UK: Wild Species Flourish in Buckingham Palace Gardens
12/9/99
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Title: Wild species found flourishing in the gardens of Buckingham
Palace
Source: The Independent (London)
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 9, 1999
Byline: Michael McCarthy
Buckingham Palace garden is the richest habitat for wildlife in the
whole urban area of London, a new report reveals.
The 40 walled acres in the heart of the capital are so cloistered and
protected from disturbance that they harbour 325 wild-plant species
and 30 species of breeding birds.
They also contain 112 types of spider, 56 types of moss and 16 types
of land snail, as well as a multitude of other species.
The garden's riches are revealed in its first wildlife survey in 35
years, published by the London Natural History Society with the
encouragement of the palace's head gardener, Mark Lane.
"Buckingham Palace garden represents something unique in Britain,"
the report reads. "Here, in the heart of of one of the most urban
areas of Europe, surrounded by traffic and a very large number of
people, lie [40 acres] of greenery which remain largely secluded,
other than briefly each summer during the garden parties."
The garden is adjacent to three royal parks - Hyde Park, Green Park
and St James's park - but is much denser in its plant cover than they
are.
The survey goes into detail on the types of small life forms it
contains, such as slime moulds (the strange crosses between fungi and
animals that live on the bark o trees), of which the garden contains
68 species. It also holds 60 species of bryophytes - mosses and
liverworts - and 39 species of lichen.
But it is in the higher plants - wild ones, rather than those put
there by the gardeners - that the garden is really rich. The 325
species recorded in the survey include bluebell and primrose,
meadowsweet and foxglove, dog violet and ladies' bedstraw, scarlet
pimpernel and lords-and-ladies. There are real surprises, too, such
as a colony of spotted orchids which produced 30 flower spikes this
year.
"To find wild orchids growing in the heart of central London is quite
amazing," said Elinor Wiltshire, a botanist who surveyed the garden's
plant life with David McLintock, another wild-flower expert who
carried out the first survey in 1963.
"The garden has a very special character. You might expect it to be
just lawns, flowerbeds and shrubs, but it is much more than that and
its wild flora is absolutely wonderful."
The garden's bird life is also very rich, the report reveals, with 58
species seen during the survey, of which 30 bred. Breeding species
include jays, barn owls, long-tailed tits and great crested grebes
(on the lake), while visitors include green and great-spotted
woodpeckers, tree creepers, sedge warblers and goosanders. The lake
even plays host to kingfishers. "The density of wild birds [in the
garden] is probably higher than anywhere else in the capital," the
report says.
Doubtless because of the high wall, the survey found only six wild
mammals: fox, grey squirrel, brown rat, wood mouse, house mouse and
pipistrelle bat. The four-acre lake is poor in fish, with only three
species recorded: roach, perch and gudgeon. The dace, recorded in the
1963 survey, have disappeared, and the occasional common frog is the
only amphibian or reptile in evidence.
However, the garden in general is "a wonderful haven for wildlife",
the report declares.
"If you go for a walk in one of the parks nearby, you just have a
billiard table to walk on, some lollipop trees and dog muck
everywhere," said Colin Plant, who edited the report. "But the Palace
garden is a wildlife oasis. That there is so much, in one small place
in the centre of London, is quite remarkable."
A second volume of the survey will be published in two years' time,
dealing mainly with the garden's insects, such as butterflies and
dragonflies.
* The Natural History of Buckingham Palace Garden, London. Part 1 .
Available from 4, Falkland Avenue, London N3 1QR, price o5 plus o1
p&p.