Trees (General; Miscellaneous)

[hunck]

Tree of the Year: 'Magnificent' Surrey yew wins vote​

A "magnificent" Surrey yew tree which is thought to be more than 500 years old has been named the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year.

The tree is growing in the grounds of the ruined Waverley Abbey near Farnham.

Tom Reed from the Woodland Trust said: "It is great to see that this magnificent tree has been recognised as Tree of the Year 2022 and the way the tree is rooted within the ruins of the abbey is a great symbol of the fact that our ancient trees are intertwined with other aspects of our cultural heritage."

 

[hunck]

Saving the dragon’s blood: how an island refused to let a legendary tree die out

Long article about the scheme to save unique slow-growing tree on Socotra island.

A unique species on Socotra in Yemen, famed for its bright red resin and umbrella-shaped crown, has been in decline for years. Now islanders are leading efforts to save it

When Keabanni was a child, his great-grandparents told stories of vast forests of dragon’s blood trees. Across the plateau, they said, there were so many trees that you could walk from the shade of one to the shade of another without the sun ever touching you

In recent decades, however, the pressures of human activity and a changing climate have taken their toll. Some scientists predict that the dragon’s blood tree will experience a steep decline in the next 30 to 80 years, and may one day be gone altogether. “The long-term future of this species is not hopeful,” wrote Petr Maděra, a professor of forest botany at Mendel University in the Czech Republic, in a 2019 paper.

Keabanni, however, is not letting the trees go without a fight. For the past 20 years, his Diksam campsite has served as a sort of dragon’s blood conservation headquarters, with a nursery and informal research centre.

Most trees draw water from the soil and up their roots to the leaves; dragon’s blood trees can also do the reverse, taking water from the air and passing it into the soil. Scientists suggest that the unique shape of the dragon’s blood tree is an adaptation to life in its arid environment, allowing the trees to capture moisture from the fog and clouds, a process called horizontal precipitation capture. Researchers estimate that each dragon’s blood tree can inject several times more water into the soil than the local environment captures as rainfall, providing a critical component of the island’s hydrological system.
“One dragon’s blood tree brings a huge amount of water into the system,” says Kay Van Damme, a European researcher at Ghent University in Belgium and Mendel University, who is also the chair of the UK-based volunteer group Friends of Socotra and has worked on the island since the late 1990s. “If you lose a tree, you also lose hundreds of litres of water each year that would otherwise go into the system,” he says.

 

[MrRING]

Firmageddon!
https://news.yahoo.com/firmageddon-researchers-1-1-million-150000577.html

'Firmageddon': Researchers find 1.1 million acres of dead trees in Oregon​

2.5k
Evan Bush
Drought-stricken Oregon saw a historic die-off of fir trees in 2022 that left hillsides once lush with green conifers dotted with patches of red, dead trees.

The damage to fir trees was so significant researchers took to calling the blighted areas “firmageddon” as they flew overhead during aerial surveys that estimated the die-off’s extent.

The surveyors ultimately tallied about 1.1 million acres of Oregon forest with dead firs, the most damage recorded in a single season since surveys began 75 years ago.

Oregon’s dead firs are a visceral example of how drought is reshaping landscapes in Western states that have been experiencing extreme heat conditions. In many areas, these firs might be replaced by more drought-hardy species in the future, reshaping how ecosystems function and changing their character.
Evan Bush
December 11, 2022, 10:00 AM·6 min read


Drought-stricken Oregon saw a historic die-off of fir trees in 2022 that left hillsides once lush with green conifers dotted with patches of red, dead trees.
The damage to fir trees was so significant researchers took to calling the blighted areas “firmageddon” as they flew overhead during aerial surveys that estimated the die-off’s extent.
The surveyors ultimately tallied about 1.1 million acres of Oregon forest with dead firs, the most damage recorded in a single season since surveys began 75 years ago.
Oregon’s dead firs are a visceral example of how drought is reshaping landscapes in Western states that have been experiencing extreme heat conditions. In many areas, these firs might be replaced by more drought-hardy species in the future, reshaping how ecosystems function and changing their character.
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“When I looked at it and crunched the numbers, it was almost twice as bad as far as acres impacted than anything we had previously documented,” said Danny DePinte, an aerial survey program manager for the U.S. Forest Service. “Nature is selecting which trees get to be where during the drought.”
Oregon is known for towering volcanic domes covered by a blanket of conifers that becomes sparse and patchwork on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains before it tucks into the high desert.

The people who know the trees best say there are many signs of problems in Oregon.

“We’re seeing forms of stress in all of our species of trees,” said Christine Buhl, a forest entomologist with the Oregon Department of Forestry. “We just need to shift our expectations of what tree species we can expect to be planted where.”

Researchers have been surveying Pacific Northwest forests by air since 1947. Little about the process has changed during that time, according to Glenn Kohler, an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, which operates the program alongside the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry.

Each summer, small high-wing planes soar about 1,000 feet above the tree canopy at about 100 mph. Trained observers peer outside both sides of the plane, looking for noticeable damage to trees.
Dead trees — conifers that are completely red or orange — are the easiest to spot, but the observers can also pinpoint trees that are barren of needles in some areas.

The observers rate the intensity of damage and map its location. Pilots fly in a grid pattern with flight lines about 4 miles apart to cover every swath of the forest.

“It’s literally like mowing the lawn,” Kohler said of the flight trajectory.

Paper maps of the past have been replaced today by Samsung Galaxy tablets that track the plane’s progress and make mapping easier — and probably more accurate.

Observers require a season of training, Kohler said. It can be a dizzying task.
“We’re analyzing 16-30 acres per second,” DePinte said, noting that small planes can offer a more turbulent ride. “You definitely have to have a stomach of steel.”

This year, the aerial observation program flew over about 69 million acres of Washington and Oregon forest in about 246 hours.

“We’re just really painting the picture. It’s not hard science. You’re not counting individual trees or inspecting individual trees. The purpose is — what are the major trends and to detect outbreaks,” Kohler said.

The scale of damage in Oregon, which was first reported by the environmental journalism nonprofit Columbia Insight, was staggering to the researchers and begs for a more thorough study.

“We had never seen anything to this level,” DePinte said. “It sets you back and makes you pause. Your scientific mind starts questioning why. We don’t always have the answers.”

Trees are susceptible to bark beetles, root diseases and defoliators like caterpillars. Aerial surveys help researchers capture the booms and busts of these pathogens.

Healthy trees typically can defend themselves against these threats. When beetles drill into a trees’ bark, for example, a healthy tree can push the beetles out by excreting pitch, a gooey substance, where they entered the tree, Kohler said.
But disturbances like drought, wildfire and windstorms can stress trees and weaken their defenses. Large numbers of dead and dying trees could allow bark beetles to lay eggs, feed their larvae and flourish.

Scientists still only have a coarse understanding of the factors that are causing widespread die-offs in Oregon, but many view drought as the underlying culprit.

“There are multiple factors at play here. One of the things most of us agree on: The primary factor we have going on here is hot drought,” Buhl said, meaning that the state has been hampered by higher-than-normal temperatures and also low precipitation.

DePinte said damage was most pronounced in White, Shasta and Red firs on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountain range’s crest, where the climate is drier.

Nearly half of Oregon is experiencing severe, extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The drought is worse in eastern Oregon.

Oregon’s average temperatures have risen about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, according to a 2021 state climate assessment delivered to the state’s Legislature. The severity of drought has increased over the past two decades in part because of human-caused climate change, the report says. Summers in Oregon are expected to become warmer and drier.
“We’ve been hearing about climate change for some time. Climate change is happening. We’re now feeling it,” Buhl said. “These summers are getting warm and long. We’re seeing evidence on the landscape. We needed to pay more attention decades ago, but we didn’t.”

Buhl said impacts to forest health are taking out roughly as many trees as wildfires, which are also now more likely and more intense by climate change.

Heat waves are a growing threat, too. On Oregon’s west side, trees were scorched by the June 2021 heat dome, which sent Portland’s temperature as high as 116. Scientists have said the intense heat wave was “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Aerial assessments last year documented nearly 230,000 acres of heat scorch across Oregon and Washington, DePinte said. Most of the damage was on hillsides with south-facing aspects that soak up more sunlight because of the sun’s angle in the sky.

“It was the combination of the high temperatures in the afternoon with the sun boring down,” said Chris Still, a professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. “We think a lot of those leaves just cooked in place.”

Still speculated that the heat dome could have contributed to this year’s fir die-off, also, but more research and evidence is needed to examine any possible connection.

DePinte said the 2021 scorching was the largest ever recorded, which means the Pacific Northwest has now seen two events of record-breaking damage in its forests in as many years.

 

[Sharon Hill]

I'm not sure I buy the "scientific" explanation of noise because it's dehydrated. The noise is not ultrasonic - you can clearly hear it.
But it IS totally creepy.

Video of Tree Mysteriously Crying in Islamabad’s Margalla Hills Shocks Everyone​

https://propakistani.pk/2022/12/13/...in-islamabads-margalla-hills-shocks-everyone/

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/actor-ahmed-ali-akbar-shares-creepy-video-of-crying-tree/

 

[Sid]

I'm not sure I buy the "scientific" explanation of noise because it's dehydrated. The noise is not ultrasonic - you can clearly hear it.
But it IS totally creepy.

Video of Tree Mysteriously Crying in Islamabad’s Margalla Hills Shocks Everyone​

https://propakistani.pk/2022/12/13/...in-islamabads-margalla-hills-shocks-everyone/

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/actor-ahmed-ali-akbar-shares-creepy-video-of-crying-tree/

No Idea what could be creating the crying noise - but, a closer look at the initial picture seems to suggest that the hole in the tree is/was created by a woodpecker looking at the notch markings left around the circumference.

I wonder if it might be a certain type of unusual woodpecker (chick/s) that maybe making that noise, thinking that the person outside the hole is the parent bird coming back to feed it? I also note that the outside - on the tree bark, seems to be riddled with what appears to be beetle attacks?

 

[Sharon Hill]

No Idea what could be creating the crying noise - but, a closer look at the initial picture seems to suggest that the hole in the tree is/was created by a woodpecker looking at the notch markings left around the circumference.
View attachment 61592 I wonder if it might be a certain type of unusual woodpecker (chick/s) that maybe making that noise, thinking that the person outside the hole is the parent bird coming back to feed it? I also note that the outside - on the tree bark, seems to be riddled with what appears to be beetle attacks?

I had a friend suggest that it may be a flying insect in the hole whose wings/buzzing makes this sound.

I've still found NO evidence that this is related to the drought the article says. The noise of drought-stressed trees is ultrasonic popping, nothing like this.

 

[brownmane]

I had a friend suggest that it may be a flying insect in the hole whose wings/buzzing makes this sound.

I've still found NO evidence that this is related to the drought the article says. The noise of drought-stressed trees is ultrasonic popping, nothing like this.

I couldn't find the audio unless I went to Insta, so I don't know how it sounds, but insects in the wood might be a possible cause. I've heard, but don't know if true, that termites can be heard if there is a colony in the wood.

 

[Sharon Hill]

It's NOT termites.

 

[maximus otter]

I'm not sure I buy the "scientific" explanation of noise because it's dehydrated. The noise is not ultrasonic - you can clearly hear it.
But it IS totally creepy.

Video of Tree Mysteriously Crying in Islamabad’s Margalla Hills Shocks Everyone​

https://propakistani.pk/2022/12/13/...in-islamabads-margalla-hills-shocks-everyone/

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/actor-ahmed-ali-akbar-shares-creepy-video-of-crying-tree/

The words “Renowned TV actor, Ahmed Ali Akbar, recently went for a shoot…” cause me to narrow my eyes. That noise sounds suspiciously like a human voice dubbed over unremarkable amateur footage of a nondescript tree.

ls Ahmed’s next project a found-footage horror entitled The Haunted Tree?

maximus otter

 

[Sid]

The words “Renowned TV actor, Ahmed Ali Akbar, recently went for a shoot…” cause me to narrow my eyes. That noise sounds suspiciously like a human voice dubbed over unremarkable amateur footage of a nondescript tree.

ls Ahmed’s next project a found-footage horror entitled The Haunted Tree?

maximus otter

I must admit - I also thought the sound of the crying baby sounded more like the crying of a young boy, not a baby. Made me wonder why he didn't investigate the cause of the sound there-and-then? Also, I did wonder that it 'might be' just a way to draw attention to the conservation aspects of the Margalla Hill's wildlife before the world by creating a bit of intrigue.

 

[maximus otter]

Gravestone-encircled ‘Hardy Tree’ tree falls in Camden

A historic tree in a London churchyard famous for its link to British writer Thomas Hardy has fallen.

The tree, known as the Hardy Tree, became a symbol of life among death after the novelist and poet placed gravestones around its base in the 1860s.

The to-be celebrated writer Hardy, only in his 20s then, worked as an architect in the office of Arthur Blomfield in Covent Garden.

The firm got the commission from the bishop of London to disinter a large number of graves from Old St Pancras cemetary while engineering works were being undertaken on the Midland Railway, which runs through the now Kings Cross St Pancras station.

Hardy received the instruction for mass exhumation and decent reburial elsewhere, hence the prominent image was created.

It has attracted tourists in the Old St Pancras Churchyard ever since, but on Tuesday images emerged online of the toppled ash tree.

A Town Hall spokesperson told the Camden New Journal in July that it was looking at ways to commemorate the tree, with its fall imminent.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/news...ree-e2-80-99-tree-falls-in-camden/ar-AA15KkOA

maximus otter

 

[Bad Bungle]

It seems we all love an association between a distinctive mature tree (the silent witness) and a noteable person or event. I was fortunate to grow up near a Manor House with a manky old Oak under which the butter-fingered Good Queen Bess lost a ring circa the Olden Days.
But doubts were raised over the provenance of the Hardy Tree in Old St Pancras churchyard some time before the sawdust had even settled. Local Camden historian and archivist Malcolm Holmes was researching the first mention of the tree surrounded by gravestones and claims to have found a photograph showing the ring of gravestones without the tree in 1926 (“St. Pancras churchyard and it’s disturbed gravestones” in ‘Wonderful London’ (edit St.John Adcock). He admits it is the only such photo he's found and it is clear from later photos that the tree was well established by 1960 (kids treating the stones in the same way as we treated Stonehenge back then). Could an Ash tree get so big in 40 years ? Well yes I believe so, although my meagre experience of dendrochronology is limited to mature Hazel (Corylus).
So the implication is that the Ash tree grew up inbetween the stones rather than the stones placed against it. A pity that core samples weren't taken (I'm assuming) of the fallen tree at St Pancras, dating would have been straightforward and unambiguous (see Turin Shroud)
As to the first mention of the Thomas Hardy association with the Ash tree, it is undisputed that Hardy was at the Old St Pancras grave-yard in the 1860's working with the Clerk of Works in ensuring the interred remains from the displaced graves did not end up in the Bone Mills. What is missing is any evidence that Hardy had any direct involvement in the arrangement of the stones. Holmes latest research on the tombstone inscriptions strongly pointed to the stones coming from St Giles In The Field Parish, not St Pancras, and dating after 1877 (long after Hardy had left) when the London churchyards became Public Gardens. The 1975 ‘Harrap’s Guide to Famous London Graves’ by Conrad Bailey features a good photo of the tree but does not mention Hardy at all. In fact the earliest mention of the 'Hardy Tree' would be sometime after 1978, the name gaining popularity in the 90's and Camden Council putting up the current sign in St Pancras around 2000.
Does it matter that the Hardy Tree is just another myth? Not really, Old St Pancras has its own fascinating history and it was really cool how the trunk grew around the headstones.




https://thelondondead.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-myth-of-hardy-tree-old-st-pancras.html?m=1