Thursday 26 October 2017

Oakland

The fascinating BBC4 90 minute programme about the oak tree is still available via the iPlayer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06fq03t/oak-tree-natures-greatest-survivor

For study their chosen oak is set in a field from which all competing trees have been removed probably by grazing animals. That allows the tree to spread more than it could in woodland. The multitude of acorns deposited every four or five years might otherwise have created an oak woodland. It might have been interesting to see oak in the context of mixed, predominantly oak woodland. Much of the material in the programme would still have been relevant but there would be differences.

Here on Blacka we had a developing oak woodland still in its early stages. Two young oaks on the edge of birch and alder woodland are changing colour, their position being to the north of neighbouring trees.


More sheltered from north and west this tree still retains more green.


As does this well protected older specimen.


More oaks would be present had the manager not decided that there must be an open area suitable for cow grazing; hence the killing off of several promising specimens.


In the nearby woodland there are oaks competing with the pine and alder.


Despite the shelter their leaf drop is more advanced.






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