Wildlife
Now a unique mix of old woodland, Victorian garden survivors, and recent woodland, it is one of the closest ancient woods to central London and is home to over 200 species of trees and flowering plants. A multitude of fungi, rare insects, birds and elusive woodland mammals including the Wood mouse are also present.
Mostly sessile oak-hornbeam woodland, the site includes a wide variety of other tree and shrub species, including numerous exotics planted when the wood included parts of large gardens. The flora includes numerous indicators of long-established woodland; ramsons (Allium ursinum), wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa), lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) and hairy wood-rush (Luzula pilosa). The last two of these are uncommon in London. All three British woodpeckers breed, along with Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Tawny Owl, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk. Hawfinches are recorded occasionally and may also breed. Invertebrates are well recorded and include the purple hairstreak and Speckled Wood butterflies, several nationally scarce bees and wasps, and stag beetles. Fungi are also well recorded (174 species) and mosses include Mnium punctatum at its only known London locality.
There is only one small pond in Sydenham Hill Wood which tends to dry up in summer, so there are no frogs or toads on any regular basis.
Of the bat species using the wood, there are records of common and soprano pipistrelles, noctules (which are in decline nationally) at least one species of the myotis bats, and brown long-eared bats (the only site in Southwark where these have been recorded).
Read more about this topic: Sydenham Hill Wood
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