All posts tagged: trees

Walkers ‘stunned’ as Sherwood Forest trees chopped down ‘illegally’

Walkers ‘stunned’ as Sherwood Forest trees chopped down ‘illegally’

Published by Sam Flores

Walkers have been left “absolutely stunned” after part of a woodland at the heart of Sherwood Forest was found to have been chopped down when it should not have been. Newark and Sherwood District Council admitted contractors had felled some trees they were not supposed to as part of a long-term project to introduce more native species at Intake Wood in Clipstone. The alleged illegal felling, which is being investigated by the Forestry Commission, has infuriated residents living nearby, who were already angry about the large-scale removal of pine trees. “I’m absolutely stunned. If I had done that as a resident I’d be quite rightly held accountable for that,” said Carl Atkin, who has lived in the area for 17 years. “I’m angry and upset because ultimately they’ve done work they shouldn’t have. They’re completely devastating the landscape. “The contractors chopped down trees illegally and they’ve been allowed four days later to carry on working.” Councillor Paul Peacock, leader of Newark and Sherwood District Council, said the authority was investigating the accidental felling of a …

A statue of Queen Victoria, memorial trees and a swimming pool: Judi Dench’s garden – in eight poignant items | Judi Dench

A statue of Queen Victoria, memorial trees and a swimming pool: Judi Dench’s garden – in eight poignant items | Judi Dench

Published by Sam Flores

A visit to Dame Judi Dench’s garden in Surrey is bittersweet. The 2.4-hectare (six-acre) plot contains enough trees – about 100 – to count as an arboretum. Among them is a carpet of wild garlic and a wildlife pond from which rabbits like to sip. But each of these trees represents someone she knew who has died. As her eyesight has nearly gone, Dench, who features in the latest episode of the Royal Horticulture Society’s new podcast, Roots, navigates her way around the garden via memories and smell. Here, she shares her stories of the garden and discusses the items that mean the most to her. A young oak tree for her husband A tree dedicated to her husband, Michael Williams. Dench will soon plant another to commemorate their wedding anniversary. Photograph: RHS Dench was married to the actor Michael Williams for 30 years before he died of lung cancer in 2001. She is about to plant a young oak tree, sent to her by her daughter, Finty, and her grandson, Sammy, in commemoration of …

‘Travellers’ chop down trees and clear land – angering locals

‘Travellers’ chop down trees and clear land – angering locals

Published by Sam Flores

Residents in Guildford, Surrey, have voiced anger after land on Clay Lane was cleared over Easter, with trees removed and fencing installed. Locals fear an unauthorised traveller site is being created without planning permission. Guildford Borough Council said it is investigating the work as a priority and will take enforcement action if breaches are confirmed, though the legal process could take months. Source link

Fallen trees get new life as midcentury-inspired furnishings in L.A.

Fallen trees get new life as midcentury-inspired furnishings in L.A.

Published by Sam Flores

After a devastating windstorm destroyed more than 1,200 Pasadena trees in 2011, architect Chris Peck spent the next six years gathering fallen trees, milling the trunks into slabs, and storing and drying them in his garage and his friends’ garages while he figured out how to use the wood. At first, he was happy to keep the fallen trees from being cut into stumps, turned into mulch or sent to landfills, even if that meant just selling the wood as lumber. In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles. At the time, Peck was serving on Pasadena’s urban forestry commission, and, as he puts it, there were “trees everywhere,” including a 30-inch oak on San Rafael Avenue that he would later turn into his family’s dining room table. “Working as an architect and engineer in Los Angeles, I’ve often seen trees taken down and wondered why that wood was not utilized as lumber,” Peck says. “The idea of utilizing …

Trees don’t actually grow from the ground, physicists find

Trees don’t actually grow from the ground, physicists find

Published by Jenni Sidey

A willow tree that gained 164 pounds over five years grew in soil that lost less than two ounces. Jan Baptist van Helmont recorded that result in the early 1600s, and the arithmetic was difficult to dismiss. The Flemish scientist had planted a 5-pound sapling in 200 pounds of carefully dried earth, watered it for five years, and then weighed both again. The tree had grown dramatically. The soil had barely changed. The numbers pointed away from the ground. But toward what, exactly, van Helmont could not yet say. The answer was surrounding him the entire time, too diffuse and invisible to measure with the instruments he had. The Flemish scientist had planted a 5-pound sapling in 200 pounds of carefully dried earth. (CREDIT: YouTube / CC BY-SA 4.0) Carbon, Not Minerals The conventional picture of tree growth positions the soil as the primary contributor. Roots reach downward, nutrients travel upward, mass accumulates. That picture is not entirely wrong, but it is wrong in the dimension that matters most. Mineral nutrients absorbed through roots, nitrogen, …

Trees don’t actually grow from the ground, physicists find

Trees don’t actually grow from the ground, scientists find

Published by Jenni Sidey

A willow tree that gained 164 pounds over five years grew in soil that lost less than two ounces. Jan Baptist van Helmont recorded that result in the early 1600s, and the arithmetic was difficult to dismiss. The Flemish scientist had planted a 5-pound sapling in 200 pounds of carefully dried earth, watered it for five years, and then weighed both again. The tree had grown dramatically. The soil had barely changed. The numbers pointed away from the ground. But toward what, exactly, van Helmont could not yet say. The answer was surrounding him the entire time, too diffuse and invisible to measure with the instruments he had. The Flemish scientist had planted a 5-pound sapling in 200 pounds of carefully dried earth. (CREDIT: YouTube / CC BY-SA 4.0) Carbon, Not Minerals The conventional picture of tree growth positions the soil as the primary contributor. Roots reach downward, nutrients travel upward, mass accumulates. That picture is not entirely wrong, but it is wrong in the dimension that matters most. Mineral nutrients absorbed through roots, nitrogen, …

Eurovision for trees reaches its zenith. Will Poland win again? – POLITICO

Eurovision for trees reaches its zenith. Will Poland win again? – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

The organizers of the European Tree of the Year contest, a relatively niche event on the Brussels social calendar, have been grappling with these questions for years. The competition, which started in 2002 as a national event in Czechia before expanding to Europe in 2011, has over the years crowned an Estonian oak that stood in the middle of a football pitch; a lone pine that survived a flood in a Czech village; and a 500-year-old Romanian lime tree that is part of local folk legend. The contest’s last four winners, however, all grew in Poland. “From the beginning, the competition was not about the beauty of the trees, but about the stories and the communities. [But] the last four years, it became difficult because it turned into a competition between nations,” said Petr Skřivánek, who runs the event on behalf of the Environmental Partnership Association, a Czech NGO. Poland’s recent success is largely due to Make Life Harder, the country’s most popular Instagram meme account, which has been promoting the contest to its 1.7 …

When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard review – the Indiana Jones of trees returns | Science and nature books

When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard review – the Indiana Jones of trees returns | Science and nature books

Published by Sam Flores

It’s 2021, and Suzanne Simard is in a police vehicle, being escorted off a protest site in Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, where activists are locked in a standoff with the Teal-Jones Group, an industrial logging company. She decides to give the apprehending officer a piece of her mind – in the way only an earnest Canadian forestry ecologist can. “It takes decades for clearcut forests to stop emitting more carbon than they sequester, and centuries more to recover the sink strength of the original stands,” she tells him. “We don’t have decades for these forests to recover from clearcutting. In the hundreds of years it takes for a forest to mature, our planet could warm upwards of five degrees celsius.” The officer is unmoved. But if you were responsible for one of the nearly 6m views tallied on Simard’s 2016 TED talk, you’ll know it was worth a try: few people can speak about trees with quite as much conviction as Simard. One part Indiana Jones, one part Mister Rogers, she is a Canadian national treasure and global environmental …

Planting a billion trees won’t save the climate, however, the right ones might

Planting a billion trees won’t save the climate, however, the right ones might

Published by Jenni Sidey

The appeal of reforestation is almost intuitive. Trees absorb carbon dioxide. The planet has too much carbon dioxide. Plant more trees, fix the problem. It is the kind of logic that has fuelled commitments from governments, corporations, and international bodies to plant billions, even trillions, of trees in the coming decades. The science, it turns out, is considerably more complicated than that. New research from ETH Zurich, finds that the location of reforestation matters as much as the scale, and in some cases more. Two scenarios differing by 450 million hectares, an area roughly the size of all European Union countries combined, can produce nearly identical cooling effects by the end of the century. Meanwhile, planting forests in the wrong places can actually warm the climate. In some cases, the warming partially or even fully cancels out the carbon benefits. “The fact that we can achieve the same cooling effect with significantly less land shows that where we plant is more important than how much we plant,” said Nora Fahrenbach, a doctoral student at ETH …

The odd ways mammals descend trees and what it means for primate evolution

The odd ways mammals descend trees and what it means for primate evolution

Published by Jenni Sidey

A monkey descending a tree trunk often keeps its head up, moving almost like a cautious climber backing down a ladder. Squirrels and many other mammals, by contrast, tend to go headfirst. That difference turns out to carry clues about how primates evolved their distinctive upright postures. A new comparative analysis of tree-dwelling mammals, published in eLife, examined how animals move down vertical supports such as trunks and vines. The research compared 21 arboreal species, from primates to rodents and marsupials, making it the first broad study to analyze both upward and downward climbing across many mammal groups. The results point to a pattern shaped not just by body size, but by evolutionary history and anatomy. “While not all arboreal mammals traverse narrow terminal branches, they all rely on vertical supports to reach tree canopies,” said lead author Séverine Toussaint of the Center for Research on Paleontology in Paris. “Their ability to safely descend sloping and vertical supports remains important, yet largely understudied.” Two species from the study – a raccoon (Procyon lotor) and mongoose …