TREE FOLLOWING - I'VE FOUND MY TREE

Only after taking this picture of the tree did I realise how close
its silhouette is to the Tree Following emblem.

The morning was sunny. I set out to photograph my tree. I arrived. The sky had clouded over. The world was in black and white. Ok. We'll go with this. We'll have a proper silhouette.

I've chosen my tree with my heart rather than my head. I don't know what kind of tree it is. I can't reach its branches. I can't reach its needles. There's no interesting undergrowth around it. It's not in a photogenic location. I can't remember any bird sitting in it. It's falling to bits. It may have to be felled before the end of the year.

It may have to be felled . . . that clinches it. This may be the last chance we'll have to get to know it. There are many of the same in the area. I'd guess they were planted at roughly the same time. They are in parks and in gardens. This one is on a patch of grass in front of a block of flats.

Many near it have already been chopped down. Their branches die and have to be lopped. Eventually there will be none left. Indeed, I reported this tree myself a few years ago when a large branch broke away after a high wind. It didn't fall; it dangled. It could have landed on something. When tree surgeons arrived I was worried they might take out the whole tree. They didn't. (As you can see!)

It's a kind of pine (I think). When you look up into its remaining branches you can see its cones. They are about six inches long, heavy and very dense. A friend has tried to grow a new tree from the seeds of several - never with success.

The needles are long too (about four inches) and grow in bunches. The bark is chunky, irregular and layered. When dry it's grey. When wet its colour is richer - with tints of conkers. There are webs in its fractures - so there must be spiders. It weeps resin.

See the fallen needles leaning against the bark on the left of the picture?
The plant about to flower is Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Above ground, the trunk is supported by what I think of as toes. Alongside them and around the tree there are plants. I hadn't expected plants. I'd expected sparse grass. There were docks and daisies, plantain and chickweed.

Roots have broken the surface.






Although you may not be conscious of it, what you hear when you visit a tree will influence how you relate to it. Trees inspire emotions and emotions are inspired by sound as much as by sight. The only means I have to record sound for the blog is by taking a video. So that's what I've done. It's not exactly action packed but it gives the tree a context; there's a car, a crow, voices, gulls.

Here it is on YouTube - Click!

It's surprising how many plants grow around
the tree despite the spread of its branches.
Daisy (Bellis perennis)

All I need to know now is what kind of tree it is. For the moment, I'm calling it Freda. I don't know why it looks like a Freda. It just does. So, having decided on its name I set out (irrelevantly, I admit!) to find out what 'Freda' means. Maybe 'peaceful ruler' or 'elf-strength' say the baby-name sites. (I'm not always sure whether these meanings are real or made up and my knowledge of mediaeval saxon doesn't exist - does anyone know?) Pottering further through the internet and away from my tree, I found an Elfrida who was Queen consort to Edgar, King of the English; roughly 957 - 975. (It's complicated.) King Edgar? Never heard of him! I know I'm wandering from my tree but they were a 'right lot' in those days and while I've not read this book about her its synopsis on Good Reads gives the idea! Indeed Elfrida would have made a good founding member for the League of Wicked Stepmothers. She had one of her step-sons murdered at Corfe Castle so - Dorset! Strength! Peace! Freda it is! It's an old fashioned name. If we ignore less pleasant associations, perhaps it's due for a come-back.

Are you following a tree?

All photographs in this post were taken on March 5th 2014

I'm Following a Tree

This post is part of the Tree Following project for 2014. To find out more about it, go to the Tree Following Page. Tomorrow (7th March 2014) there will be a Linky box. If you have a post about the tree you are following you will be able to leave its URL there so other readers will be able to find it easily. If you haven't used a linky box before, don't worry. It's all very straightforward and obvious when you see it. If your post isn't ready yet - no matter. The box will stay 'open' for a week.

Easy to remember - open for 7 days from 7th of every month from now on.

Want to join in? Email me at looseandleafy@googlemail.com

P.S. This tree is very tall. I'm no good at guessing heights. Carole at La Fosse has used trigonomtery to measure the height of the chestnut tree she's following. That's beyond me. All I can say is that 'my' tree is very tall but not as tall as hers!

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OH ALRIGHT - THERE ARE FLOWERS TOO!

While bemoaning grey days and bleak economics, one can't pretend that green plants and bright flowers aren't great lifters-of-spirits-ers.

There are the obvious ones for the time of year.

Like blackthorn blossoms that open before their leaves arrive.

And I am specially encouraged by flowers which spring open in city streets. Ones which live there despite the odds. (Or, perhaps it's odd that we don't expect them and sometimes don't see them there.)

March 26th 2013

This flower is growing at the top of a flight of underpass steps in Bournemouth city centre. (A city with a population of around 168,000.) It's a Speedwell. Maybe a Common Field-Speedwell (Veronica persica) (which can also be called 'Persian Speedwell' - pretty exotic name as well as pretty flower!).  Or it might be a Green Field-Speedwell (Veronica agrestis). Maybe I'll get a definite ID from iSpot?

March 26th 2013

This is the plant the flower is growing from. As you can see, there are quite a few buds waiting to open.

And between the cobbles of speed bumps in a Weymouth housing estate.

March 31st 2013

Common Whitlowgrass (Erophila verna). Each flower takes up about two square millimeters. These are not growing in a busy road - but dustcarts and cars do drive over them. I doubt (though I haven't stood there to check) that anyone (except me and people who've stopped to ask why I'm crawling around in the road) have noticed they are there.

Oh, and why not

March 31st 2013

notice the daisies? These are growing in an un-trampled area of a park. Unsurprisingly un-trampled because there is one basket ball hoop and one five aside goal. Not entirely inspiring when both are for team sports!

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THE UNDERPASS - AN IRREGULAR POST

It's gloomy. It's cold. Shivery cold. We wrap up and rush by. Not stopping to notice the flowers at our feet.

Everything's grey. Traffic lights about the only cheerful sight around.

The highways department - local council - county council . . . don't know! Some department . .  has planted bushes across the bridge. They are thorny and currently leafless with the remnants of red berries here and there. When trees on the left come into leaf, the atmosphere of the place will change.

Cars and lorries and buses and bikes cross the pedestrian underpass.

If we want to cross, we must walk down. Past the bushes the council has put there to hold up the bank. Where ivy and teasels and cleavers and seedlings have found places to go.

Through the tunnel - grass at the other side.

Where there are thistles and things. (This picture is clickable. As well as thistles and grass and moss I've found in it buttercup and groundsel, daisies and what may be dead-nettles, a long leafed plant that might be plantain but I'm not sure. There's clover and possibly pimpernel - or maybe the beginning of cleavers. And several seedlings of something. There may be more. If you find them - say!)

There are daisies in the grass.

I mention  grass - but there are lots of other plants too.

And grass growing on the wall.

This lichen may be Lecanora campestris.

Lichen too.

The black cushions in white cups are its 'fruiting bodies'.

It may be dull. It may be February. It may be noisy and trafficy and not exactly scenic - but there's lots going on around town.





(All photos taken on 27th February 2013.)

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I DON'T LIKE FLOWERS

I don't like flowers. They have their place, of course. They look good in vases and there wouldn't be seeds without them. But when I think about what I like to have around me - it's bark and leaves. Between them, it's hard to choose. My first instinct was to plump for leaves. Then I thought about trees in winter. They look just as good as their summer selves so maybe my final, finely tuned decision is in favour of bark. Though I feel uncomfortable with it because leaves and stems are what I like to take photos of and I'm always moved by the little hairs that show up in pictures but which we rarely notice otherwise - and the veins and wrinkles and shapes that we may examine from time to time, or be startled by when the sun shines through them but which, most days, we ignore. (Of course we do. We none of us have time to work through a forest, leaf by leaf.)

It's a funny time of year for flowers round where I live. The burst of spring yellows and blues is over. Alexanders are tipping, as is the Hawthorn (May). Sloes and apples are clearly in place. Indeed, sloes are already their full size - though green. Thus, we have autumn embedded in summer.

Locally, tall, white, umbrels are what catch my eye most. Some are lovely. On others, the individual flowerlets are so densely packed they resemble nothing more than sickly cow pats on sticks; or perhaps white picnic plates.

Rape plants gone wild stand out splendidly from the dull, decaying mess and then there are buttercups - I like buttercups.

And the problem, for me, is exacerbated because I find yellow and white hard to photograph.

White flowers lose definition and yellow glares back so glaringly, images of petals get splodged with horrid white patches.

There are masses of garden bloggers who show white and yellow flowers, apparently without difficulty, but for me it's a labour. And for someone who doesn't even like flowers much, who prefers leaves and stems - it isn't even a labour of love.

So . . . in this post . . . I'm getting it over with. A flower post of white and yellow flowers which took hours to construct because I kept having to go and try again until any showed up at all.

I hope you enjoy it.

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And you might like to tell me (and each other) - are you a flower person or someone who would you prefer to kneel in long grass and peer up at its seed heads against a blue, blue sky?