Kings Heath Park Trees

Last year I spent ages looking for a Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) which I knew exists in Kings Heath park, I just didn’t know where it was. The park is not all that big, no more than about 15 Hectares I guess. Enough room to fit a thousand trees and shrubs with room for a couple of football fields and bowling greens. Tiny compared to, say, Richmond park but big enough to lose a tree in it. Especially when they all look sort of green, with the occasional purple one because of those with a liking for anthocyanin. Especially as well when you don’t really know what you are looking for. I did look it up so I had some sort of idea, I’m not completely clueless. I knew what shape the leaves were but I didn’t know how big this tree was, nor how big the leaves would be. And the reason I was looking for it was I had been told that the flowers were quite spectacular and special. So a good tree to track down, considering I’d made it my task to log all (as many as possible) of the trees in the park. Anyway I found it in August. Not at a time that I was particularly looking for it but just because I happened to look up at the right moment and spot an odd-shaped leaf. But no flowers. And no flowers for the rest of that summer.

Come April of this year and trees are starting to leaf out and others are producing buds. So it’s time to monitor the Tulip tree. I notice the first sign of tiny leaves at the start of April. By mid April the tree is full of small leaves and what look like buds. Time to get out the long lens on the camera for a closer look. Sure enough there are green, elliptical buds with a yellowish covering and also some pale brown, spiky objects. What are they I wondered? Are these flowers? Back to the interwebs to find out. And back each day to check on progress. All through the rest of April and into May the buds seemed to get fatter and the spiky things stayed the same. Turns out these were last year’s seed heads and by now I’d found a few of them on the ground. The seeds are wind-borne samaras and flake off from this central spike.

I was checking on the tree regularly, all through May, peering up into the branches using my long lens or binoculars. Plenty of buds in sight but no flowers. Then, just into June, on our daily walk all was revealed. The first of the flowers opened on June 6th. They weren’t easy to spot and still looked a little green. They were all quite high up, too, and almost hidden by the leaves but they were there and so it was time to go back home and get the camera and long lens. Over the next few days, with some good sunny days, more and more flowers emerged and the tree is now full of colour. You just have to look closely to really see it. And as the name suggests, the flowers look like tulips so I haven’t got a really good picture of the inside of the flower because they are all high up and pointing upwards and I’m only 5′ 8″.

Now I know where the tree is and when it flowers I’ll try to pass that information on to anyone who wants to know.