Tree Watch

Tiny apples replace the blossom and a pink chestnut

2008-05-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

This a few weeks ago ....

Has now turned to this. Unbelievable .... to me at any rate.

The blossoms are all fallen and the apples are starting to swell. Over in Bukhara where I was a few years ago they start eating the apples when they are still almost this tiny. Surprisingly they are quite sweet and nice. Someone from our village was going to Uzbekistan on a mission to look at their apple trees but it fell through. The country and the people are lovely but the politics is very nasty indeed.

Who dyed this chestnut pink?
In contrast with the normal horse chestnut with its white flowering candles, you find occasional trees with pink blossom. There is one on our village green planted to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth (the present one!) It was donated by the bakers who used to keep the shop and is about 55 years old now. These trees are not a real chestnut but are a cross between the American red buckeye and normal horse chestnut.

The blossom is really good this year. And at fifty years old our tree is getting towards being one of the oldest around. The buckeye is more like a bush than a tree and so these hybrids don't grow very big or live very long.

This is a close up of the flowers to compare with the white ones shown a few days ago. The actual red-buckeye flowers are bright crimson as you can see by following the second link below.

And here are the finished flowers, spread across the green in a pink carpet.

Here's a link to more about the pink chestnut.
http://www.tree-shop.co.uk/products_detail.asp?productheadingID=1034
And here's a lovely one for the red buckeye
http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?search=Aesculus+pavia

The weeping birch - fully leaved and a walnut leaf

2008-05-20T04:25:00.001-07:00

The weeping beech is fully clothed now. Here is is at the beginning of May.

And here is a walnut tree from the same garden. The colours of the leaves are so wonderful I had to include them.

The chestnut spikes bloom and so does the may

2008-05-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

May 13th. The chestnut spikes are out and the tree looking glorious. You really need to click on this pic and see it full size. This is a remarkable tree.

May 8. Spikes out not quite so far.

April the beginning of the leaves.

Close up of the flowers. Those tiny green balls will eventually become conkers I imagine.

The flowers and the leaves. See how the leaves are starting to look tough and high-summery. There is a whole essay on chestnut leaves in the Penguin edition of Hopkins poems. They always have 7 leaflets he says (I'm not sure he's right, but they normally do). Anyway here is an essay on Hopkin's essay that I found on the net.

Anyway the may blossom (hawthorne) is amazing in the forest this year so I must include a pic. You suddenly come across them blazing white as you walk through the forest.

The apple blossom has fallen - the oak apples swell

2008-05-15T00:56:00.001-07:00

The flowers are all gone now. Here's a reminder of what it was like just a few days ago - May 4 I think.

Beside the New Forest oak Nick is photographing is another, less healthy, oak. It is covered in "oak apples". These are swelling caused by a gall wasp that lays eggs in the leaf buds and deposits a chemical that causes the leaf to turn into a small round casing where the grubs can grow and are fed by the sap of the oak. There is more about this (probably more than you want to know) in a longer oak apple post on the sister blog Oak in Autumn. For a little while these galls look like tiny apples though they quickly turn browner and less attractive. Here is a pic, it really does look like a sweet little apple!.

The oak in sun and shade

2008-05-07T13:26:00.001-07:00

Suddenly it is hot and the leaves are thick and there is the beautiful shade. Funny that I have not thought about shade any time since I started photographing the oak back in October. Funny that shade can be beautiful after months of longing only to get in the sun.

And here are the horses under the oak. No foals yet but with luck there will be one soon.

The apple petals fall

2008-05-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

And now the petals fall and lie scattered on the grass. All so fast.
This was only a few days ago.

It happens so quick - a weeping beech transforms in a couple of days

2008-05-06T14:43:00.001-07:00

These pictures were taken two days apart. Suddenly the leaves have come.
Compare these pictures of the leaves.
The buds are the long points of beech leaves
And then two days later - there are the leaves.

This weeping beech is in a garden in the South of the New Forest. It was growing too tall so the top was cut out. It is still thriving. Very often pollarded trees are the ones that are strongest. Experts think that the New Forest Oak featured in this blog was pollarded at one point in it 600 year or more life. Look at the bottom picture large (by clicking on it) and see the amazing contrast between the colous of the bud, the emerging leaf and the sky. Photos of the weeping beech are by Philippa.

The apple blossoms swell all in a day

2008-05-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

It's only a day or so between these pictures

But you can see how the blossom has opened. Spring is short.

In this photo you can see a bee crawling over a fully open flower.

The chestnut greens up

2008-05-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

Here is the tree on May 2nd

And here it is about 10 days before. The spikes should be flowering soon.

The oak in green (and orange) and flower

2008-04-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

Yes the leaves are here now. Green green green. Can it really be this green? The answer is yes, when it's seen in the springtime April light. But oaks at this time of year sometimes start almost orange. Here is another oak not far away. You can follow the green oak back from the autumn of last year in Nick's own more eccentric blog. http://oak-in-autumn.blogspot.com/

Above is the orange oak.

And on here are the oak flowers. The male ones on long catkins. The female flowers too tiny to be seen on a photo this size. Soon the air will be rich with oak pollen.

And here are some more pics. The leaning trees in a shot that captures the look of the New Forest at this time of year where the green of oak and beech among the dark trunks seems almost brighter than the sky.

An amazing cherry tree in blossom in Germany. Finally beach leaf come out just new and bright. Those browney bits that used to be around the bud are now scattered along the edges of all the New Forest roadst. You can eat young beech leaves at this stage, taste a bit like sorrel.

Apple tree flowers too!

2008-04-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

We planted some apple trees too. Also the first flowers. It seems like our trees are a couple of weeks behind those in England.

plum tree in flower

2008-04-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

We planted this tree 2 winters ago. This is the first time it has flowered. Exciting!

Chestnut in the evening light

2008-04-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

This is how the chestnut looked on April 13.

And a week or so before. On the local chestnuts in the New Forest the leaves are all out and the blossom spikes visible. This one is a few days behind.

Light makes so much difference to the look of a tree on a bright sunny day it looks covered in green leaves. Then the next day when the light is lower the leaves seem almost gone. This is what makes it so hard to convert a series of tree pictures into movie showing the changes.

Apple blossoms

2008-04-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

Here is how the North Hampshire Apple has been faring over the past couple of weeks. Photographed by George.

And here it is over time:

And some blossom pics for luck.

Lovely eh? Tell us what sort of an apple it is George.

The stream's been switched on again

2008-04-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

The stream's been switched back on already, I thought they'd take longer. It always makes me feel a bit dizzy looking at the stream when it's first back on, having that rushing movement so close. Now the birds have to compete with the gurgling of the stream as well as the sounds of trams and cars in the distance. Our tree looks much the same but the little beeches and the big poplars are getting really leafy now.

The tree on our stream

2008-04-23T01:48:00.000-07:00

April 23rd
The bushes are really green, the poplar leaves are about half open and the buds on our tree have turned into frothy brownish flowers (maybe someone can tell what sort of tree it is now). The birds are singing like mad, but I haven't heard or seen the woodpecker yet this spring, hope it's still around.
April 18th
No obvious change. You can see groups of buds at the end of the branches, but it's not yet clear what sort of tree it is (you expect us to know? we've only lived here for ten years).

The building on the left is the next-door house, and behind it is the brewery. The glass pyramid that they copied from the Louvre, houses a well where they've drilled down 200 metres to access particularly pure water for brewing.

On the right is an office building with a little patch of lawn in front of it.

April 15th
The tree looks much the same, the stream is still down. The Germans are so efficient, they empty this mill stream about every 18 months and walk through looking for and fixing potential leaking spots. It always seems eerily quiet when the stream's not rushing by.

The stream is syphoned off the Isar river upstream near the zoo, and put back in again in the centre of town. The stream's even still got a working mill on it that generates electricity.

14th April - No water, more green stuff

2008-04-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Ah-ha! There is some development. Is is young leaves or blossoms we can see? Hey! Who turned off the stream?

Trees on 9th April

2008-04-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Not many changes yet!

The tree outside our window

2008-04-14T12:26:00.001-07:00

Lucy and I decided to contribute the easiest possible tree photos. The tree right outside our window. Actually there's more than one tree in the pic, so you can choose which one to watch.
The trees are on the opposite side of the mill stream, the "Auer Mühlbach" that flows past our house. I'm not actually certain what kind of tree they are, so perhaps, you can all help identify them. I think that the nearest is a black poplar. I'll have to go up closer to the other to see what it is. This photo was taken on 04. April 2008.

April 10: The oak and the chestnut

2008-04-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

Here is the oak green again and seemingly unmoved by the snow.

And the leaves on the Wiltshire chestnut continue to swell.

The Wiltshire Chestnut - March 29 to April 8

2008-04-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

March 29: This is a chestnut. Amazing tree. About as big as the New Forest Oak but, I imagine, not half as old. Two hundred years maybe, compared to the oak's 5 or 6 hundred. Interesting to see where the forest oak has grazing animals around it, it's branches stop about 5 or 6 feet above the ground. This chestnut however goes right down to the ground.

Here's one of the amazing sticky buds.

April 1: or thereabouts. You can just see the green. Click on the pic to see it large if you don't believe me!

Then the snow came. But look how far the bud has changed.

Now you can see the leaf beneath the snow. And I imagine the thing below the leaf will become a flowering chestnut spike in a week or so

April 8: Yes the green is there. Isn't spring wonderful!

These pictures were taken by Mary. Another Tree Watcher. Email if you would like to join the tree watch and post pics of your tree as it changes.

April 4 - Suddenly there's snow

2008-04-06T13:59:00.001-07:00

The New Forest oak. No sign of the green when I photographed it in falling snow this morning. But it's evening now and all the snow has melted. The green will be there all right tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if the snow slows the greening process.

The leaning trees. The snow added more weight and white to the crown. But they are still standing.

And finally a magnolia with snow smothering the twigs and blossoms.

Green, green everywhere

2008-04-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

The apple has tiny leaves.

The oak has a halo of green.

The leaning trees are are leafing at the top.

The beech is in almost full leaf. Nothing will stop spring now

Leaning trees New Forest April 1

2008-04-01T10:56:00.001-07:00

These trees are leaning heavily as they grow towards the light in a gap in the woods.
When trees lean, they raise their roots up into a mound like this, below the leaning tree.

Then, when they fall, a big circle of earth comes up around the roots. Like this nearby beech tree.

Oaks do not have deep roots, although they start of as acorns with a tap root but these whither in time.

Trees often fall when the extra weight of the leaves grow and tons of water are taken up into the crown of the tree. Even more likely after a wet winter like this one. So they may come down. Or they may live on. They've been leaning for many years and Jeanie's been photographing them for the last 5.

Apple on April fools day

2008-04-01T10:52:00.001-07:00

This is an apple tree in a North Hampshire garden, soon to be smothered in leaves and blossom.

These are the buds

Welcome to Tree Watch - March 29 2008

2008-03-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

This is Tree Watch a blog that shows photographs of trees as they change through the year.

People who love trees are invited to join and post photographs of their favourite tree.

Each tree is identified. This tree we are calling New Forest Oak (it is one!). Here it is towards the end of March. You can just see (or maybe just imagine) a halo of orangey buds around it. The pinky green of young oak leaves will be there soon. Watch for more photos.