Dear Readers, even on a cold, misty day there’s always a street tree to cheer one up, and this one is a corker. About a year ago I watched as this tree was sawed off to a stump.

“Well, ” I thought. “That’s the end of that”.

However, the tree obviously had other ideas -look at it sprouting away, bless it! I suspect that some council arboriculturalist will be tasked with ‘sorting it out’, but in the meantime it is fighting back with all of its resources. Let’s see what happens next.

We are very lucky with our street trees here in East Finchley. In the summer, the enormous London Plane trees along the High Road help to keep us cool.

Along Lincoln Road, there are lots of lime trees (linden not citrus 🙂 ) – it interests me that they have been planted on this road, but not any of the others. I suppose that fashions change, in street trees as in everything else.

Lincoln Road used to have a gibbet (a cage for hanging up the bodies of executed criminals) at one end. I think a lime tree is much nicer.

Though even these trees are not immune from a bit of brutal pollarding. I’m glad to say that these, too, are recovering.

However, Barnet have recently started offering a scheme whereby you can ‘sponsor’ a street tree, and in general a whole new array of species have been appearing. At the bottom of our street we have Crape Myrtle, for example…

…some hibiscus trees…

and some Amelanchior (Shadbush). The tree below has an interesting history. One of the benefits of writing this blog is that it sometimes records things that I’ve forgotten. This tree was planted in a tree pit in 2019 after, I note. ‘the original tree was removed due to a fungal infection”.

The tree started to lean over at a peculiar angle, and in 2023 the whole tree blew over, with what looks to me like convincing evidence of another fungal infection at the root.

Now the tree pit has been filled in and replaced by an EV charger. At least there’s no chance of another tree meeting the same fate.

But there are two times of year when the street trees in the County Roads here in East Finchley really come into their own.  One is in spring, when the crab apples and cherries are full of blossom.

The other highlight is autumn, when the leaves start to turn. It might not be New England, but it always cheers me up.

It’s very easy to go about one’s business without paying attention to street trees, and yet I’ve discovered that if I just stop and look at them properly, I can learn so much – the relatively simple things, such as what species/cultivar they are (not always as simple as you’d think, but in London at least you can have a look at the London Tree Map which might give you a clue), but also the more intuitive things. How does the blossom smell? Is the tree full of bees? Is there a big fat wood pigeon in it, eating the crab apples? Does the tree look in shining health, or a bit sad and in need of comfort? Like so many things in  nature, street trees have a lot to offer, if we’re prepared to put in a little time to get to know them.

Stop Press! A number of birch tree saplings have very recently been planted along Fortis Green (just round the corner from me in East Finchley). These are Betula ermanii ‘Holland’, otherwise known as ‘Erman’s Birch’. 

When they’re all grown up, they should look like the one below. Birch trees generally are hosts for lots of invertebrates, fungi etc, so it will be interesting to see if any native species use these trees, which are originally from East Asia. Paul Wood, in ‘London’s Street Trees’, says this is one of the first of the birches to ‘turn’ in autumn, with its leaves turning golden as early as October. I shall have to pencil in a re-visit.