Kew at Castle Howard 2011

Autumn colour, trees, fungi & lichen - Kew at Castle Howard Arboretum -15 October 2011

As the morning mist cleared, the Howardian hills emerged on a beautiful cloudless and windless day. Twenty six members and friends took full advantage of this forecast break in the weather to tour the 140 acres of the Arboretum. http://www.kewatch.co.uk/

The local volunteer guide, Caroline Hall, explained how this old park land, within walls of the Castle Howard Estate, had begun to be altered to an arboretum in 1978 with a large collection of Rhododendron moved from southern England. The connection with the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew was confirmed with John Simmons moving from there to Castle Howard. All of the tree collection is catalogued as part of the RBG database.

Although established for about 30 years, it is only recently that it opened to the public. It has only 2.5 gardeners, so there is considerable reliance on c200 volunteers. Caroline expertly and enthusiastically guided us around the various trees, noticing the numerous specimens of the relatively few native trees that are to be found in Britain. There are also some very exotic introductions in the collection. An interesting avenue was planted during the Millennium featuring pairs of 14 species prized by the furniture industry and sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers. http://www.kewatch.co.uk/fm/FMTreesIndex.html

Instead of looking at the macro botany, our own local enthusiast Mark Seaward, acted as her foil, by getting us to look more closely at both the fungi and lichens which had established. He emphasised that in this district acidification (by long distance industrial air pollution) meant older trees were poor substrate for the lichen. Instead, the many more recently planted trees were far better for finding these, often because of hypertrophication caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus, from agriculture. A collection of 27 fungi and 33 lichens was made for identification later, and Mark provided a list on the next day.

Together  Caroline and Mark had emphasised different aspects of the botany of the park, and with buzzards and sparrowhawks overhead adding another dimension, we all had an excellent morning; but as I chose the date, I will take credit for the impeccable weather!

If you would like to visit the Arboretum see http://www.kewatch.co.uk/

Paul Bartlett