30 DAYS WILD : DAY 13 - TREE FOLLOWING PART TWO

For Part One of Tree Following on Loose and Leafy in June - Click Here.

Top leaves of mature sycamore tree.

Do you know Jessica? She blogs in my old county of Dorset. She has blogged a lot about rocks and patterns and is currently doing a 'Daily Walk in Difficult Times'. And for many of us - perhaps all of us . . . these are, indeed, difficult times. Right early on in Lockdown, Jessica suggested I could do with a camera with a zoom lens. At that point, I was not 'allowed' out of my house. With a zoom, I could 'see' for much further than my own eyes or my current camera would allow.

Sycamore leaves and vestiges of blossom.
I hadn't set the date properly on the 'new' camera
so I can't tell you when I took the photo - some time in May!

It was a tantalising thought. I imagined sort of living in an urban lighthouse, peering round the landscape from my window. I mentioned this to my brother who, astonishingly, turned out to have a camera with a zoom lens that he no longer uses. It arrived in the post. Unfortunately, the instruction booklet which was sent separately didn't. I can read the manual on-screen but it's not the same so I dived in to experiment. Queue high winds and rain. Queue the sycamore trees leafing up so much that although in theory I can see right across to hills on the other side of town I can currently see little but green. And then there's my arm.

Developing sycamore 'wings' (seeds).
May, 2020

Until a couple of weeks ago it was horribly painful all the time. I constantly re-filled hot water bottles to press against my shoulder. Then, one evening, unthinkingly, I levered myself up in bed onto my elbow. It was agony. Momentarily terrible. Followed by a sort of pins-and-needles tingling. Followed by a new sense of freedom. Movement which had felt forever impossible tuned down a notch to 'perhaps possible if I work on it'. Since then, it's been getting better and better. It still hurts but nothing like it did. Because of the pandemic, I couldn't go to the hospital for a check up when my arm came out of a sling. It was a telephone appointment instead. And there was no physio. I think my left shoulder must have been dislocated all that time as well as the top of the humerus being broken. It must have 'clicked back' into position when I lent on it.

Red galls on the upper side of leaves because mites
are living on the under-side.

The point of all this is that starting off with my new camera has been slow. My arm hasn't been strong enough to properly support its weight and the view I had intended to examine has disappeared behind a wall of greenery that is often thrashing around all over the place. Neither it nor the long camera lens would keep still.

Wrinkles at the foot of new growth.

None the less, it has been extraordinarily interesting. I went to the top of the house and looked out of the window and pointed my lens to the tops of the trees - just for the sake of it.

I found there are red galls on some of the leaves, a reaction made by the tree to mites which live on the undersides of its leaves.

I was able to see the blossom close up. (No picture of this because everything was too wobbly - one of the reasons I think I may 'follow' these trees again next year.)

The 'wrinkles' closer up.

And remember the wrinkles on the twig we looked at on the 23rd May?  I was able to see where they 'fit' in the scheme of the tree.

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to
look into the parts of trees
usually too high to reach!

So . . . today's random act of wildness is . . . looking into the parts of trees usually too high to reach!

TODAY'S LINKS

There seem to be two kinds of mite which cause galls like these on sycamores. Here are two links to articles about them in case you'd like to find out more.

1. Sometimes it's Tough Being a Tree - on the blog Hortographical.

2. Mites - On the site 'Science Direct'.

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Have you thought of following the progress of a tree through the year? For more information, go to Squirrelbasket.