Tree Following: November

A baton-change has occurred for the tree-following host. Due to technical complications, Lucy at Loose and Leafy has handed over to Pat of The Squirrellbasket. An intriguing image, a squirrel with a basket. I’ve long thought that when squirrels stand up and stare at you, with their little paws held at chest height, they look like they should be holding a handbag!

In my October observations, I noticed that the foliage of ‘my tree’ were still mostly green, and attached. Yesterday, when I took my pictures, all the leaves were yellow and the canopy approximately three-quarters obliterated.

What a difference a month makes. I doubt it will take another four weeks for the rest of the leaves to disperse; with the winds that have been blustering today, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all ripped from the tree by the end of the weekend.

And with the ridiculously mild temperatures we’ve been having in London, the weeds are emerging with a fresh green more suited to spring. Here, Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) pokes through the leaf detritus.

As the ecological quiet of winter approaches, I wonder if there will be much to observe in December. We shall see. Until next time…

Tree Following: October

Last month, I missed the deadline for tree following with Loose and Leafy. Well, not this time!

From  a distance, the tree I am ‘following’ looks like it is still green in canopy but a closer inspection shows another hue is slowly taking hold.. Not as fierce an autumn colour as other Acers such as the Japanese Maples, which flame up in oranges and crimsons, Sycamore takes on butter tones.

It will be interesting to see how long this tree takes to shed all its leaves – Cherries are very quick, I’ve noticed, whereas London Plane trees can take up to three months to dump their foliage. Think about it.. that’s quarter of a year!!

Until next time, Tree Followers….

Tree Following: September

OOoops! Tree following time came round again, and I missed the slot to connect with all the other tree followers on the Loose and Leafy blog. Thought yesterday was the 14th, and by the time I’d realised, it was too late to go and take pictures. Still, here is my September update, for anyone who is interested..

The weather is getting autumnal – rainy, with cool nights, and some spells of warm (but not hot) sunshine. The canopy of this sycamore I’m following is still decidedly green though there are a couple of butter coloured leaves on the ground. This is in contrast to the Acer I can see looking out of my window now is strongly tinged with yellow and orange. 

With all this extra moisture, the Ear Fungus is listening out again; it was last seen in a fresh state in February and March..

And the first of the seeds are coming down – though, as I mentioned in May, I didn’t spot any flowers on this particular tree, so I guess this half-helicopter twirled in from another tree. I like the contrast between the verdant seed end and the sere brown of the wing. I don’t usually see this transition stage between fresh and dry of the samara (or helicopter), so it was a definite photo opportunity.

 October will no doubt bring more obvious changes, and I promise not to miss the link next time!

Tree Following: August

The end of summer is beginning, and it is only the middle of August! Some would say it never really started but on Parkland Walk yesterday, when visiting the sycamore I am “following”, I noticed senescent leaves were lying around. Maybe the dry months London has experienced has influenced this (though it’s been rainy in the past few days).

A new observation is the onset of Tar Spot, Rhytisima acerinum. This would have started in spring, but has only become obvious now.  There doesn’t appear to be much of it. I wonder if the powdery mildew I noted in June’s post was actually the development of this fungal infection. Tar Spot can cause early leaf fall, but the leaves I’ve seen scattered around don’t bear any of the blotches typical of this pathogen, so I’m not so sure it’s the reason for the discarded foliage. For those of you who like crisp, clear images, I wasn’t going to include this photo.. but I kinda liked the impressionism of it!

Anything else to report? Well, there is new graffiti on the new graffiti, but I won’t give the vandals any credence by taking any photographs because it’s mindless, insulting stuff. There’s also a bit of damage to the exposed roots, and the wounds look fresh. I suspect this is an extension of the vandalism; somebody idly chipping away at the bark with a sharp object. What else will this remarkable tree have to put up with..?

More next time… and other trees to look up on the Loose and Leafy blog.

Tree Following: July

I visited my weed tree a few days ago, before the onset of rain. It’s been very dry in London for the past few weeks, and the earth around this sycamore is parched and dusty. Even the weeds have died off..

                        No Weeds

On the tree itself, much seemed the same.. until I spotted red protrusions on some of the leaves. I had to clamber into the fork of the multi-stem to get photo. I tended to call these nail galls before, but actually those are more pointy and appear on lime trees, hence their Latin name Eriophyes tiliae. The ones on sycamore are Aceria macroryncha. The galls are caused by mites which feed on the fresh leaves, and each mite can stimulate a number of galls to be produced. In May, the mites will lay eggs into the galls, and the growing larvae will feed on the the lining of the galls. Having only known that these galls were caused by mites, I didn’t know anything about the lifecycle and behaviour before. Now I know, I’ll have a closer look at these galls to see if I can spot the small holes fringed with hairs on the underside of the leaves, through which the mites gain access to the galls to lay their eggs.

Aceria macrorhyncha mite galls

I’ll be keeping an eye open for the development of Tar Spot, a fungal disease which affects Sycamores in London. As yet, I’ve seen no sign on this tree.

If you haven’t already visited the Loose and Leafy blog, head over there for more tree following links.

Tree Following: June

The time has once again come round to record my observations about the tree I’m following. The most dramatic change is the new graffiti. The first time I saw this tree, the exposed roots had been spray painted, but that gradually faded.. In the past month, someone has decided the exposed ravel of roots weren’t fabulous enough, and embellished them. I’ve written about my distaste for this kind of graffiti previously (see the post dated 8th September 2014 entitled Crocodile in a Copse) The weeds that grew in the pockets have all been killed off.. Mind you, it’s been dry these past few weeks, and the Cow Parsley that grows a handspan from the Sycamore’s base is looking very dessicated now.

Something else I noticed was the loss of a limb. I might’ve overlooked this were it not for the brightness of the, as yet, unweathered scar. This had been a dead limb. Perhaps the graffiti vandal had grabbed on to it in a moment of disturbed balance. The branch was nowhere to be seen. As this old railway line is popular with dog-walkers, I wouldn’t be surprised if a dog had dragged it off in joy.

As for the leaves, their greenness has deepened, and some kind of powdery mildew is taking hold..

For more tree following, go over to Loose and Leafy. There are 35 of us sharing our observations. Until next time..

Tree Following: May

The canopy has started encroaching the view of the sky, and the feeling along this stretch of Parkland Walk becomes more tunnel-like, befitting an old railway line. What is “my weed tree” up to?

The leaves are out, and are that vibrant, luminous green of the newly emerged… but curiously, there are no flowers yet. I’ve seen other Sycamores dangling their pendulous inflorescences, but not this one. At least not that I could spot.

At its roots, some of the wildflowers have filled out, like the Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), but the Speedwells are diminishing.

Now, what was it I thought that umbellifer was? Erm… well, it was wrong! Now that it’s flowering, I can tell it is Cow Parsley. (Anthriscus sylvestris). Of course! Since my erroneous guess, I’ve been given the BSBI (Botanical Society for the British Isles) handbook on umbellifers of the British Isles. Next time, I should know better!

There are also saplings that have nestled into the base of this tree – about four or five of another janitor tree, the Ash, with keys that whirl about in autumn like the Sycamore’s. But that is for later post. Can you spot the Oak seedling masquerading as Fraxinus?

Until next time……………….

Thanks, as always, to Lucy at Loose and Leafy for organising this tree following lark.

Tree Following: April

Just when I thought the tree I’m following wasn’t doing anything, still snoozing the winter off, it went and burst into bud while I wasn’t looking! I checked on this tree on the 8th, and I’m sure the buds were still tightly closed. Now, some leaves have opened already, and I’ve realised they’re not quite all “up there” as I’d panicked about in my last post….

… Some are still in vibrant green bud…

And there I was thinking this was going to be another post about the wild flowers hanging about beneath the canopy…

These yellow delights are Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria). Of course, they’re only delightful when you don’t have to weed them out, as I have had to do recently. Then they are tenacious, stubborn little upstarts!

But I have left this tree following post to the last minute, and the portal at Loose and Leafy where I can share this is shutting down around about now, so no time for any other thoughts…

 

 

Tree Following: March

There is a spring in Nature’s step: the sun is like a daffodil in the sky (oh yes it is!) and the earth is fuzzing up with weeds. So what’s new with the ‘weed tree’ I’m following?

Well, annoyingly, I’ve chosen a tree whose leaves are all ‘up there’. I was too entranced by the exposed root system to really consider that there were no low-down branches on which I could observe bud burst. Such vernal activity is not going to have the details described in as much depth as I’ve read about in other tree-following posts. Hey ho.. With its multi stems and sparse side growth, this tree resembles a mature coppice tree, one whose cutting cycle has been abandoned so that the shoots have thickened into trunks. Sycamore is ideal for coppicing: the regrowth is rapid and can be harvested again after just eight years. The wood is superb for kitchen utensils as it has a fine grain which is easily cleaned, and it has no odour or toxins that might taint food. Over in Wales, it is favoured for lovespoons.

Snail trails on tree trunks. Look closely..

What a roundabout way of saying “I can’t really tell you what the buds are doing”! What I can tell you is that the molluscs are awake and roaming. There are snail trails heading straight up the trunks so far I had to crane my neck to look for their terminals, but there were no ends in sight. I’m guessing these are adventurous snails rather than slugs as I have a vague recollection of reading that snails will travel to greater heights. Whatever they are, they’ve investigated the Jelly Ear fungus.. See the slime silver?

Jelly Ear fungi with snail slime

There is more of the fungi on other parts of the tree which looks fresher..

I had a closer peek at the white-mouldy-looking fungus on the underside  of a sideways-leaning trunk. The colours are all 1970s wallpaper!

The weeds are becoming more identifiable – at just the leaf-seed stage, I didn’t recognise this as a Speedwell. I’ll have to wait until it flowers before I can figure out what Veronica it is..

As for Umbellifers.. they’re difficult even when they’re afroth with blossom! Puzzling through my new, super-dooper, more in-depth wildflower book, I’m having a wild guess that this is.. should I embarrass myself by saying? I’m surely wrong! Okay, Burnet Saxifrage.. I reserve the right to change my mind!

Unsurprisingly, there are sycamore seedlings sprouting from their ‘helicopters’. This one didn’t fly very far from the tree, having crash-landed in a crook between the stems..

Sycamore seedling

Something I didn’t notice last time was this fragment of glass embedded in the bark  – of course I tried to prise it out! It has the shape of a rose thorn..

Rose thorn piece of glass

If you haven’t arrived at this post via Loose and Leafy, and are interested in the minutiae of trees, go to the tree following page on said website, and you’ll find lots of us arboreal stalkers!

 Until next time…

Tree Following: February

At last. I’ve picked a tree to follow for the Loose and Leafy inspired phenomena. I opted for an unusual individual. Not because others are unworthy of comment or observation but because, in my typical dithering way, I simply couldn’t decide on which plain one to follow. All trees are interesting to me, and I’d want to follow them all!

So here it is. Hated by many conservationists as a weed, the sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus). This one lives in Parkland Walk, a Local Nature Reserve which is mostly comprised of secondary woodland along an old railway. Leaves on the line are no longer a worry here. Good thing too – British Rail’s complaint of “the wrong sort of leaves on the line” in autumn were those of yes, you’ve guessed it, the sycamore (its leaf litter rots down to a mucilaginous sludge, causing problems for trains and schedules).

The first thing about this particular sycamore that grabs the attention is the root system which is partly retained by bricks. These are the remains of a building of some sort, possibly a signal man’s hut. Another portion of the roots is exposed in the way much beloved of the Picturesque movement, all gnarly and entwined. The tracework of these roots would make perfect planting pockets if in a garden. I can imagine primroses peeping out of them. Instead, there is the odd blade of grass and other seedlings which I can’t yet identify…

 …and the tubular webs of Amauralis spiders…

A good gander around the rest of the tree reveals features that could easily be overlooked. The flubbery Jelly Ear fungus…

…and the perforations of dead wood.

From the other side of the tree, upslope, can be seen the bright green of both moss…

 

..and graffiti.

Whatever the angle, I’m looking forward to a year with this ‘weed tree’. Thanks to Lucy at Loose and Leafy for this wonderful idea.