An early circuit

At the end of reference 1, I mentioned a Scots Pine towards the bottom of the Epsom side of West Hill. A tree which a correspondent claimed was planted to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. Gemini at first told me that the upper age limit for a Scot Pine in the south of England is around 200 years and wove quite a nice story around that possibility.

The next day I took another look and guessed the trunk diameter to be around 2 feet at head height. I thought that the top of the tree looked healthy enough.

It being one of the days forecast to be hot, this being about 06:30 in the morning.

On the basis of the first snap and the estimate of 2 feet, Google Images goes for something much closer to 100 years. A 200 year old tree would normally be much fatter. I had better take my tape with me on my next circuit.

Early enough, that this snap of the forthcoming Big Yellow Box facility came out very dim.

The hoarding came down around two months ago, since when there has been little if any activity, beyond the concrete blocks noticed at reference 2 having gone. BH says that the Civic Society was worried about the ground around the scrawny tree getting compressed. But there was a waiting van and a waiting car: maybe action was imminent? Action which is still not visible a week later.

A bit further along East Street, something else which seems to thrive in cracks in the pavement with a sunny aspect.

Google Images reminds me that it is Verbascum Thapsus or common mullein, which takes me to the days of the plague, restrictions and Jubilee Way. And to references 3 and 4.

Bentham & Hooker more or less agrees, but I would be even happier if I had some detailed snaps. He talks about decurrent leaves, on which Wikipedia is not very helpful, although he does mention this particular plant in that connection. B&H also offer five other species, and some of them go in for hybrids. So identification can be tricky.

While the Scrophularia family make the cut at Zomlefer, which talks of 220 genera (Verbascum gets a mention) and 3,000 species. All a bit botanical. Her glossary is slightly better than Wikipedia on decurrent.

Nothing for the family in the archive, but still something else which needs a closer look.

Home via Sainsbury's, probably via the footbridge after that. Plenty of trolleys in their stack, ready for the rush to come. Only just opened.

PS 1: I thought later that decurrent had cropped up before, which search of the archive reveals is indeed the case. Reference 7 helps a bit, but I clearly need to look again at the mullein.

PS 2: in the event, I took a piece of string, having decided that measuring girth single handed was going to be more reliable than measuring the diameter. This gave 2.7m, so rather more than the estimate I gave Google Images this morning. He revises his estimate to 100-150 years, taking into account that the tree has probably grown faster than it would have up in Scotland. The end of this contribution is snapped above.

And that is probably the best we are going to do, short of tracking the tree down in Bourne Hall Museum, which seems a bit unlikely.

The correlation between girth and age is just not good enough. And, I dare say, if you tried to throw height into the mix, the data would not be there. Even less there than it is for girth!

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/strawberries.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/trees-and-so-forth.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/giant-weed.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/series-2-episode-xii.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decurrent.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrophularia.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=decurrent.

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