A tree a day for a year

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in nature, nature photography, trees

Tags

a tree a day, photography project, trees

I love trees! Not only are they beautiful to look at, trees provide food and shelter for humans and for wildlife; trees release oxygen and clean our air by absorbing greenhouse gases; trees help reduce flooding and water pollution, and stabilise ground at risk of erosion; trees are the source of many medicines; trees provide income for a huge number of the world’s people; and so much more.

151223 year of trees (1)

Each year I like to set myself a photographic challenge and, in 2015, my project has been to photograph a tree (or trees) every day for the whole year. These are two of those images.

151223 year of trees (2)

Spending so much time with trees this year has brought me enormous pleasure. The Japanese have a term for walking in the woods that I particularly like – it’s shinrin yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’. I think the world would be a much better place if we all bathed regularly in forests.

Lovin’ the lichen

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in lichen, nature, nature photography, trees

≈ 2 Comments

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algae, copper beech trees, lichen, winter

Bordering the recreation grounds opposite where I live is a magnificent long line of copper beech trees. Their leaves provide a glorious show of colour in spring, summer and autumn but the trees look rather barren during the winter months. However, if you look closer, you’ll find their bark is alive with algae, mosses and lichens, and the colours, shapes and patterns of these small organisms are, indeed, many and splendid.

151217 lichen on copper beech (2)

A lichen is a complicated entity – it is not actually one single organism but rather a fungus living in a symbiotic relationship with a photosynthetic partner, which might be a green alga or a cyanobacterium or both. The fungus is the farmer and the alga and/or bacterium produce/s the food it survives on.

151217 lichen on copper beech (1)

Next time you see a lichen, look closer and be amazed!

151217 lichen on copper beech (3)

Hungry trees

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in nature, trees

≈ 2 Comments

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cemetery, hungry trees, post box, tree swallowing post box, trees devouring objects, urn wedged in trees

Trees are rooted in the earth. Except for their upward and outward growth, they are basically static – unless they’re blown over or chopped down, they’re not going anywhere. So, if humans are crazy enough to put an object close to a growing tree, sooner or later the tree will begin to engulf that object. All around the world, hungry trees are consuming fences and posts, signs and park benches, gravestones, bicycles and even cars.

hungry tree

I’ve only been in Cardiff a short while, but already I’ve discovered two hungry trees. One is slowly but surely wrapping itself around a post box in my street. And not just any post box – this tree has style. It’s consuming a Grade II-listed Victorian post box that was probably erected around 1900. Not surprisingly, the post box has now been decommissioned.

hungry tree 1

My other hungry tree is growing in the local cemetery and it has an urn in its clutches. Perhaps the urn toppled off its pillar on a neighbouring grave, perhaps a vandal knocked it off, and it fell between some saplings. Whatever happened, it’s now wedged tight and, as the saplings grow, the urn is raised higher and higher above the ground.

So, stay alert! You might well have hungry trees in your neighbourhood.

hungry tree 2