Thames corridor and London). Volucella inanis its close, but smaller, relative has turned
up in Boreham in two places this year (including my garden) and also at Springfield in
Chelmsford (TL 7108). I also saw both Volucella species together at Gaynes Park.
Upminster (TQ 558852) in late July. The Painted Lady butterfly and the other nymphalids
Comma, Red Admiral and small Tortoiseshell, all seem to have had a good year.
The June visit to Copped Hall supplied us with a meadow grass that no one could name.
I noticed it in very dry, compressed ground, just behind the shell of the Hall itself. It was
later tentatively determined as Poa humilis, but with yet another unusual Poa also
recorded on the nearby Waltham by-pass, as possibly Poa alpigena the specimens
gathered are having to be grown on for full positive identification. The tiny Geranium
lucidum, a very beautiful, dainty cranes-bill was also new to me from a waste/disturbed
ground site at Boreham. My most stunning find though was a small group of 'wild'
gladiolus found at another site in Boreham. I am not too sure yet of the species, but it is
possibly Gladiolus communis var byzantinus, The plants looked very comfortably
naturalised in their new home growing in amongst brambles, grass and Lady's Bedstraw
(see plate 4).
Stinking Goosefoot Chenopodium vulvaria, a legally protected Red Data Book plant,
has cropped up (again) in my garden at Boreham. I have noted about 16 plants, which I
believe probably originate from a buried seed bank in the soil. They really do smell
awful though, of dead, rotting, oily fish. Brookweed Samolus valerandi turned up as a
single plant in my parents' garden at Buckhurst Hill in June (TQ 410938).
Trees at Mundon Hall near Maldon July 2003
M.W. Hanson 3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex CM3 3EG
Having read J.C. Shenstone's interesting paper in the Essex Naturalist of 1894 (Vol.
VIII) a number of times my curiosity was around by a mention of a field full of sizeable
pollard trees adjacent to Mundon Hall. Shenstone wrote:
"Mundon Hall Oaks.—At "Mundon Hall", near Maldon, there is a
magnificent collection of oak trees, no less than forty-nine fine
trees in a field of moderate size, and in an adjoining wood there is
another, making fifty in all. A large proportion of these trees have
trunks which have grown to the respectable size of from 16 to 17
feet circumference. It is quite wonderful to find so many well-grown
oaks in one small enclosure. The Hall, though modem, no doubt
replaced some older building, as an extensive moat formerly
surrounded both the hall and church. Very probably the group of
oaks is the remains of a park."
14
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 42, September 2003