 

Green roof

Here we left Burnham Beeches and followed the Beeches Way, crossing a road to walk down Beeches Road to the A355. 

Turning right here we followed the main road a short way through the urbanised village of Farnham Common, leaving on the opposite side of the road at the Foresters pub along Victoria Road, past a library and the Victoria Inn.  The road bends right into Parsonage Road, from which we almost immediately turned left along a footpath enclosed by tall garden fences and eventually into the woodlands of Farnham Common.  These woods are private and one is restricted by fences through thick scrub of rhododendron Rhododendron ponticum and cherry-laurel Prunus laurocerasus.  The woods are beech and oak with some hard fern as well as bracken Pteridium aquilinum, wood-rush Luzula pilosa, wood meadow-grass Poa nemoralis, and also, when one arrives near houses once more, green alkanet Pentaglottis sempervivum. 

Farnham Common beeches

At the east edge of the wood we faced a meadow full of common catsear Hypochaeris radicata.  Here the trail turns north along the edge of the Brockhurst Wood, following what is plainly an old green way between banks with formerly laid hedgerow trees of ash Fraxinus excelsior, hornbeam Carpinus betulus, oak, and maple Acer campestre. 

Laid hornbeams

On the left beside a house there is a patch of the huge leaves of Algerian ivy Hedera algeriensis, but then the vegetation becomes more natural with cow-wheat, foxglove Digitalis purpurea, wood-sage Teucrium scorodonia and wood melick Melica uniflora. 

Foxgloves

After three bends Beeches Way leaves this green lane on the right to cross meadowland, on the left heavily grazed by horses, but on the right dominated initially by ox-eye daisies Leucanthemum vulgare and then (in what was presumably once a separate field before the intervening hedgerow had been destroyed) by Yorkshire fog Holcus lanatus and meadow buttercup Ranunculus acris.  In this second field we passed a couple of spikes of common spotted orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii.  The trail now crosses Duffield Lane and continues again between fences, that on the right made of ugly corrugated sheets that in places threaten to fall over on to the path and partially held up by a series of oak trees, all that is left of a previous hedgerow.   Behind the fence is a wasteland and derelict buildings with horses grazing.  Some plants of pignut Conopodium majus and slender St. John’s-wort Hypericum pulchrum indicate that this was at one time ancient woodland.  

Wasteland

Fenced path

Fortunately one soon passes through this section to enter a wood that is part of Stoke Common.  Again we chose to follow Beeches Way diagonally to the right through here, passing through an area of cleared birch Betula pendula and bracken with clumps of heather Calluna vulgaris.  Recently taken over by the Burnham Beeches team, Stoke Common is being extensively cleared to recreate the former heathland environment.  Towards the south edge of this section of the common we re-entered woodland and passed extensive creeping Jenny Lysimachia nummularia.  The trail briefly leaves the wood to cross Gerrards Cross Road and enter the main part of Stoke Common.

Creeping Jenny

We continued to follow the Beeches Way here northwards through trees and then more cleared birch where cattle were grazing to help suppress re-growth of the trees. 

Cleared area of Stoke Common with cattle

The heath here is obviously damp much of the time, indicated by the prevalence of cross-leaved heath, more common than the clumps of heather. 

Cross-leaved heath

There was also lesser spearwort Ranunculus flammula, marsh thistle Cirsium palustre, sheep’s sorrel Rumex acetosella, heath rush Juncus squarrosus (on the county Rare Plants List), and other common rushes J. acutiflorus, articulatus and bulbosus. 

Heath rush

At a junction we again followed Beeches Way to the right, by a shallow water-filled scrape with creeping red stems of water purslane Lythrum portula, its reddish flowers hidden at the base of the oval leaves. 

Water purslane

By this path we saw petty whin Genista anglica, its yellow flowers now over and replaced by inflated seed-pods, plus more common spotted orchid. 

Petty whin seed-pods

At the cross-roads we left the Beeches Way going straight on to turn left past a couple of ponds and a smaller scrape with cattle-trampled muddy margins, maintained as habitat for starfruit Damasonium alisma.  We could see no signs of this plant, perhaps too early in the season, but then this is a very unpredictable plant that is not seen every year.  This is one of the few sites where it has been seen recently, despite management attempts on its behalf at a few other former haunts.  Around the ponds are lots of creeping willow Salix repens ssp.repens, heath woodrush Luzula multiflora, reed canary-grass Phalaris arundinacea, water purslane and rushes, and a broad-bodied chaser criss-crossed the water.

Creeping willow in seed

Here the lesser spearwort leaves were mined by what appears to be the larvae of the agromyzid fly Phytomyza stolonigera, apparently known only in Britain until now on creeping buttercup in London, although widespread in Europe.

Lesser spearwort with mined leaves

At the next crossing of tracks, where heath bedstraw Galium saxatile clung to the ground or scrambled in a larger form over the heather, we turned right and regained the Beeches Way, which takes one through the wooded north-east corner of the common, the often muddy tracks with bog stitchwort Stellaria uliginosa and wavy hair-grass Deschampsia flexuosa.  At a particularly wet corner we had to be careful to turn left, although the trail is not clearly signed at this point.  We walked up to the road to turn right towards Fulmer.  On the right hand side of the road, in the ditch along the edge of the common, there is plenty of lady fern Athyrium felix-femina and small balsam Impatiens parviflora.  

Lady fern

Small balsam

At the junction we turned left down the hill towards Fulmer.  The Black Horse is on the right hand side as soon as the houses start and provides a good place for a break for lunch.  We kept to the botanical theme by having a tart of wild garlic, sorrel and nettle as starter, followed by slow-roast local rabbit with crispy nettles!  We are glad that the over-abundant nettles and rabbits are being put to such good use.

The Black Horse

Across the road from the pub is Webb’s Cottage, 1833, with a fish-scale tile roof, formerly the property of John Kaye of Fulmer, sheriff of Bucks 1849.  The front includes a plaque with the Kaye family motto “Kynd Kynn Knawne Keppe” (look after your own kin-kind).

Webb’s Cottage

Kaye Family Motto

After lunch we more or less followed the same route back as we had come in the morning, with slightly different routes only across Stoke Common and through Burnham Beeches.  Having re-entered Stoke Common we left the Beeches Way at the wet corner, carrying straight on to pass along the edge of Frame Wood, marked by a high mossy bank and ditch with laid hedge-trees, obviously a medieval boundary.  Both pedunculate and sessile oaks Quercus petraea grew along here, with their hybrid.  A roe-deer crossed the path ahead of us.  

Stoke Common, wooded area

Frame Wood bank

Even though it was early for toadstools we came across both orange grisette Amanita crocea and panther-cap Amanita pantherina. 

Orange grisette

Panthercap

Wood-ants were again plentiful here and we were lucky enough to see a large leaf-beetle with red wing-cases, each with three black spots, black thorax, and serrated antennae - the uncommon Clytra quadripunctata, whose larvae feed on detritus in wood-ant nests. 

Clytra quadripunctata

Where the wood-bank bent to the left we followed it to the south edge of Stoke Common and made our way westwards along that to the road gate where we had originally entered.  Alternatively it is possible to cut diagonally across to this SW corner – although we found it difficult to find that path after there had been so much clearance.

The route now follows the Beeches Way again, the way we had come, all the way to Burnham Beeches and the café.  Here, refreshed by an ice-cream, we left the main road to the right, Halse Drive, and then took a path off to the left along a fence-line to see some of the best pollard beeches in the forest.  Some of these are clearly quite ancient and the pollarding creates grotesque shapes.  They are in various stages of health and decay, and some have had to have branches removed to prevent them collapsing. 

Old pollard beech

There are also some pollard oaks, including one we measured at 4.67 metres girth (tagged 01309). 

Old oak

Oak bark

Along this path there are innumerable examples of these pollards, a fascinating trawl through history.  Just beyond the earthworks of Sevenways Plain (a single rampart enclosure probably used for holding stock in the late Bronze or early Iron Age) we took a path south into Lord Mayor’s Drive.  Turning right a little way we found a path on the left that led directly down to our car-park.

The old trees support many rare species of wildlife and lower plants.  One such is the knothole yoke-moss Zygodon forsteri. We were able to see a small quantity of this dark moss around wet knotholes in the aerial root of one old beech.  It is known from only two other sites in England, always on old beech, although on the continent it grows on oaks.  It is a tiny dark green moss which still had pale stalks that once held last year’s spore capsules.  It is both “endangered” in the Red Data Book and protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, so must not be picked. 

58 Knothole moss (centre)

Near it were also minute ants, Leptothorax nylanderi, which nest under the bark of such ancient trees and are again very uncommon.

(Thanks to Helen Read, ranger with the City of London Trust, for help and information.)

Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire border: Stockgrove Country Park & King's Wood (Flora of the Greensands)

27 May 2011                   SP9229 Map OS Landranger 165

Length: Half a day

We parked at Stockgrove Country Park Visitor Centre, which has all basic facilities including a café.  Most of this walk is in Bedfordshire.  All of it is on the infertile acid sandy soil of the Greensands Ridge, a rare habitat in the context of Bucks as a whole, providing heathland plants with limited distributions in the county.  The area can be explored in more or less time as desired, but it is possible to visit most parts in half a day.  Paths are easy on soft sand, with scattered lumps of sandstone, the local building material: for a useful leaflet "Sand & Sandpits", pick one up at the Visitor Centre or go to http://www.sandpitproject.co.uk/.  Stockgrove Park is owned by Bucks County Council and efficiently run by the Greensand Trust http://www.greensandtrust.org/, whose rangers are very helpful.

          We initially took the “easy access” route west through oak and fir woodland to the lake, passing bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta, wood-sorrel Oxalis acetosella, remote sedge Carex remota, wood speedwell Veronica montana and planted rhododendron Rhododendron ponticum, the latter, like the lake, reflecting the fact that this was once a country house estate.  

Yellow iris by Stockgrove Lake

There are pedunculate and sessile oaks Quercus robur and petraea, plus hybrids between the two. 

Sessile oak leaves

Sessile oak predominates in Baker’s Wood SSSI on the left, many of them in the form of old coppiced trees.  By the stream and the lake there were alder Alnus glutinosa (with galls of mite Eriophyes laevis), dogwood Cornus sanguinea, gypsywort Lycopus europaeus, wild angelica Angelica sylvestris, grey sedge Carex divulsa divulsa, greater pond sedge Carex riparia, water figwort Scrophularia auriculata, and bugle Ajuga reptans.  On the other side of the path at the bottom of Baker’s Wood we found a patch of lily-of-the-valley Convallaria majalis leaves, but no flowering specimens, heather Calluna vulgaris and a single (fenced) patch of bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus, rare in this part of the country.

Bilberry in fruit

            Although the lake is noted for its mandarin ducks, we only saw mallard, coot and heron.  We rounded the end of the lake and walked back 60-70 metres.  Nettles by the lake here had unusual leaf-galls of reddish-orange spots caused by the fungus Puccinia urticata.  There were also clumps of the introduced red-osier dogwood Cornus sericea.  We turned left along a path up the hill through a developing heathland habitat where firs had been cleared, with heather, sheep’s sorrel Rumex acetosella, early hair-grass Aira praecox and wood-sage Teucrium scorodonia.

Sheep’s sorrel

This led to the corner of Oak Wood, predominantly now conifer plantations with other introductions such as sweet chestnut Castanea sativa.  We bore left and kept near the southern edge.  This path led directly through a number of well-established yellow azaleas Rhododendron luteum.  Most were just going over. 

Yellow azalea

"Here we go round the azalea bush ..."

Around them were many plants of climbing corydalis Corydalis claviculata, pill sedge Carex pilulifera and lady-fern Athyrium felix-femina.  There was also rhododendron, including a pale pink cultivar. 

Climbing corydalis

Oak Wood

Rhododendron ponticum

At the far end of a large pond there is an interesting wooden seat carved from oak wood on the theme of that tree, with oak leaves and acorns (in memory of Julia Bisknell who died in March 2001).  On the seat is carved this inscription:

"This life is good. Live it gently with fire, and always with hope" (Ben Okri, “African Elegy”)

Julia’s Bench

Pond by the bench

The bench was attracting quite a lot of life, with woodland insects such as the soldier beetle Cantharis rustica, the orange and black oak capsid bug Rhabdomiris striatellus, the weevil Phyllobius pyri, and a caterpillar of the yellow tail moth looking for a pupation site.  Marshy ground here had clumps of soft shield-fern Polystichum setiferum.

Cantharis rustica Soldier beetle

Yellowtail caterpillar

A path to the right took us uphill at the end of the pond, past a wet hollow with much ivy-leaved crowfoot Ranunculus hederaceus and wavy bittercress Cardamine flexuosa.  Here was also the common long-horned moth Nemophora degeerella.  We eventually came to the Greensand Ridge Walk and turned right again, across the centre of Oak Wood, consisting purely of conifers which were enjoyed by goldcrests. 

Pines, Oak Wood

There was a bare understorey apart from bracken Pteridium aquilinum.  We turned right again at the next footpath which descended along the east side of the wood to where we had entered it.  There were some old silver birch trees Betula pendula along here with a lot of climbing corydalis beneath them and the brackets of birch polypore Piptoporus betulinus on their trunks.

Birch polypore

          At the junction with Stockgrove Park we carried straight down the hill (taking care not to take the new track on the right into Rushmere Park, which has just been purchased to greatly extend Stockgrove).  This descends to the stream and marsh a couple of hundred metres above the lake.  We crossed the bridge and turned left beside the stream until we came to a path leading up into Baker’s Wood.  This is mainly sessile oak, with wavy hair-grass Deschampsia flexuosa beneath.

Bakers Wood: sessile oaks

Old sessile oak coppice

The path led north-east to the far end of the wood where a track descends to the Visitor Centre.  We spotted some wood anemone Anemone nemorosa leaves as we came down here.

          After a snack and a wicked cup of freshly-ground coffee at the café we crossed the road to the path to Rammamere Heath, a good place to see adders.  On sunny days the wooden fence here is also a good place to see common lizards.  The path goes through a pleasant meadow with yellow rattle Rhinanthus minor, pignut Conopodium majus, square-stalked St.John’s-wort Hypericum tetrapterum, lesser and bog stitchworts Stellaria graminea & S. alsine and meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria.  Common blues were flying here with various small moths such as Chimney Sweeper. 

Yellow rattle

Chimney sweeper

At the end of the fence we turned right along the wide path beside Rammamere Heath on the left and Kings Wood on our right.  There is more good heath vegetation along here with heather, heath bedstraw Galium saxatile, birdsfoot Ornithopus perpusillus, tormentil Potentilla erecta, heath speedwell Veronica officinalis, pill sedge, and oval sedge Carex ovalis.

Birdsfoot, flowers & fruit

Heath speedwell

Oval sedge

          When we reached the Rammamere Heath information board we turned right into Kings Wood, with Bragenham Wood on the left, and here we saw huge colonies of lily-of-the-valley in full flower, both along a track to the right and along the track ahead. 

Lily of the valley

By taking three right-angled right turns along wide tracks we found we could traverse a great deal of King’s Wood and eventually come out on the heathy ride by Rammamere Heath where we started.  A left turn here took us back to Stockgrove.  Through the wood we encountered slender St.John’s-wort Hypericum pulchrum, pendulous sedge Carex pendula, small-leaved lime Tilia cordata, downy birch Betula pubescens, aspen Populus tremula, and foxglove Digitalis purpurea. 

Kings Wood: coppiced oak

Aspen

Foxglove

The leaves of the small-leaved lime had galls of two different mites Eriophyes leiosoma & Aceria lateannulatus and mines of the micro-moth Incurvaria pectinea.  The aspen had the galls of the mite Phyllocoptes populi.

Galls of Aceria lateannulatus

Mines of Incurvaria pectinea