University of Bath Claverton Down and Bushey Norwood Tree Trail, 4 November 2025

Above: Caucasian Wingnut, Pterocarya Fraxinifolia © Carole Catling

Leader: Hugh Williamson

A group of 20 met at the starting point, The Lime Tree Cafe on the Claverton Down Campus of the University of Bath.

Our BNHS president, Lucy Starling, introduced the leader, Hugh Williamson, of Bath Urban Treescape. Hugh explained that until the early 1960s the Claverton Down area was listed as public space and playing fields. The University was founded in 1966 and is home to a wide variety of trees, many of which Hugo pointed out on our walk around the grounds and through the adjacent Bushey Norwood.

Amongst the many trees we saw, we noted various birches, oaks and pines; a Serbian Spruce with its narrow spire-like form; a Sweet Gum Tree, Liquidambar, which has beautiful autumnal red leaves that look similar to maple leaves; a Trident Maple, Acer Buergerianum, with its lovely three-pointed leaves; a Caucasian Wingnut, Pterocarya Fraxinifolia, which has long leaves and catkins. The catkins mature into winged nutlets, which give the tree its name.

We saw two Giant Sequoia trees, Sequoiadendron Giganteum. We learned that they do very well in the UK climate and there are now more in the UK than in California. Hugh pointed out the Handkerchief Tree, Davidia Involucrata, native to China and named for ‘Père David’, a French missionary and keen naturalist who lived there. We passed a Black Walnut, Juglans Nigra, which had dropped lots of its nuts below. I brought home a few to try at a later date. They need to have the outer green husk removed, and be left to dry before cracking their very hard deeply grooved shells. These were some of the highlights for me amongst the many trees we saw that morning.

At the end of the walk, Hugh handed out the Claverton Campus Tree Trail booklet. There are about 15 different tree trail booklets produced covering the Bath and Keynsham areas and they can also be found on bathurbantreescape.com in digital form.

The walk was memorable also for the fungi found along the way. The most exciting was the rare Tiered Tooth Fungus, Hericium Cirrhatum, spotted by one of our BNHS members. This was found growing at the top of a tall, dead beech. It is a very close relative of the true Lion’s Mane. In the same monolithic beech, were Artists’ Bracket (Ganoderma sp.) and Beech Woodwart. Also spotted were a group of Clouded Funnels; Black Bulgar; Yellow Brain Fungus; probably Clustered Bonnet (or similar Mycena sp.); Snowy Ink Cap; Blue Roundheads and Dog Vomit Slime Mould.

Thank you to Mike Williams for the fungI identification and Hugh Williamson for a most informative walk.

Carole Catling