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Appearing & Disappearing Trees

Thank you, folks, for your kind commiserations about my lovely 'monkey tree' as we kids called it. I assumed then that it was called that because it was often full of happily climbing children acting like monkeys!

I wonder what such a tree was doing in a corporation park in the 1970s anyway? If it's such a slow-growing species it must have been there for years longer than the park itself, which dates from the very late 19th century.

As for oak saplings becoming mature trees and then shrinking, well, it's just the behaviour we are learning to expect!

My garden is full of little saplings which I have grown from seeds, conkers, nuts and so on. At the moment they are in pots but one day they will need their own space, which I can't give them.
An entire forest in waiting!
 
Anonymous said:
Some years ago I read a wonderful article in the Guardian (respectable UK newspaper) about trees which seem to be sometimes there and sometimes not.

There was a country house called something like 'The Pines' which had fine, mature trees beside its front gate, which were on some photos and not on others. I also remember the landmark trees at a crossroads which were described in a guidebook and seen regularly by the writer, only to be suddenly not there when he/she returned from a stay abroad: nobody local remembered them!

I wish I'd cut out the article. I don't remember the writer's name, only that of the illustrator, Sharon Finmark, who Google tells me is a well-established artist.

Does anyone have the faintest idea what I'm talking about?
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Aaah! This is the thread I've been trying to find ever since @escargot mentioned disappearing trees! :willy:

But I can't find anything on an internet search about disappearing trees in the Guardian newspaper, or with that illustrator's name (I've tried several searches)... so I know it's a bit of a stretch, but does anyone know more about this?
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
Aaah! This is the thread I've been trying to find ever since @escargot mentioned disappearing trees! :willy:

But I can't find anything on an internet search about disappearing trees in the Guardian newspaper, or with that illustrator's name (I've tried several searches)... so I know it's a bit of a stretch, but does anyone know more about this?
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Yup, I've often searched for the article. I think it was in a weekend edition.

The way forward is to search online in a public or university library.

That approach paid off for me a few years ago when I rediscovered a fascinating Observer article about 'colon cleansing' holidays. Possibly the funniest thing I'd ever read.
 
I used to visit a small bluebell wood in wales.
There was an ash tree. It had a strange shaped branch. We called it the elbow tree because of this.

Sometimes the tree was there, but other times it didn't seem to be. I used to hunt for it. One day I found it somewhere it wasn't meant to be.

I wondered if it was the tree or the paths that were moving.

It was a very strange place, tiny, but easy to get lost in.
 
My regular bike ride route takes me past the site of the Monkey Tree that was taken down several decades ago, soon after I fell out of it and wrecked my face. I always look over towards the spot just in case it's come back.
 
hunck said:
A week in Bognor with your arse in the air & a hosepipe. Luxury.
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It was much further afield than that, like Bali or somewhere.

Photo highlights include people holding up large plastic sieves containing the last shreds of the contents of their intestines.

One bloke was astonished during one of his evacuations to hear a thud in the bowl which turned out to be a marble he'd swallowed as a child.
 
Cult_of_Mana said:
Some years back, after one of the freak storms that swept across Britain, a very large tree near to where I live was toppled. This tree must have been at least 30 feet high, had a huge canopy and must have also had quite an extensive root system. Unfortunately I can't remember the species. It may have been a Maple. It was a real beauty anyway. In due course it was cleared away as were other trees that were damaged to the extent that they were no longer safe. However the strange thing about this particular tree was that it was removed in such a way as to remove any trace of it ever having being there! I used to pass this tree every day. I still pass the same spot now. Not a twig or leaf was left behind. The ground was perfectly covered with grass that looked the same as the grass growing several metres away. If the root ball had been removed, the hole must have been so perfectly filled that no subsidence has occured to this day. I saw the tree when it was standing and when it had fallen (I saw the roots!). When it was taken away it was as though a large mature tree had never stood on that site.
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The Teenager likes it if I walk to school with her on my days off, and we have a regular route through the neighbourhood. Back before lockdown, we were just passing one particular spot when I suddenly realised that the tall conifer that normally stood there had gone. There would only have been about 3 days between trips, and when I looked back at the verge, you could see that the ground had been disturbed - there was soil there rather than grass - but no stump, no roots, nothing to say that this had been a 10-year-old-plus tree the previous week.

To be fair, it had been planted about 8 feet in front of somebody's front window, so I'm not surprised they wanted it gone, but it was that moment of realising, "Hang on, something big is missing here!"
 
bugmum said:
The Teenager likes it if I walk to school with her on my days off, and we have a regular route through the neighbourhood. Back before lockdown, we were just passing one particular spot when I suddenly realised that the tall conifer that normally stood there had gone. There would only have been about 3 days between trips, and when I looked back at the verge, you could see that the ground had been disturbed - there was soil there rather than grass - but no stump, no roots, nothing to say that this had been a 10-year-old-plus tree the previous week.

To be fair, it had been planted about 8 feet in front of somebody's front window, so I'm not surprised they wanted it gone, but it was that moment of realising, "Hang on, something big is missing here!"
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On a corner with a big grass verge near 'ere there was a really huge tree, possibly a lime, which cast a shadow over the nearby OAPs' bungalows for most of the day.

I used to think 'That's too big!' and think it should be, if not felled, at least heavily trimmed.

Last autumn workers came and cut it down completely, which I thought a shame. Now there's not even a stump, just a patch of soil.

It's still on Google Maps so here's a snap of it on there.
I must have been concentrating on the big tree all that time because I don't remember the other nearby ones!

big tree.jpg
 
Remember the clip on It'll Be Alright On The Night when a chap wanted to plant tree in a village, but couldn't find where the last one was he planted ? " We could ask at the Post Office - I met the gentleman twice, once in '63 and once in '70 and he might have noticed which way I went"

 
Bad Bungle said:
Remember the clip on It'll Be Alright On The Night when a chap wanted to plant tree in a village, but couldn't find where the last one was he planted ? " We could ask at the Post Office - I met the gentleman twice, once in '63 and once in '70 and he might have noticed which way I went"

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He hadn't lost a tree, he'd lost a whole village! :rollingw:
 
escargot said:
There was a huge monkey puzzle tree at our local park on which all the kids played happily. One day I fell out of it on my face and broke my nose. (I went home in great pain and was punished for climbing- I was a girl, you see!)

As I wasn't taken to a doctor, and the broken nose only became apparent after some appalling facial swelling went down, nobody outside my friends and family knew about this accident. But I was certain it was my fault when I heard that the tree had been cut down some weeks later, and when I could bring myself to visit the spot, there was no trace at all of it.

I sometimes walk past and still miss that tree.
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The tree I fell out of was most likely actually a banyan. It was known locally as the 'Monkey Tree' which is probably why I thought it was a monkey puzzle tree.

Here's a respectable How Stuff Works web page about them -
The Mighty Banyan Tree Can 'Walk' and Live for Centuries

Seems the tree can spread out through its roots into the area around it, creating a little forest.

The mystery of the felling of our treasured Monkey Tree is solved: I reckon it was too close to the road behind the fence and might have started digging it up.

I will ask on our local Facebook page where I will do doubt be told by flat-capped amateur historians that no such tree existed.
 
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