Coldfall Wood - Flora

Flora

Like the other local ancient woodlands in the area, the Wood is dominated by oak standards, but the understorey is much less diverse and consists of almost pure stands of multi-stemmed, overgrown hornbeam coppice. Beech, hazel, mountain ash and Wild Service Tree are all rare, though there are some fine specimens of the last species.

Little light penetrates to the woodland floor in the most wooded places and large areas of the Wood are devoid of either shrub, field or ground layers of vegetation. Consequently parts of the Wood can present a dark and gloomy appearance in the summer months. Nevertheless, in the few glade areas, caused by the collapse of an occasional canopy tree, or by more recent coppicing, the flora is of considerable interest. Pill sedge hangs on in its only known Haringey site, and tiny populations of cow-wheat, slender St. John's wort, wood anemone, and heath speedwell manage to survive, though they seldom flower.

An area of approximately one acre was cut in the north-western corner of the Wood in December 1990 with the assistance of the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, the Friends of Coldfall Wood, and the Haringey Branch of the London Wildlife Trust. The felled hornbeam poles were cut, stacked on site, and allowed to decay in situ to provide deadwood habitat for the benefit of invertebrates and fungi. Brushwood was used to construct a dead hedge around the coppice. This has protected the area from trampling, both by dogs and humans, and will hopefully provide a nesting habitat for wrens and other woodland birds. Regrowth from the cut hornbeam stools has been encouraging with a maximum growth of two metres being recorded by the end of 1991.

The vegetational succession following the coppice is being carefully monitored by means of permanent quadrats. In the first year after coppicing, more than seventy species of flowering plant have been recorded here – a gratifying increase from the original flora of a mere six species. The newcomers include heath groundsel, which is unknown elsewhere in the Borough, suggesting the possibility that its seed may have lain dormant in the soil since the last coppice was cut before the Second World War. Ring counts of the coppice poles suggest that this was done about sixty years ago. The majority of new plants, however, will have colonised from outside and many of the arrivals are widespread ruderal species typical of disturbed open habitats, such as mugwort, sow-thistles and willowherbs. Rosebay willowherb dominates much of the area. A hundred years ago this was a rare plant in southern England and it is noteworthy that it was recorded from Coldfall Wood as early as 1901 (Kent 1975). The appearance of Sumatran fleabane was not entirely unexpected, for it has spread rapidly throughout Haringey since first being recorded from the Borough in 1985 (Wurzell 1988). It is also present in North Wood. There can be few other ancient woods in Britain that include this subtropical species in their flora.