Still no rain in Pop’s Wood so that must be about 6 – 8 weeks now. The trees seem to be coping with the combination of the dry and very warm weather which I find amazing. Pop’s wood is on a sloping site and so any water must inevitably run off down the slope, with no fresh rainfall to replenish what has run downhill you would imagine that the higher ground is by now becoming dryer and dryer. I guess only time will tell if there has been any real damage to the trees’ general health once we have been through the autumn and winter. If there has been structural damage or weaknesses set up in the surrounding ground or tree root systems then the stronger winds in autumn may prove hard to resist and maybe we will see some trees blown over. Hopefully not.
I was having a closer look at the cherry plum trees this week. It is a strange set up. In a very dense clump at the top of the wood is a group of say half a dozen cherry plum trees. These trees are bushy trees and though apparently quite healthy on closer inspection it becomes clear that a lot of the spread of the clump is due to a number of the larger trees having fallen over in recent years. These fallen trees have remained intact with their root systems still partially attached to the ground and so have survived the fall. The new growth has sprouted out vertically from these horizontal branches rather like a laid hawthorn hedge. So a group of trees that would ordinarily only take up say 200 ft² now sprawls out over a much larger are of say 1000 ft². You could reasonably argue that this is an inefficient use of the land and you would be right. However, a clear advantage of having them laying flat is that the edible fruit is very easy to pick!
Having said that the trees are almost bare this year. This maybe as a result of the dry weather but I think that it is one of those fallow years following what appeared to be a bumper crop last year. Comparison is shown below; last year’s crop to this year’s growth.
I said earlier that the trees seem to be surviving well one of the cherry plums has suffered a broken stem which is only evident through the dead and drying leaves that protrude through the green canopy. Not sure what would have caused this as there hasn’t been any particularly strong winds and anyway the tree is in a relatively sheltered position. The breakage is about 20 feet above the ground and is in a stem of about 4″ diameter. This could well have been a diseased part of the tree or could be an indicator of the lack of water causing distress. Or maybe a combination of the two, in an already diseased section of the tree further stress caused by lack of water could well lead to a failure. One to watch out for as the summer progresses.
Woodworm. You usually think of woodworm being a pest that lives in houses and attacks indoor furniture in particular period pieces from an earlier age. However the woodworm, which is actually a beetle, evolved from a woodland setting where they eat their way through the dead wood on the forest floor. They generally prefer that the wood they inhabit and eat has a higher moisture content than generally exists nowadays in modern dried timber and our centrally heated homes so they are less of a problem nowadays. However, in days gone by people struggled to heat their homes with large stately homes being notoriously hard to heat. These indoor spaces and the air dried wood had suitable moisture levels and temperatures for the woodworm beetle to flourish hence the prevalence of them in period furniture.
So here are a couple of pictures of the beetle in Pop’s Wood. The picture above shows a piece of sycamore that has been left on the ground and boy are those beetles making them selves at home. The lighter markings are piles of sawdust caused by the larvae, which was laid into the top layers of the wood, pupating and hatching as beetles and boring their way out. These then breed, lay eggs, and repeat the process causing further damage. The summer is the time for the larvae to hatch and so there is a lot of activity in those apparently dead pieces of wood. Great time to be a green woodpecker that ground feeds and must be gorging themselves at this time of year.
More next time………..
Tim Burr 