Kew: part two

This being the second part of the story started at reference 1.

With the immediate objective being to make it to the big palm house in 15 minutes or so for our rendezvous.

We started the Wellingtonia noticed at reference 2, just inside the entrance.

We moved onto Zog, railway advertising for which has already been noticed. In the event, not too intrusive. And not too much of the tiresome outdoor art which one gets at Wisley, sometimes in profusion.

Next up was one of our green parakeets trying hard to eat an orange light which had been strung across a tree, a light about the size of a golf ball.

Not a Scots pine as I had at first thought, rather a black pine, from Corsica. Wikipedia does not say why it is called a black pine and Gemini suggests that it might be about the bark which darkens with age or the dark green of the needles. Hmmm.

In case I get around to checking against a Scots pine. Not that the colours in these snaps are terribly reliable.

A fine monkey puzzle, with a lot of cones coming on.

Some cones and spirals.

The ends of some of the lower branches were in a bit of a state. There is also some white fluffy stuff growing between some of the nearby leaves. Google Images first offering was something to do with the male cones - those above being the females - but his second offering, snapped below, was much more plausible. Warning at the bottom noted.

I don't suppose that, without any tree credentials, it would be easy to get at anyone at Kew who knew. I suppose a better next step would be to dig up some references on the pests of these trees. But at least there is no doubt as to the tree's identity, as there might well be with a tree picked up on my rounds here at Epsom.

This tree, a black locust tree from North America was looking well, if ancient.

The ticket. Robinia pseudoacacia, rating a substantial entry in Wikipedia at reference 7.

Which says odd-pinnate although that is not captured by the snap above, as had been intended. As things stand, I remain unconvinced that the concept of odd and even pinnate is well defined, that this binary distinction will be supported by detailed examination of growing leaf tips.

An echium of very modest dimensions. Not up to the standard of those usually to be found at the Botanic Garden at Ventnor at all. But then, I suppose they have the better climate.

This must have been about the point at which, overdosed on coffee, we got rather lost in the bottom right hand portion of the map above, the northeastern corner of the gardens, as explained at reference 3. Palm House bottom left. All seems a bit silly now, but I suppose it was one of the pleasures of advancing age.

But we did come across these handsome eucalyptus trees. I did not think to read the ticket.

And at one point, this stuff seemed to be springing up everywhere. I failed to find the ticket. Google Images says Paulownia Tomentosa or foxglove-tree. It also says that information about the genus is to be found at the Kew Gardens site, which is true to the extent of a  mention of Paulownia kawakamii, an endangered species from Taiwan. So not terribly helpful. However, we do have reference 8, which seems to fit. There is talk of freely suckering from roots - although I do not recall a mature tree nearby.

Named - and mainly grown - for it showy, foxglove like flowers.

[From alamy: Paulownia Tomentosa, 'Foxglove-tree' Leaves grown in the Tropical Garden at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, Harrogate, Yorkshire, England, UK. A helpful snap but £24 for a proper version]

This one looks about right, but when I go to the Harlow Carr page within the RHS website, I find AI assistance, one of these trees for sale, descriptions of various other members of the genus, but nothing about this particular tree, no free image. Certainly not this one.

However, the arrangement of the leaves in alternating pairs on my stems looks spot on, so I think Google Images got it right.

The genus gets about three column inches in Hortus Third which corroborate the foregoing.

When we finally made it to the Palm House, the stone animals were all present and correct and the lake was present. But this last was much smaller than I had remembered. Perhaps a memory derived from a childhood visit; it was certainly the sort of place I would have been taken to visit as a child, although I have no specific memory of same.

At this point, some fine holm oaks, of present interest for grazing pigs, of which more shortly.

I then headed off for the redwood grove, as noticed at reference 3, leaving BH to recuperate on a handy bench by the Temperate House.

PS 1: Thomas at reference 4 has a section at the start of chapter 6 on champion trees. Trees like the oak trees here in the UK often grow to 30m high and might grow to 40m. A Wellingtonia might grow to 100m, but a coastal redwood might grow to 120m. As might an Australian tree of which I had not previously heard called the Eucalyptus regnans, snapped above, sometimes the mountain ash, of which one specimen was said to have reached 130m. So not very like our mountain ash at all, a fairly small tree. But the Wellingtonia does take the prize for the biggest tree, say in term of weight.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/11/kew-part-one.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/wellingtonia-133.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/wellingtonia-134.html.

Reference 4: Trees: Their natural history - Peter A. Thomas - 2014.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans.

Reference 6: https://www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/PlantDirectory/Trees/Trees-5m/Eucalyptus-regnans. Rum looking flowers. The source of the snap above.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa.

Group search key: botanicsk.