The Caucasian Wingnut Thicket

In 1886 a storm brought down one of the two Caucasian wingnuts planted beside the stream that feeds the Botanic Garden's Lake. The gardeners did not clear the ground. They let the suckers come up, and what stands there now is an immense thicket of stems, the tallest of them as tall as the original tree. That is why this entry is a stand rather than a single trunk. The suckers have been left to grow for well over a century, straddling the stream so that it is hard to say where one tree ends and the next begins. The garden counts it among its most outstanding features. The Tree Register measured the tallest stem at 27 metres in 2004, a figure quoted by Trees and Shrubs Online. The record of the 1886 loss comes from a 1915 survey by the garden's curator. Nobody has published when the original pair went in. The garden was established in 1846 and the trees were standing before the storm, so they were planted somewhere in those forty years, which makes the stand at least 140 years old in its roots. The clone itself is the living continuation of those first two trees. In late summer long green chains of winged nutlets hang from the branches. The garden is ticketed, fifteen minutes on foot from the station.