The sentinels of Whitehall are greener today
For many years I have stood by the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, watching the crowds.
While the monument designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens is the centrepiece for national mourning, the avenue of London plane trees lining Whitehall make a similarly impressive sight.
During the two-minute silence a shivering wind often stirs the trees, sending leaves drifting to the floor.
Little has changed in this deeply moving ceremony. The monarch places their wreath, Big Ben tolls, and tearful veterans stand ramrod straight.
Little has changed, that is, apart from the trees themselves.
Prof Tim Sparks, an expert in phenology and advisor to the Woodland Trust Nature’s Calendar project, which maps the seasons, has been researching the trees. Trawling through newspaper archives, he has obtained photographs over the decades and discovered a remarkable transformation.
In 1919, when the first two-minute silence was held, the trees were almost totally without leaves. Gradually, they have become increasingly verdant.
Indeed in recent years, as I can attest, sometimes they have hardly started shedding leaves at all.
Some have suggested this is the result of London’s cleaner air, others that the trees are now more mature.
But for Prof Sparks, it confirms something evident up and down the land – autumn is arriving later.
Sunday is forecast to be drizzly and 13C in London. Contrast that to old photographs of Queen Mary bundled in furs on the Foreign Office balcony.
The passing years confirm the increasing drift between our cultural assumptions and what the seasons are actually doing. But of course, at the 11th hour tomorrow, such scientific intrigue pales into insignificance.
Regardless of the weather, we will gather to remember.