Kings Heath Park Trees

There are a huge number of trees around the pond and its periphery. I have not mapped this area properly but there are a few trees that I can point out

Away from the pond, next to the path alongside the bowling green, there is a tree with lots of twisting stems. This is a Persian ironwood. Its bark has a patchy camouflage appearance like the London plane. In autumn its leaves turn a bright red colour.

On the other side of the ironwood there is a Tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera. It’s a member of the magnolia family and produces flowers that sort of resemble a tulip. It has quite strange leaves, almost like a maple but with four lobes and almost a flat top instead of the pointed apex of a maple.

Down the gravel path from the tulip tree there is the Handkerchief tree or Ghost tree or Dove tree (Davidia involucrata). It gets its name from the flowers which it produces in late April to May. The flowers don’t have petals but they have large white bracts which look like hankerchiefs or ghosts, hanging in the tree’s branches. The actual flowers are small balls of purple stamen surrounding the central stigma and style.

If you then go back towards the tulip tree and cut through towards the pond, near the viewing platform there is a Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. This is a deciduous conifer. There is another Dawn redwood, more or less opposite this one on the other side of the pond. I think the tree next to the redwood is an oak which may be a Cypress oak Quercus robur ‘Fastigiata’ – its branches tend to grow upwards a bit like a Lombardy poplar.

More or less next to the redwood, towards Avenue Road, there is a Weeping willow, Salix babylonica. Its branches spread out right over the pond and dip right down into it.

A bit further down there is a Weeping beech, Fagus sylvatica Pendula. There are two of these on the pondside; the other is diagonally opposite this one, almost opposite the Dawn redwood.

The huge tree behind the weeping beech, almost on the path is a Black poplar.

On the other side of the pond, I know there are more Persian ironwoods, some Cappadocian maples, some Ornamental maples and Rowans but I haven’t fully explored these yet – maybe 2023.

The only ones on that side I have photos of are a paperbark maple (Acer griseum) and a Crab apple Malus sylvestris), which are both closer back towards the Park House.