TAPING TREES IN SUFFOLK - NOTABLE EXOTICS

The climate in East Anglia has been said to favour the growing of a greater variety of plants than most other parts of Britain but as far as major gardens and arboreta go Suffolk does not really live up to that claim. For the larger tree species this may be the result of cold winter and spring winds from the east and the relative lack of deep sheltered valleys, which I feel has tended to produce specimens of better girth than height. I also suspect that a long period of comparatively less wealth (or greater desire for privacy) among the garden creators here has meant there are fewer collections of sufficient age to include notable specimens. The late 18th and early 19th century landscape gardener Humphry Repton was born in Suffolk and later lived here for 5 years, but most of his landscape work was done for patrons outside the county. Save for the particularly long-lived species like Oak and Cedar he will anyway have bequeathed few trees likely to still survive (in measurable form) today.

British champions

Despite these factors there are a good number of trees of interest to be found in Suffolk. The Tree Register's 1994 champions list includes 10 from Suffolk, including a 38m tall Black Poplar (Populus nigra ssp. betulifolia) at Chelsworth - 1 of about 700 Suffolk specimens of this nationally much reduced native subspecies surveyed by the late Edgar Milne-Redhead. Over the last ten years I have managed to add at least one champion to the Tree Register list. This is a Hedgehog Holly (Ilex aquifolium 'Ferox') in Christchurch Park in central lpswich of cl0m height and 25cm trunk diameter in 1996 - but as this variety has been known since at least the early 17th Century I am sure there must be better specimens elsewhere. However, it does show that even quite small trees can be worth measuring. Close by in the same park is a much bigger tree of the Cider Gum (Eucalyptus gunnii) which though only about 22m tall, when I re-measured it in 1996 had a trunk diameter of 124cm which is probably still the third best in the country. Another Eucalyptus, the increasingly popular E.pauciflora ssp. niphophila in a nearby back garden with 40cm trunk diameter likewise compares well with the best of 47cm in warmer Cork, south-west Ireland.

Town and gardens

Those trees are quite easy to spot, but in another back garden a less conspicuous tree was brought to my attention by the town's Arboricultural Officer. This proved to be a Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica), not a record breaker but at 15m tall with 63cm trunk diameter a good size and a nice surprise to find behind a house which it most likely pre-dates. Other locally measured trees worthy of mention (including some potential champion candidates) are a Malus x purpurea in a town garden, of about l0m (but in need of accurate measurement), a Calocedrus decurrens in Chantry Park, damaged by the 1987 storm but still c23m x 114cm in 1998, Fraxinus excelsior 'Pendula' c16m x 115cm at 1.2m (below the graft and c76cm at 3m: above the graft) in 1995, Morus alba cl2m x 34cm in 1998, Populus alba 'Pyramidalis' c2lm x 89cm in 1998, Prunus virginiana 'Shubert' c8m x 18cm in 1998, Prunus x yedoensis 'Ivensii' 2.7m x 41cm (below the graft), Pyrus nivalis cl0m x 18cm & 7m x 19cm in 1998 (+ c7m x 23cm in 1995 but now removed due to children throwing the fruits!), Ulmus glabra 'Pendula' c11m x 84cm at 1.25m in 1996, Ulmus x hollandica 'Wredei' (=U.minor 'Dampieri Aurea') c11m x 29cm in 1998 and Ulmus 'Sapporo Autumn Gold' c11m x 36cm in 1998 - all in lpswich, the last also cl0m x 35cm at 0.95m in 1995 in Woodbridge.

Notcutts Claret Ash

A 24m tall specimen of the Claret Ash (Fraxinus angustifolia 'Raywood') was planted in the 1930s near their base in Woodbridge by Notcutts Nursery, having introduced it from Australia in 1925. I was pleased to find that on quite an exposed position on the Deben estuary it has survived the storms of 1987 and 1990. In 1995 I estimated its height as 25.9m -so maybe it is another champion. At Notcutts Nursery itself Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst' is also a champion candidate at cl3m tall x 42cm diameter when I measured it in 1994.

A Chilean in Ipswich

Early this year my brother visited a friend's garden in Ipswich and brought me a flowering twig from a small tree I had previously completely overlooked, thinking it to be the common Box (Buxus sempervirens). The vanilla scented flowers and more pointed leaves with occasional serration showed it to actually be a Chilean Azara microphylla - it is about 7m tall with the thickest of two trunks 18cm diameter, so in a sheltered, walled back garden a quite respectable size compared to Tree Register's biggest (11 m x 30cm), again in balmy Cork. This tree may also have a Notcutts connection as it is just a street away from the original lpswich site of their nursery before it was moved to Woodbridge in the late 19th Century.

Osage Orange

My latest Suffolk tree find again came from my brother, at the Suffolk Biological Records Centre but this time I was a step ahead in the identification. He was given a cutting from the local newspaper with picture of a tree and its fruit from a village near Newmarket which had apparently defeated experts consulted locally and at Kew! Having seen one in fruit before I immediately recognised it as an Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera). From the photo the tree appears to be a good height (although the trunk is not visible) and is reported to be well over 50 years old, perhaps originating from seed imported in wood to its site on a defunct timber yard - but another possible origin could be Cambridge University Botanic Garden's champion specimen just 12 or so miles to the east.

Suffolk collections

A synopsis of notable Suffolk trees should not conclude without mention of some of our main collections, i.e. the Abbey Gardens, Bury St. Edmunds (with large Ailanthus altissima and Corylus colurna), Helmingham Hall (where I measured several venerable Common Oaks (Quercus robur), the largest: cl0m x 253cm in 1996), lckworth Park (Alan Mitchell measured in 1984, with a champion Quercus pubescens), Sotterley Park (with champions for 4 different tree varieties), East Bergholt Place, measured 1992 - one of our foremost collections, including a champion Gleditsia japonica and rarities, such as Emmenopterys henryi and Quercus alnifolia (the latter possibly a champion but perhaps now dead) and finally Cottage Farm, Little Blakenham, a relatively young garden with a good selection of trees, including Gymnocladus dioicus 'Variegata', established after 1945 by Viscount Blakenham who was treasurer of the RHS 1970-81.

Historical planting

Ascertaining the date of planting of good specimen trees locally has proved difficult. A Blue Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca') in Christchurch Park, Ipswich at 104cm trunk diameter is almost certainly the one referred to as planted in 1864 to mark the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth. However, a nearby Common Oak with plaque saying it was planted in 1863 is really just not big enough (88cm trunk diameter in 1996) to be that old and is probably a replacement for a tree that died or the recipient of the plaque from the original tree after it died. Another tree with an historical Suffolk link is the Indian Horse Chestnut (Aesculus indica) introduced in 1851 by Colonel Henry Bunbury of Barton. One flowered there in 1858 and another planted by Sir Charles Bunbury was c2lm tall in 1914 but from there the trail goes cold. I assume that 'Barton' actually refers to Great Barton near Bury St. Edmunds in central Suffolk. It is also suggested that two Abies cephalonica planted by H. Bunbury at Barton may have been raised from seed sent by C. Napier when he introduced the species in 1824 - Elwes listed one there as the largest in the country (31m x 126cm in c1913) and when measured by Maynard Greville in 1952 they were 36m and 33m. However, this location is not mentioned in Alan Mitchell's survey of British conifers (1972) and in his last book (1996) Alan said only one tree from the original 1824 seed survives today, in Surrey.

References:

W.J.Bean, ed.G.Taylor/D.L.Clarke (1970-80): Trees & Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, 8th ed. (+ 7th ed. 1950-51). J.Murray
A.Mitchell (1972): Conifers in the British Isles. HMSO
A.Mitchell (1996): Alan Mitchell's Trees of Britain. Harper Collins
A.Mitchell, V.Schilling, J.White (1994): Champion Trees in the British Isles, 4th ed. Forestry Commission

Daniel Sanford:
3 Alpe Street, Ipswich, Suffolk IP1 3NZ

Adapted from 'Notable Exotics', The Tree Register, Newsletter No. 8 1998/99, with the kind permission of the editor and the author.