Burnham Beeches is a stunning place, especially on a sunny day and one of the best WPP sites. A real pleasure to spend the day in detailed discussions about all things wood pasture and AVTs with City of London and Savernake-Based Forestry England & NE colleagues.
Because it’s Tuesday. Fantastic Holm Oak, Bishops Palace Gardens, Chichester. Strapped with an iron band at some point, now being subsumed into the trunk. Probably not what we’d do now, temporary strapping renewed periodically might be more like it, but successful on its own terms #thicktrunktuesday
The complexity and beauty of life
Beautiful day out on Wednesday with NE colleagues enthusing about Wood Pasture and Parkland habitat and Veteran trees at Lowther Castle. Here talking about spotting trees with significant decay features & habitat value even when you can’t immediately see it.
I’ve been metaphorically hovering over the delete button for a while but seeing as I’ve not used it for ages perhaps it’s time to commit.
I was lucky enough to have a visit to Harold’s Park Wildland last summer, it was great to see their enthusiasm for nature recovery as well as Nattergal’s innovation around blended finance and use of BNG
1. There have been plenty of debates about whether or not Trump and his circle are fascists. In this column, I argue that the debate solves nothing. What we’re seeing is a reversion to the default state of politics in centralised societies: autocratic tyranny. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Just back home from a super couple of days topping up the inspiration tank at the Citizen Zoo rewilding conference in Cambridge with colleagues and friends. Take home message? Go hard or go home.
Out with Cumbria Lichen and Bryophyte group today, lots of mossing but also some nice trees @rspbengland.bsky.social Haweswater Naddle Forest. The Holly was especially good, 4.57m girth at the base, largest stem 2.07m. Will add it to the ATI later.
Deadwood is vital of course but the most important deadwood / decay habitats are those within still living trees, so in the case of veteran or ancient trees I would intervene if the tree or part of it was at risk. I wouldn’t touch ivy on most other trees though, it’s mostly a wonderful thing.
Fantastic place.
A ‘conceptual roadmap’ to highlight the social-ecological origins and nature of wood-pastures. Each key structural (and functional) feature of the wood-pasture (column 1) is in fact a co-creation between nature (column 2) and people (column 3). A step toward a deeper, integrative understanding.
Ivy can cause issues in the canopies of veteran & ancient trees if it shades tree canopy or its evergreen foliage increases wind-loading on branches, esp in winter. In the vast majority of cases though any negatives are nullified by the vast pollen & nectar resources it provides for inverts.
Winter walk around @nationaltrust.bsky.social Fellbrigg the other day, some fabulous trees!
