Birch as Art

One of the most impressive features of Blacka is its range of birch trees.

They appear individually, standing proudly in mainly open space, also in small groups and then more densely in wooded parts often with an underlayer of thriving bilberry shrubs.

There is plenty of young rowan and oak as well but it's the birch that attracts attention through its ability to acquire character and formal diversity at a very early age.

I know nowhere else that so successfully showcases the potential of birch to embellish a landscape. This is down to its transience.


The specimens here are in their way rare in that they are part of an advance guard with a mission to occupy and improve an area previously blighted by an exploitative management regime. Birch is a young tree mostly short lived therefore defying any attempt to protect it and consequently of no interest to conservationists who must always be looking for grant-funded projects. *

To spend a day looking at the variations in form shown by these young birch trees would be an educational experience for a young (or even old) art student. We in this country may have only a restricted range of native tree species compared with tropical forests but birch in particular does its bit to promote difference of form through its growth patterns.

Another example of this is alder, interestingly a close relative of birch and growing alongside it in parts of Blacka's wet woodland. In common with its cousin it also manages to acquire great diversity of form and fascinating formal characteristics from an early age. It's also a tree that looks very much at home in moist and gloomy situations. Rackham would have drawn it and Dickens would have written a short story about it.

* I can almost hear the voice of a Natural England officer saying "..no conservation value" !!  Translation reads "...no value to conservationists".