Primrose Hill, where I was yesterday, is very different from Hampstead Heath – a park rather than a heath for a start and a fraction of the size – but still close enough I think to squeeze into this blog. The summit is almost 63 metres above sea level and it does have a great view over both the city and Hampstead to the north. Before Health and Safety muscled in hundreds of us used to crowd onto its summit on Guy Fawkes night for a spectacular bonfire and fireworks. Sadly, it is now reckoned to be too dangerous.
Like Regent’s Park, Primrose Hill was part of Henry VIII’s hunting territory, before he granted it to – guess who? Yes, Eton College. The college held onto it until the early 1840s when the building of the great railways terminals only half a mile to the south, turned it into prime development land. Many fine villas were indeed built in the area but the hill itself and its immediately surrounding land was bought ‘to extend the parkland available to the poor people of north London for open-air recreation’.
Now that parkland stretches from the villas in Regent’s Park Road to the north to Regent’s Park itself in the south – you can just see the roofs of some of the enclosures in the Regent’s Park zoo amongst the trees below.
Primrose hill has always been a bit flat, even dare I say boring, for my taste – although the area around the park is delightful with some lovely shops. But it does accommodate some magnificent tress – such as this soaring plane….
…with its extraordinary flaking bark. Talking about the London Plane in Around the World in 80 Trees Jonathan Drori says:
In the heyday of its planting the London Plane grew up in the heart of the industrial revolution which left London black with soot. Few species could survive such an assault but the plane has a special trick which allows it to thrive in polluted air. Its bark is brittle and, because it cannot adapt to the fast growth of the trunk and branches underneath, it drops off in flakes the size of a baby’s hand. The pleasingly random dapling left behind on the trunk resembles army camouflage and represents a critical part of the tree’s defence.
In the heyday of its planting the London Plane grew up in the heart of the industrial revolution which left London black with soot. Few species could survive such an assault but the plane has a special trick which allows it to thrive in polluted air. Its bark is brittle and, because it cannot adapt to the fast growth of the trunk and branches underneath, it drops off in flakes the size of a baby’s hand. The pleasingly random dapling left behind on the trunk resembles army camouflage and represents a critical part of the tree’s defence.
The bark of the London plane, like that of many other species, is dotted with tiny pores, a millimetre or two across, called lenticels, which allow the exchange of gases. If these become clogged, the tree suffers. The ability of the plane to slough off a layer of grime that it has removed from the atmosphere helps to keep both this city dweller and its human companions healthy.
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