TREE FOLLOWING - AUGUST 2020

The top of the right hand tree. Heavy with leaves. 7th August 2020.

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the trees I'm following. Initially, it felt fairly simple. These two trees are sycamores. They are immediately outside my front door. All I had to do was look at them, photograph them, post about them. So why overwhelmed?

7th August 2020.

To some degree we can blame it on the Coronovirus. It is overwhelming - so everything is overwhelming. Even small things. I can smell gas in the cellar and am waiting for someone to find if there is a leak. One thing after another! At one point the bath, the shower and the handbasin in the bathroom were all out of action: broken or leaking. Shielding etc. have made it harder to get things mended. A train is on fire in Scotland. Floods in Scotland have floated cars in a hospital car-park overnight and when the water receded they landed on each other's roofs. I am not in Scotland. It is sunny here in Halifax this morning. But there hasn't been much sun. The skies have been almost constantly over-cast even though it's summer. Then there's Beirut - and all the calm and sensible people who live there somehow coping while I am overwhelmed by trees.

Trunks of the right hand sycamore (?) tree. August 7th 2020.
Trees can seem so BIG!
Their canopies another world. A world we can peer into but hardly touch.

Last month I took photographs so I could post about them - then didn't. I couldn't stop finding more and more to see in these trees, and more to think about. I was heading the same way in August. I peer through the branches and see what appear to be millions of creatures living there. Ladybirds, lacewings, little black flies. Between them they are a whole universe of beings. Then there's the way the two trees muddle their branches. Which tree is which? And are they even sycamores? Maybe one is some kind of maple? I'm sinking in the shapes of the seeds, the texture of the bark, the colour of the leaves, their possible names in Latin!

The winged seeds of sycamore and maples are called 'Samaras'.
(I call them 'keys' or 'helicopters'.)

So I was in danger of stopping again. Right. Take myself in hand. There will need to be a short fleet of posts. It won't fit in one.

Are you finding this too? That there are so many big things wrong with the world that even simple things seem difficult? I find I can only do things if I do them in small bites - and then celebrate. Hurray! I just swept the floor! Hurray! I just walked upstairs and back down again! Hurray! I am managing to post daily on my other blog Message in a Milk Bottle. (I really enjoy taking these simple and unconnected pictures.) Hurray! I've just written a Tree Following post for August!

ARE YOU?  Click the tree design to find out more.

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Linking with Nature Notes at Rambling Woods.
And to Our World Tuesday

30 DAYS WILD : DAY 11 - TREE FOLLOWING (part one)

Trunk of the sycamore 'on the right'

I was hoping that if I waited, I'd have sunny pictures for this month's tree following. But it is cold. It is windy. It keeps raining. Some of my very tiniest flower seedlings have keeled over and died. I'd better just get on with it!

Sycamore tree 'on the left'
The bark isn't as red in 'real life' as it looks in this picture.

I'm 'following' the progress of two sycamore trees through the year. They are very different from each other and it may mean I should be calling one of them a 'maple' - but they are sycamores to me . . . and I feel I have been acting as nurse maid to them. For weeks on end they dropped blossom. It was thick under foot. Each day I swept it up. And each day more fell. Then suddenly it stopped. The amount falling didn't ease off gradually, it was abrupt. One morning, I went out with my broom - and there was nothing to sweep. There was a pause for a few days. Then a big showering down of little helicopter wings - seeds which weren't going to mature. I swept them up too. That lasted three days or so then they stopped falling. I lent on my broom and thought 'now we wait for autumn'. It's not that I am particularly house proud (though Halifax is a very litter-full place and sweeping up after the trees goes along with gathering rubbish blown here from humans) it's that my short front path is one big stone slab which gets slippery easily and once you start sweeping, you just keep going. I keep thinking how I'd like to be a street sweeper. It's hard work but you get to see where you've been. A bit like ironing. You start with something crumpled and in a little while it's all flat.

I can imagine following these trees next year too. I should have been paying more attention to what the rejected seeds looked like. Instead, I just swept them up. But I have noticed how different the trunks are. (I distinguish the trees by calling them 'the one on the left' and 'the one on the right'.)

And during this time, ripe seeds which fell as 'helicopters' or 'keys' in the autumn have been growing; some in my window boxes. They can't stay there! In pulling them out I gave us the opportunity to see what a complete tree looks like, roots and all.

Uprooted sycamore seedling, leaves facing upwards

With the leaves facing upwards.

Sycamore seedling with underside of leaves showing.

With the leaves facing down.

See the distinctive seed leaves sticking out at right angles from the stem? When you see these in your window boxes or coming up through the pavement, you'll know you'll need to pull them out. They are happy to grow more or less anywhere and they grow huge!

A tree or bush seedling - but what? (Upper side of leaves showing.)

And there was another tree in one of the window boxes too. Idiotically, I didn't notice it was missing horizontal seed leaves and for a while thought I was seeing what the two kinds of sycamore looked like when little. No. The seed from a completely different tree had blown in and grown. 

Unknown tree or bush seedling. Underside of leaves showing.

Part of me would have like to grow it to see what it turned into but I really don't have room. Perhaps someone will know what it might have been? Whatever it was, here we have a complete 'tree' from its uttermost height to its longest toe of a root. Bother! I've not put a ruler there again! I'll become a better scientist one day! (The sycamore seedling was about fourteen inches long when uprooted. The other, a little shorter.)

Sycamore seedling integrated with its shadow.

As ever though, there's more to see.

First the 'Peter Pan Image' - the seedling at one with its shadow. Not only is this interesting as a pattern, its outline gives hints at what else might be there. A slight protrusion . . . 

Aphid on sycamore seedling.

. . . the shadow of an aphid. 

Of course there's an aphid. Is there anywhere where there isn't an aphid?

Brown circle on seed leaves
of sycamore seedling.

And here's a mystery. (Isn't there always a mystery too?) A brown circle. I don't know what this ring is. Do you? (It could, er, could it be where someone dripped a drop of coffee on it? At first I thought that was what it was but now I don't think so because the colour is not 'filled in'.)

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to
examine a tree.

That's tree following for today. More about these sycamores to come.

To find out about Tree Following, go to Squirrelbasket.

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