Trees

A visit to Perthshire to the big hills and big trees made a pleasant break from the sodden byways of the Scottish Borders.

The Falls

The Birks

The Birks of Aberfeldy, immortalised in verse by Burns, provided a pleasant evening stroll.  The air was charged with negative ions from the cascading Falls of Moness, its purity vouched for by the lichens clinging to every ancient tree.   Wood anemones and red squirrels added to the enjoyment.

Being among such splendid trees, there had to be a visit to the Fortingall yew, reputed to be up to five thousand years old.   For years it suffered depredation by souvenir hunters and local children and is now protected in a walled enclosure.  There is a local legend that Pontius Pilate was born here as the offspring of a Roman ambassador and a Pictish woman but it seems a highly unlikely tale.

The Yew

 If its age is a great as recorded, the yew has stood from a time before the Neolithic settlers raised the stone circles that still abound in the surrounding fields.  It was once circled by wolf and bear.  Wild boar would have rooted about in its shade.

It’s a thought.   A living organism that goes on and on, regardless of human existence, oblivious to us except when we come and cut chunks from it or set fire to it as has happened to the yew.   Five thousand years,  hmmm!

I have this little yew in a pot.  I found it growing under one of the apple trees.  It was probably seeded by a thrush having dined on the berries of a mature specimen that grows by the nearby burn.  Thrushes seem to be only birds that eat yew berries - and laburnum seeds - without any harm coming to them.  

  Now, if I can just grow it up a bit, then find a safe spot to plant it out …….and in  7012…..will there be any one here to see it?

On the subject of trees, I’ve been keeping an eye on the oak and the ash coming into leaf.

Oak before the ash, in for a splash

Ash before the oak, in for a soak

At the moment they seem to be neck and neck but I have a feeling the ash is going to draw away in the leafy stakes and we are in for a wet summer.    Experts say it is temperature that controls the sequence with cooler weather favouring the ash and doesn’t predict rainfall.  I hope they are right