Thursday 9 December 2021

Tree Following December update

For Tree Following this year I'm following one of the several wonderful old silver birch trees in North Merchiston Cemetery in Edinburgh. Crafty Green Boyfriend and I started walking round this cemetery (and the nearby Dalry Cemetery) every day for our #DailyExercise during the first UK lockdown last year. And we're still doing the same walk regularly, though currently I'm spending time visiting other cemeteries as I'm doing wildlife surveys there for the City of Edinburgh Cemeteries department. And in fact over the last month, I seem to have taken exactly no photos of my birch tree! 

Yesterday, however, I visited East Preston Street cemetery, which has several lovely birch trees. So here is a selection of photos of those birches:






one (but only one!) of the trees has a lot of witches' brooms in it. 

 

These growths can be caused by a variety of things, most usually fungi, bacteria or viruses, although they can be caused by insects (you can read more about witches brooms on the Woodland Trust website here).


7 comments:

The Weaver of Grass said...

Beautiful and more or less black and white which makes them more fascinatinf.

Jeff said...

I never knew that growth on a tree limb was called a witches broom. It's a nice term, might end up sometime in a poem.

Hollis said...

I like the gnarly old birch! (4th photo, with grass)

Erika said...

Interesting shape of the trees. It looks like something happened to them when they were young trees.

Lowcarb team member said...

Beautiful photographs, I enjoyed seeing them.

All the best Jan

Crafty Green Poet said...

Hi Weaver, yes it does look quite monochrome.

jeff - yes it is a good term to use in a poem

Hi Hollis, thanks for commenting. I tried to comment on your blog but couldn't! It's the same with several Blogspot blogs, which doesn't make sense as I'm a blogspot blog too! Anyway, I thought your trees growing round the rock were very interesting.

Erika - a lot of silver birches here grow in interesting shapes, it might be due to the wind.

Flighty said...

Lovely trees, and interesting pictures. xx