psmv6: More tulips

Back to Wisley a week or so ago, hoping to catch the tail end of their tulip festival. A visit which was advertised at reference 1, more than a month after the previous visit, noticed at reference 2. Once again, surprised how long ago that was.

Arrived in time to get into Car Park No.1, with the snap above being one of a couple of sighting shots, intended as a fall-back should BH forget where we had parked. Not sure that it would have been of much help in that eventuality, but there are some interesting badges bottom right.

This had meant an early start - early start, that is, for us - with our arrival on the A3 being marked by there being some kind of a hawk overhead. While the lights we were with us when we left the A3, getting through the waterworks associated with Wisley Acres without significant delay. Into the café for tea, decaff and scones by 10:35.

Our first sit in the sun was taken on a bench by the big lily pond, where the massive display of tulips was just starting to go over. But still pretty impressive.

And BH is rather fond of the curiously pruned shrubs on the other side.

And then some more, in a rather different planting, seemingly on the other side of the pond from where we were sitting.

Trying to locate this bed, I turned up a shiny new map of Wisley from their website, powered by Hypamaps, a rather dynamic affair from which the still above is taken.

In the snap above, the lily pond is below the left hand spot, while my money is on the yellow tulips being in the vicinity of the right hand spot. But I am not very confident about it. Nor am I sure that I would not have got on better with the old style map, which I have yet to relocate.

Part of the idea may be that you use your telephone as you walk around the gardens, to tell you what you are looking at, a supplement to the labels which are stuck in the ground and hung off trees and shrubs. Maybe in the not too distant future, you will be able to point your telephone at a plant and it will tell you what it is, not by Google Images analysing the plant for what it is, but by the telephone knowing where you are and consulting the Wisley database, perhaps correlating the telephone image with the map to get your location down to the nearest plant, rather than to the nearest few metres, which is the best that the telephone masts can do. But you can see all this for yourself at references 3 and 4.

Not the same as counting petals and so forth for yourself at all.

Followed by yet another style of planting, this one a little patchy for some reason. But good, all the same.

From the tulips to the herbaceous beds, the ones topped out by the decapitated horse. This morning, I failed to recall the name of the sculptor of the arch which preceded the head - and which I had liked much better. Gemini was able to help out on the clue:

'Can you tell me the name of the sculptor who does large arches made from a sort of perforated limestone. There is one in Hyde Park and there used to be one in Wisley Gardens, at the top of the hill now occupied by a horse's head'

With the answer being Henry Moore. Along the way he was able to tell me all about the Hyde Park version. And, as a result of a supplementary, I now know rather more about the distinction between Kensington Gardens (to the west of West Carriage Road) and Hyde Park (to the east). And that between the Long Water and the Serpentine. Maybe I would have got there in the end, left to myself.

And I learn from reference 5 that:

'... Not satisfied with these two parks, Henry commandeered the land which now makes up Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and The Regent’s Park, seizing it from Catholic monks and turning it into another vast hunting park...'.

Just like our own Nonsuch Park.

I rather liked this one.

After a while, we came across two large patches of grass, thickly planted with blue camassias, then coming into full flower. With the edge of one of the patches being snapped above. They must be fashionable just presently, as we seem to come across them quite frequently - having been unknown to us before we came across them in Devon four years ago, as noticed at reference 6. Our own very modest pot which followed, is just coming into full flower too.

Settled for lunch in the cafeteria which is part of the science block, also home to the library and various other attractions.

Lentils were off, so we settled for a respectable pea soup, served in an arty, lop-sided bowl, supplemented by a sandwich of some kind, the bottom half of which is snapped above. It turned out to be vegetarian - I suppose there were enough clues and I should have known - and better than I had thought likely. BH got rather more pesto than she had bargained for from the top half. With the result that her contribution was that I should have cut the sandwich in half vertically, rather than just taking it apart.

After lunch, I left BH by the new lake, which has settled down nicely, and went off in search of the cork tree, which we did not get around to on the last occasion, taking in some of the fine Wellingtonisa by the lake, previously scored, on the way.

I found the cork oak in the Jubilee Arboretum with the help of a passing gardener, complete with label confirming that it was indeed a cork oak, Quercus suber. Very much like the one on Clay Hill Green, shape apart, as last noticed at reference 7. Except that here, the small red buds did appear to be on the move.

No acorns on the ground, and I don't remember any from Clay Hill Green. Maybe you don't get acorns on young trees?

Gemini's take on that one was that cork oaks do not produce acorns until they are between 15 and 25 years old. Bing/Copilot offers: 'Cork oak trees typically begin producing acorns between 20 and 30 years of age, with peak production occurring around 50 to 80 years' and a cursory inspection of his search results did not turn up anything better.

While reference 13 does not include the cork oak in the handy table 6.1 of same at all. So the Gemini figure looks reasonable, but it is not yet corroborated.

Luckily, it is enough for present purposes to be reminded that young oak trees do not produce acorns.

Meanwhile, BH was taking the sun by the lake, with a buzzard taking a few swings, very low overhead, to provide a bit of interest. With a bit more from some long fish in the lake, perhaps a couple of feet long, some more or less stationary, some swimming about, rather lazily. I thought that they were pike, although I did not get a good enough look at the mouth and jaw to be sure. I was much more sure about the pike we once saw at the rather larger lake at Painshill, just the other side of the M25/A3 junction, as noticed after the event at reference 8.

By this time, we had enough sun and decided it was time for off, taking in some serious looking sweet pea planting (Lathyrus odoratus) in the trials area on the way. Something to be visited again in a few weeks time.

There was a No.339 in the car park. Given my trouble with No.39, I had thought about relaxing the rules to allow one to pick '33' and '39' out of a number such as this, but then thought better of troubling the rules committee. So no progress.

PS 1: home to read the story at reference 9, which, inter alia, advertises the Magnolia Gardens of Charleston, a truly wonderful place in the spring, when the magnolias are in flower. So I turn them up at reference 10 to find that the place started as a plantation of the slave era and is now, as well as being a magnolia garden, something of a memorial to those times. Which I think would rather put me off visiting: visiting gardens in this country, originally laid out and planted with money derived from sugar plantations in the West Indies is one thing; visiting gardens which were plantations seems to be quite another. But I suppose I am being a bit silly; I am just not used to having such issues pushed under my nose.

Aside: I believe plantations in the West Indies are to be found in the ever so genteel novels of Jane Austen, but I do not recall any moral outrage on her part, even though the movement for abolition was of her time. Gemini explains that lots of ink has been spilt on this very topic and that her record is probably pretty good for her class, her time and given her avoidance of public controversy. He offers reference 11, a product of reference 12. Which I have nothing against - except an aversion to getting my information from a talking head, particularly an unknown talking head. I still relate much better to the written word. Better still, from a book.

PS 2: from the comfort of my study, there is something rather unsavoury, about enclosing a parcel of land, hiring a park keeper to keep it well stocked with suitable animals - and then hunting them down. I think I prefer doing the killing in the privacy of a slaughter house, leaving the countryside to look quiet and peaceful. I dare say rich and powerful people have always done it, not to mention the Roman circuses, but still and all. Facilitating if not rearing, then hunting foxes being a special case.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/fake-197.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/pitcher-plant.html.

Reference 3: https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley/map.

Reference 4: https://hypamaps.com/.

Reference 5: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/about-us/history-royal-parks.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-house-and-garden.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/bud-check.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/painshill.html.

Reference 9: A hedonist - John Galsworthy - 1920. From 'Caravan'.

Reference 10: https://www.magnoliaplantation.com/.

Reference 11: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vhuBU9HOllo.