Tree bits and bobs

This is a little park local to me where there are some lovely old trees.

A sycamore, a plane tree, an oak and two shots of what really truly is a small leaved lime.

It does me good to see them.

These trees are all pretty close to a very busy road. In fact, the park is on a corner between two busy roads. But there it actually feels peaceful. There is a holm oak and a sawtooth oak and maybe a sessile oak. There's a turkey oak down the road and a silver maple just a bit beyond that.

The trees in this park seem happy to me. And I think that this soil has never been farmed with chemicals and has always had at least some trees. It's not like ancient woodland or anything, but it's proper soil. The trees were probably planted when the house was built. Thornton Hall was built to the designs of Leicester architect John Johnson in 1773-1775, by the Fremeaux family. The Thornton family inherited the estate, and sold it to Northampton Borough Council in 1937. That would make these trees 250 years old... and that means the circumference of the trunk at chest height should be 625cm. Really??

Let me check... OK, so:

The girth of a tree can be used to estimate its age, as roughly a tree will increase its girth by 2.5cm in a year. So, simply measure around the trunk of the tree (the girth) at about1m from the ground. Make sure you measure to the nearest centimetre. Then divide the girth by 2.5 to give an age in years.

625 divided by 2.5 equals 250.

Really, though, I don't think any were that big. Well, maybe the sycamore and possibly the plane.

That means all the trees I think of as so old really are just in their 30s, 40s and 50s, as it were. I have known this thing for a while, but not totally taken it on board. I think the tragedy is that I never see trees older than 300 years and few more than 200.

Prior to the park, guess what? More snails on trees!!

Oh, and, rub marks on oaks. This is the third I've noticed. They've all been at a height of between five and six feet. The first I thought was caused by deer antlers but the wound had risen as the tree had grown up. The second I thought was caused by the branch of a nearby tree. But by the third I was thinking it was some other "thing"...

Talking of oaks, one of my favourites at the Reserve has just dropped a huge branch - taking out the branch of a beech along with it.

One more tree thing before I go. I found a nest in an ash by a sheep field. You probably can't see well from the photo, but the nest was lined with wool!