Trees Please Me

A wren's nest formed between two upright planks leaning against my compost toilet. The mother used to pop out whenever I went to the loo and hop about petrified I'd go after her chicks

As I labour in my vegetable garden of delights I am surrounded by trees, many of which are currently displaying an autumnal feast for the eyes. In the recent sunshine the golds, browns and reds made a vivid display on the hillsides and riversides and of course are strewing their leaves everywhere including on my veg patch, providing new and exciting places for slugs to hide.

Trees on the north side of my veg patch...

... and the south

The six acres I own host a wide variety of tree species, both broadleaves and conifers. Some, particularly the conifers, have been planted deliberately - the steep bank below the road has lots of tall spruce, fir and larch, there's a long narrow plantation of young-ish Scot's pine, and there are a good number of Christmas trees dotted about, some way too big now to fit in your living room (unless you're the Queen.)

Most of the broadleaves however appear to be naturally self-seeded, with the river hosting some majestic examples of sessile oak, small-leaved lime, birch, and hazel, clinging precariously to the high crumbling bank above the water as ivy curls up their trunks. Other species living here are beech, ash, rowan, elder, crab apple, hawthorn, blackthorn, holly, goat willow and aspen. All these are native species, they've been growing in Britain since the last Ice Age. There may be others here - I'm still learning to identify them. I feel in awe to be living amongst such a diversity of treelife when much of the surrounding forests are monoculture plantations of larch or Sitka spruce.

The view from the top of a hill near me. The dark green patches are conifer plantations. I fought through one to reach the top of this hill.

Yet there's a real threat to British trees. Our most common tree, the oak, is susceptible to the scarily-named Acute Oak Decline which has been lurking in SE England since the 1980's and is still not well understood. More worryingly perhaps the third most common, the ash, could be wiped out by a fungus causing Chalara Ash Dieback which is spreading rapidly across the country. Japanese larch, a very widely planted forestry tree, is being decimated by a fungus-like pathogen labouring under the name Phytophthora ramorum.

And you may have seen in the news that gin drinkers are upset because the junipers of Scotland and the north of England that provide the unique berries that flavour the drink are being ravaged by Phytophthora austrocedri, a pathogen that arrived from Argentina in 2011 (the only other place it's known to exist.) I'd hope a few non-gin-drinkers will also find the news troubling. The juniper is one of only three native conifers on this island.

The Lantern Parade in Machynlleth last Saturday

Not to mention the nine other tree diseases the Forestry Commission puts in its Top Tree Diseases list which variously infect beech, plane, cypress, pine, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut, elm and alder, to name but a few. And the reason for all these diseases appearing relatively recently? You got it. Us. People bringing in live plants from abroad. It just takes one to be infected. So far at least, my trees seem healthy enough. It would be a shame to lose them after I've just got to know them.