Trees are (almost) immortal

According to the website of Kew Gardens, in the great hurricane, on 16 October 1987, the whole root plate of the Turner's Oak, one of the oldest trees there, lifted and settled back in the ground. This appeared to rejuvenate it, as it was showing signs of stress and decline due to compaction of the root plate from the many people who take shelter under the broad evergreen crown.

I quote this, because it's so common to find a belief that trees are fragile and easily killed or damaged.  Actually, the reverse is true.  Our forefathers did not burn down the wildwood which covered these islands, because wood in a temperate climate is almost impossible to burn where it stands.  A dead tree - and here is one, in Syon Park - may still stand for a hundred years or more without posing any threat to passers by - and, incidentally, providing excellent habitat for birds such as owls, for insects and fungi.

But too many trees are being chopped down now because they are dead or dangerous, allegedly.  You can only feel a desperate sympathy for the child killed by a falling beech bough a week or so ago - but that's news because its astronomically rare.

This stump, for example, belongs to a fine mature tree in Chiswick House gardens; its hard to see what is wrong with it - the wood is absolutely solid and hard right to the very centre.  Remember, it takes 10 minutes to remove such a tree in the name of health and safety - one contractor told me he had been instructed to remove certain trees in the park merely because branches overhung the paths! - but a hundred or two hundred years to regrow it.  You and I will never see a mature tree here.

But trees are extraordinarily resilient - they can be pollarded and coppiced, and keep producing pretty much for ever.  Elms are even now, in some places, regrowing from stumps left by the Dutch Elm Disease fellings.  Whole hedges of elm were single clones, regenerating and suckering indefinetely.

This willow by the Thames, for example, is pretty badly beaten up - it's been sawn off about ten feet from the ground, and a major branch has been torn out by a storm.  But, its growing, ever upwards, like a train, as the next picture shows.

Or - one photograph down - the stump in Turnham Green, which has some heartrot, which is quite normal, but is solid wood in a thick ring of many inches width.  But it looks very dead, a victim of local council chainsaws.

But the growth of a tree comes from a narrow band of tissue beneath the bark, the cambium.  This grows woody xylem on the inside, strenghtening and thickening the trunk - and phloem on the outside, the veins and living pulse of the tree.  And in this trunk, the cambium has not given up, not nohow.

This is amazing life and vigour, and if the local authority vandals stay away, this will become a tree again. If you want to read about trees in a British landscape, Oliver Rackham's many books - covering the whole range from the popular to the academic - are unsurpassed.  And if you want to know how trees work, and they are wonderfully complex and surprising organisms, Roland Ennos has a small, very readable book just called Trees for the interested non-specialist. 

And trees have one thing in common with zebras - they might not exist! But that's a story for another day.

Comments

[lindsay]

Teresa - what a lovely story - at first! I thought it was a fairy tale, and then it turned out to be a horror story! But thank you for sharing it with us - and find some good trees soon!

[Teresa]

Hello, I have just started reading your journal having 'popped' over from Cornflower's site. I am usually cheered up by reading journals but this morning you have reminded me of the poplar tree between my house and next door. This tree was blown over in the '87 storm and regenerated itself, sending up four new 'trees' from its prone trunk. These were enormous and the leaves made a wonderful, soothing rustling sound. The light and shadows danced in my sitting room and provided privacy both upstairs and down. I can barely go on, this year they were cut down because the Insurers of our property said that they had caused cracks in our house. I'd rather have the company of those trees than the sight of the house next door but thankfully the rest of the garden is surrounded by wild trees. Still I'm grateful that I am reminded to enjoy the memory of those tree/branches thanks to the post on this journal.