Thursday 28 March 2013

Heritage Trees of Scotland

This beautiful book produced by the Forestry Commission Scotland and the Tree Council introduces the reader to the heritage trees that can be found in Scotland.

Heritage trees are described as 'old trees, wide trees, tall trees, rare trees, 'weird and wonderful' trees and trees with historical and cultural significance.' Scotland has a particularly large number of such trees, as the reader will find!

The book takes us on a tour of Scotland, introducing us to the trees one by one. Each tree is introduced with at least one full colour photo, text describing its appearance, significance and age and details of its location.

The trees include the yew in Colinton, Edinburgh that the writer Robert Louis Stevenson played in when he was young, the birks (birches) of Aberfeldy immortalised by the poet Robert Burns in his poem 'The Birks o' Aberfeldy' and the Corstorphine Sycamore, immortalised in my poem!

I was interested to see how many of these trees are non-natuve, there are several heritage sycamores and several heritage conifers of species introduced from the USA (Including a monster red cedar in Aberfeldy)..

It's a wonderful book, adelight to browse through for anyone interested in trees and the Scottish landscape, and possibly an inspiration for day trips to preciously unexplored parts of the country!

Heritage Trees of Scotland published by The Forestry Commission and Tree Council (follow the link for sample pages)

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more!

5 comments:

Little Miss Titch said...

sounds Lovely,we have a beautiful Country don't we?xx Speedy's mum

Ms Sparrow said...

Heritage trees--what a lovely idea!

Optimistic Existentialist said...

The more I read your blog the more I want to visit Ireland and Scotland someday. Have a great Easter weekend :)

Hannah Stephenson said...

I love learning about heritage trees. We have some here in our local park...sometimes they hang signs around them, listing their age (so fun).

RG said...

This kind of book is so inspiring!