A short walk in London
Camley Street Natural Park
A narrow strip of reedbed, pond and young woodland between the canal and the railway at King's Cross.
Standing in the place, open the portal and a guide walks it with you, about 20 minutes, spoken aloud. The facts it rests on are here.
3 spots in walking order, about 20 minutes. 2 of them have something to ask this week.
The reserve is two acres and one path runs its length, so all three are within a few minutes of each other.
Spot 1
The Reedbed Screen
The block of tall reeds screening the pond from the path, a little way past the entrance.
Nothing to ask here this week. The question at this spot is about common reed, and it opens again in week 39 of the year.
Spot 2
The Pond Dipping Platform
The low wooden deck at the pond edge, the one that sits nearest the water.
Find the green skin before the first cold sinks it
Look down at the water from the deck, and keep your hands and feet on the boards.
How is the green sitting on the water?
- One solid sheet
- Still air and still water. Duckweed closes over a quiet pond in about a day.
- Pushed against one bank
- Wind did that. It drives the whole crop downwind and holds it against whatever stops it.
- Broken into patches
- A bird has been through. The sheet pulls itself back together within a few hours.
- I could not see any green on the water
- Wind pushes duckweed to one bank, so open water on your side can mean it is all on the other.
Every green dot is a whole plant. Duckweed is among the smallest flowering plants there is, and it mostly just divides.
This is a clue rather than a certain identification. Algae makes a green film too, but it smears where duckweed slides apart.
Duckweed is a flowering plant that has given up almost everything. It has no proper stem and no proper leaf, just a flat green pad and usually one root hanging under it. It flowers so rarely that most people never see it, and it spreads by splitting in two.
Common in London in these weeks, though not recorded at this exact spot.
Spot 3
The Coppice Stools
In the young woodland, a low flat-topped stump with several thin stems growing straight up out of it.
Find the stump that answered the axe with six stems
Find a low cut stump in the woodland and count the stems rising from it.
How many stems come from that one stump?
- One
- One stem is a tree growing on, not a cut stool. Look lower down for a wide flat top.
- Two or three
- A young stool, or one cut not long ago. Each cutting adds stems the next time round.
- More than three
- A stool cut more than once. The stump widens every time, and the tree gets older rather than younger.
- I could not find a cut stump
- Not every stump was cut for coppice, and a tree felled once and left grows back differently.
Cutting a broadleaf tree to the ground does not kill it. It sends up many stems, and the stump can outlive an uncut tree.
This is a clue rather than a certain identification. Storm damage makes many-stemmed regrowth that looks much the same from a distance.
Coppicing is one of the oldest ways of working woodland in Britain and it was ordinary here for thousands of years. A stool cut on a cycle can live far longer than the same tree left standing. Some of the oldest living things in England are stools.
Source: Greenspace Information for Greater London, Camley Street site citation
Rewyld asks you one of these where you already are. Open Rewyld
Where this comes from
- Place and spot coordinates from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
- Site habitats and species from London Wildlife Trust and the Greenspace Information for Greater London site citation (Cited, not reproduced)
Each question was written to a naturalist review, and the ones that could not be stood behind at this site were cut rather than softened. Every question asks you to look, never to pick or to touch.