Yesterday I went in search of four extremely old trees.
You find them in the strangest places.
Barney, the Barn Elms plane(270? years old)
The London plane(Platanus x hispanica) is the capital's most common tree despite being non-native - a hybrid of American sycamore and Oriental plane. It proven particularly resilient to polluted air, the peeling bark an ideal way to shed contaminants, thus planes have been planted along many an avenue since the 18th century. London's tallest plane is also believed to be its oldest, a proper girthy specimen at Barn Elms, and to find it you have to wander into a huge sports ground and hunt for the leftover patch of woodland in the middle.
Barn Elms is seriously busy on a Sunday morning as a steady stream of parents arrive in the car park to deliver their offspring to multifarious sporting activities. They hop out of their 4×4s and tie their boots before dashing off to football, rugby, tennis, lacrosse, pickleball or whatever, scattering to one of umpteen pitches across the 52 acre site. Ignore them and walk out past the changing rooms and cinder track to an unmarked gate by the fishing lake. Beyond is a rectangular scrap of woodland just large enough to get lost in, and at its centre a taller tree than all the rest which is Barney the Barn Elms plane.
It has the knobbly flaking trunk planes are known for, also bulbous protrusions aplenty as a result of centuries of growth. Stomp across the undergrowth and you can actually touch it, also walk right around it, staring upwards to where the trunk divides into elegant multiplicity. In its highest branches I saw native birds not yet embarked on their spring courting, also squawking green parrots bringing the ancient plane right up to date. I had wondered if winter was the ideal season to be visiting an old tree, but had I come later in the year I'd only have heard the birds and would never have appreciated the plane's majestic silhouette.
Only when I got home did I discover that the maze of muddy paths I'd been following was really the site of a former mansion and its landscaped garden. Barn Elms was originally a Tudor hideaway accessible only by river, the estate purchased in 1750 by Sir Richard Hoare, a wealthy banker and former Mayor of London. He planted a fine avenue of trees down to the river and also (it's believed) this plane tree, the species then very much an innovative peculiarity. The Hoares moved out in 1827 when the opening of Hammersmith Bridge caused a main road to divide their land, and a disastrous fire in 1954 led to demolition of their former manor. Now only Barney lives on, 35m tall and 8½m around, in glorious woody isolation.
The Fulham Palace Holm Oak(500? years old)
Across the river, but annoyingly half an hour away on foot, are the grounds of Fulham Palace. This has been the official home of the Bishop of London for over 1300 years, so is thus perhaps the ideal place to find some very old plants. Nobody's quite sure when this holm oak was planted but it's likely to have been by Bishop Grindal (1553-1559), a budding botanist who grew grapes for royalty and introduced the tamarisk to England. A Mediterranean-sourced specimen planted just outside the Tudor walled garden would have been right up his street, and it continues to grow today roped off behind signs reading 'Protect our 500 year old Holm Oak'.
The holm oak is Quercus ilex, or holly-leaved oak, hence this tree's currently smothered with leaves and your average oak is not. Its age is apparent from the multi-stemmed trunk with huge twisting branches, many of them propped up to prevent premature collapse. The tree appears to erupt from the ground in several places and is best seen from the path, not the adjacent lawn where a burst of leaves and a separate tree get in the way. It's believed to be Britain's oldest surviving holm oak, or at the very least England's, and if you give it a few weeks it'll be surrounded by a fine fringe of crocuses too.
The Charlton Mulberry(416? years old)
Across town behind a greengrocers in Charlton Village is another ridiculously old tree doing its best to live on. The location makes more sense if you walk round the corner to the library where the full glories of Charlton House can be seen, a large Jacobean manor in a prime hilltop spot. The mulberry tree is tucked away in the corner of the gardens below the Summer House on a path many parkgoers follow, thus securely fenced off to prevent over-curious interaction and scrumping of the berry harvest in August. It's believed to date to 1608 when the great house was built, which would also match with James I's plea to the gentry to plant mulberries to boost the silk industry.
One thing this old tree has in abundance is signs telling you what it is. The oldest is now cracked in half and makes the bold statement that this was the first mulberry planted in England, which I don't believe can be the case, although it is now the most ancient in London. Alongside is a green plaque confirming this to be one of the Great Trees of London, a list initially compiled by a charity after the Great Storm, then given published credence in a Time Out Guide. A third plaque confers the even greater honour of being one of Fifty Great British Trees appointed for the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002, only two of which were in London. The most unnerving board tells you all about black and white mulberries but is printed on a mirror, eek. And the most informative panel is old enough to remember when Charlton House's tearoom was the Mulberry Cafe (who baked mulberry pasties in season), but I see it's now called Frilly's instead.
The West Wickham Oak(800? years old)
Finally to a suburban street in West Wickham, the quintessential Bromley suburb. Woodland Way lies just south of the shops and is lined by a typical string of attractive white-fronted semis, you'd think of no great longevity whatsoever. But the tree that pokes out between number 30 and number 32 is enormous, and at this time of year a great branching mass completely out of scale to the rest of the street.
Usually you find such monsters in parks or in the grounds of former stately homes, but this one's remarkable for being at the bottom of someone's back garden. 2 Southcroft Avenue is a redbrick detached house accessed via an alleyway, and because its garden backs onto Woodland Way the tree gets to dominate the street. I found a photo taken at time the house was last sold, in 2010, and the back garden's just a scrappy lawn with a small garage and a monster oak tree at the far end. A plaque out front confirms that this is the West Wickham Oak, another of the Great Trees of London, and one look at the thickness of the trunk confirms this is no ordinary tree.
Allegedly it's 800 years old, or at least that's what it says on Wikipedia, but I don't have a copy of the Time Out Guide nor can I find any official confirmation online. All I can tell from oldmaps is that the tree was originally on the edge of a large field, nothing obviously manorial, and must have been retained circa 1938 when the developers turned the surrounding land into housing. I'd thus treat the 800 year claim with a dose of scepticism, just as I don't believe Wikipedia's 1680 date for the Barn Elms plane either, indeed tree longevity claims are often wild guesses given credence by being repeated endlessly online. But what is for sure is that this West Wickham oak is a fabulous ancient outlier, and now I want to come back in the spring and admire its full flush of towering green.
