Wildlife of the Cemetery

Following a comprehensive survey of the flora in 1987 and extensive public consultation in the late 1980’s the City Council agreed in March 1990 to adopt a grounds maintenance specification aimed at preserving the character of the existing flora and fauna.  Originally part of Southampton Common, the walls of the Cemetery have formed an enclosure that has helped preserve much of the diversity of wildlife that has subsequently been lost as the Common and surrounding area has developed. The mowing of each area is based on the plants found there and allows the majority of flowers to mature and produce seed before being cut.  The timing also provides short, medium and long grass to enable animals to move to their preferred conditions when an area is mown. 
To see the mowing regime click here. MOWING MAP 

However, over the last decade or so there has been a steady encroachment by various tree saplings, particularly oak, ash and sycamore; as well as bramble.  The Friends group are now working with the City Council’s ecologist and the maintenance teams to reverse this trend.  FoSOC and the Council are currently devising a 3 year plan where, with the use of volunteers and Council employees/contractors, all working to an agreed plan, we hope to restore several areas to a more open appearance.
 

Galls are mainly caused by Gall Wasps, which are very small ant-like insects. Nearly all species induce gall formation in plants, especially oaks. Females lays eggs on the plants and when the eggs hatch the plant tissue swell up around the grubs to form galls. It is unclear why this relationship has developed as there seems to be no apparent benefit to the plant.

Conifers have been around for about 300 million years, but for the last 100 million years have been slowly losing a battle with flowering broad-leaved trees. Only 3 of about 630 species are believed to be native to the UK - Scots Pine, Yew and Juniper. The Cemetery, however, has many introduced conifers. They have separate male and female reproductive "parts" (they are not technically flowers) which in many species are on separate trees. Here we show some of these.

Trees - broad-leaved are often defined as being over 3 metre tall on a single trunk, but their separation from shrubs is very arbitrary. Here are photos of the flowers of those we have not included in the shrub section
 

Click for news of recent wildlife sightings.

Photographs

John Vetterlein has taken a large number of photographs of various types of wildlife in the Cemetery, and a selection of them can be seen in this web site by clicking on the links below:

Shieldbugs are very distinctive insects. In the UK there are about 34 species thought to be resident. Recent research by Southampton Natural History Society has found 24 of these in the Southampton area. Here are photos of just a few of these, all taken in the Old Cemetery. We hope to add more in the future.

Butterflies, along with moths, belong to the insect order lepidoptera. Unlike all other insects, their four wings are covered with minute scales - which produce the distinctive colours and patterns of each individual species. Of the 59 UK "resident" butterflies, 26 have been recorded in the Old Cemetery - which is impressive for an area in the middle of a large city
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Moths are mainly, but not exclusively, nocturnal. About 2500 species have been recorded in the UK. Like butterflies, their distinctive wing patterns result from a covering of thousands of tiny coloured scales. Many of the day-flying moths tend to be brightly coloured and several are often confused with butterflies.

Shrubs are difficult to define - and their boundary with "trees" can be very flexible. Like trees, they usually accumulate annual rings as their trunks and branches increase in diameter. Here are a selection of the flowers of several of the "woody" species which within the Old Cemetery are either short in height and/or have multiple trunks

Wild Flowers - botanically the flowers shown here are “herbs”, that is, “seed-bearing plants which do not have woody stems and die down to the ground after flowering”. The Old Cemetery, mainly due to the strimming regime, has a very big selection on display.