It was a very silly idea to look at
trees through the year as I should have realised before I started.
They are fine in spring as the buds grow and burst, the new foliage
in softest greens and pinks appears and flowering varieties delight
eyes tired of winter greys. They are lovely in autumn as the leaves
turn – not as gaudy as the maples in Canada although, oddly, our
native “maple”, the sycamore, treats autumn with contempt: its
leaves shrivel, turn a dull and dirty brown and fall to the ground to
lie mourned by none but the busy worms who will shred them and take
them underground to fertilise the soil – for nature is never
wasteful. Then comes winter when they bare their bones and, standing
stark against the sky, weave intricate patterns of light and shade.
That leaves summer: the next one I
should consider and, frankly, the time of the year when trees are at
their least attractive and especially so at midday when the sun is
high in the sky. Thus, as I have just realised, I rarely bother to
take their portraits during the months of June, July and August –
so rarely that I can find only two images taken in summer where I
have chosen to photograph a tree simply for its own sake.
Those who were brought up on Puck of
Pooks Hill by Rudyard Kipling will remember, I am sure, Puck’s
words to the children when they first met (if that is the right
word). “I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak,
Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too,” he says and it is, of
course, true that these three are among the first to return to
Britain after the ice age. This means that they support a huge
variety of wild life.
The oak, of which we have two species,
plays host to nearly three hundred different insects which, in turn,
provide food for birds. Their acorns feed jays and squirrels, who, by
carrying them off and burying them, help the species to spread. Bats
roost in the crevices and hollows: great spotted woodpeckers, spotted
flycatchers, nuthatches and treecreepers nest in holes they find or
make in the trees. Sadly, I can find no good photograph of an oak
taken in the summer so we must move on.
The same comment really applies to the
ash but since it is one of the latest to come into leaf I shall cheat
a little. This picture was taken on the twenty-second of May so
almost qualifies as a summer portrait. It stands in the lane a few
yards from our old house and we fear that it will soon be lost: ash
die back is sweeping the country and it is believed that within a
couple of years we shall lose at least eighty percent of all our ash
trees.
This hawthorn, standing alone on
Brendon Common up on Exmoor where it has to withstand the full force
of the westerly gales that sweep across the tops, is not exactly the
in the sort of place that Puck would have had in mind. It stands
beside a small car park in which we would stop to have lunch or
whatever when we were exploring for the Exmoor books. So it was that
on the last day in May in 2007 after we had eaten lunch (guessing but the
picture is time stamped 13.47) I took its picture.
The Horse Chestnut was introduced here
in the seventeenth century: simply because it is a really splendid
tree. Since it has been here but the blink of an eye in evolutionary
terms, it has yet to attract any serious inhabitants and so does
little for our wildlife – other than small boys who do battle with its fruit called conkers (despite attempts to stop them made by folks who use “health
and safety” to end much that gives fun and pleasure to life).
This week's butterfly is the Peacock, Inachis io. I regret that the butterfly photos are not that good, really. All have been taken 'in passing' when there happened to be a butterfly and I happened to have a camera in my hand. Still, it's a nice picture of the buddleia.
This week's blog dog is called George and he is uncannily like our old rescued lab, Max.
