Grotesque and misshapen trees
Tree in Kennington Park
There are some trees which are distinctive because of unusual or
distorted trunks, with irregular and changing girths towards
ground level. For instance, see the nearby photographs, of trees
at Kennington Park and at at Hyde Park.
Tree in Hyde Park,
near police station
The Hyde Park and Kennington Park forms are extreme cases.
However, some varieties, especially including the Oriental plane,
as well as some London plane or hybrid forms, often have somewhat
irregularly shaped trunks. In these forms, there may be burrs,
swellings, and other irregular protuberances on the trunks.
Some of the extreme cases shown here may be derived from the
rather more common swollen bole, which mostly seems to affect
Oriental planes. In this, a much swollen trunk rises from the
ground, typically up to about 1.5m high, then narrows abruptly
before breaking into the crown. This could perhaps be interpreted
as a buttress. However, these boles often are merely barrel
shaped, and do not show the other typical features of a buttress,
such as roots developing into buttress-ridges. The trees tend to
have similar foliage, glossy and moderately deeply lobed, typical
of some clones of the Oriental Plane. The crowns of these trees
also tend to be relatively small, and not very vigorous.
Swollen boles at
St. Pancras & Islington Cemetery, N2
A number of such trees can be found. There is a small group at St.
Pancras and Islington Cemetery (pictured). There is a whole avenue
of these at Barking Park, alongside the entrance roadway, on the
southeastern boundary of the park.
Other groups of these
trees can be found at Kennington Park, Clapham Common, and in St. George's
Fields / Gerald Mary Harmsworth Park (near the Imperial War
Museum), and at Hall Place, in Bexley. There are some individual trees occur in some other places, including
Holland Park, Hyde Park, and Kew Gardens. Other oriental planes elsewhere show
what may be an early stage of the development of such trunks.
Swollen trunks at Tottenham Cemetery
The photo on the right is of an oriental plane at Tottenham Cemetery.
It shows some distortions on the trunk and lower branches, which
may be a less severe form of the conditions shown above.
Irregular shapes also occur in some other varieties, including in
the London Plane, for instance in P. 'Pyramidalis'. For
'Pyramidalis', some of this is due to bark thickening, especially
below branch junctions. It also tends to form trunks that show
some degree of fluting, though this does not run vertically down
a trunk. By contrast, some other forms, especially P. Augustine
Henry, tend to have near cylindrical trunks, between a short
buttress near ground level and the crown.
Other distortions can sometimes be seen. The photographs below
right are of a tree at Chestnuts Park, St. Ann's Lane, N15, and
below that, of a shield shaped development on a roadside plane
tree in North London. The latter has been growing a few
centimeters larger each year for several years.
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11-Jul-2007