Flora and Fauna of Queen's Wood.

         

 

Queen’s Wood is an area of ancient woodland which has been continuously wooded since at least AD 1600. Certain plants have a particular affinity for ancient woodland and are more rarely encountered elsewhere. Many such indicator plants can be found (or have been recently recorded) in Queen’s Wood. These include the wood anemone, for which the wood is well known in spring,  when a carpet of blooms appear in places before the trees get their leaves, and the orchid, the broad - leaved helleborine. A full list of thirty other species is included in David Bevan’s Flora of the wood

 

This is ‘an astonishingly long list for woodland so close to London’s heart.’ (Meg Game 2000)

 

 

 

 

Breeding Bird and Owl Surveys carried out in 2007 and 2014 by David Darrell-Lambert showed twenty five breeding species including all three types of woodpeckers, gold crests, tree creepers and nuthatches and most recently a pair of hobbies.

     

 

A survey of Invertebrates by Edward Milner has shown the presence of rare beetles, some of which are ancient woodland indicators and similar fungi indicators have also been found in a recent Fungi survey by Andy Overall.

 

 

The three woodland ponds have provided a habitat for amphibians and, while no survey has yet been carried out, pond dipping has found frogs, newts and leeches present.