Woodpeckers are drumming in the woods; frogs are croaking in our pond. The snowdrops are in full bloom, primroses and celandines starting to open; the ranks of the bluebell leaves are assembling. On the bramble stems fresh green is starting to show in the buds contrasting with the holey, dark greeny-brown of last year’s foliage.… Continue reading The magic of spring
Tag: trees
Oxford in the murk now; a warmer murk in future?
Apart from a few flakes we have missed the recent blizzards, much of the high winds while even the flooding of Port Meadow has not been anything out of the ordinary. All the ‘exciting’ weather has been elsewhere in the country. It is fascinating to see how much difference there can be in conditions across… Continue reading Oxford in the murk now; a warmer murk in future?
Something old, something new
The Old Man has been getting about a bit recently, in the last week looking at ancient trees and woods in Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Yorkshire, replanted ancient woodland in Shropshire and Somerset, and extensive new woodland in Hertfordshire. These were mostly fairly brief visits but each raised some interesting questions and challenges in terms of… Continue reading Something old, something new
In the footsteps of the Legions
A long march, a long march, and twenty years behind, but the girl I met at Clusium comes easy to my mind. The above comes from an imagined Legionary marching song, used in a 1950s’ radio adaptation of The Eagle of the Ninth: I was about five but listened with my older brother. Fragments of… Continue reading In the footsteps of the Legions
Is yours a ‘normal’ forest?
Production foresters developed a concept termed the ‘normal forest’ which is simply one in which all age classes for a give rotation length are equally represented by area. So, in theory you could harvest the same extent of woodland each year in perpetuity, as long as it is immediately restocked: i.e if the rotation is… Continue reading Is yours a ‘normal’ forest?
Woodman good, Forester bad?
In folk tales and songs the woodman is generally a good character: he saves Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf. Foresters are a more dubious lot who deserve what they get: in one of the Robin Hood ballads, a group of foresters make fun of the hero and are subsequently slain out of hand;… Continue reading Woodman good, Forester bad?
Forty years ago, a different climate
The past is a foreign country – we really did do things differently then; there were no mobile phones for a start. During much of the twentieth century there was massive planting of trees on peat and other soils with high organic matter, but prior to the 1960s there was not much concern about this… Continue reading Forty years ago, a different climate
How do we get more trees planted?
The past is a foreign country: we might imagine that medieval kings were primarily concerned with affairs of state such as wars, hunting or other courtly pursuits, but firewood supplies?
The Old Man of Wytham 