tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39874629410003476912024-02-18T18:22:42.366-08:00AWA Tree BlogUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-51108087391445082592017-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:002017-05-10T07:45:14.472-07:00Komorebi (木漏れ日): Sunshine filtering through the trees.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There is a Japanese term “Komorebi”, for which no simple English translation exists. Yet it is a distinct phenomenon, that anyone who spends time among trees will have enjoyed. <a href="https://forvo.com/word/komorebi/" target="_blank">Komorebi </a>roughly translates as “the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees”. It is made up of three “Kanji” or Chinese characters: "tree" or "trees", "leaking-through" or "escape", and “light” or “sun”.</div>
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Komorebi is especially noticeable when the sun is low, and mist or smoke can add to the effect. The impact of Komorebi to the observer can range from creating a pleasant ambiance for a walk through the woods, to generating feelings of awe - which in the right place at the right time - verges on the transcendental.</div>
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No comparable English word for this “tree-light” exists. While the English language has “sunbeam” or “dappled light”, these are more general. The scientific term “<a href="http://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/ray1.htm" target="_blank">crepuscular rays</a>”, describes beams of light shining through the environment, which in purely technical terms, is what occurs during Komorebi. However, these terms are not related directly to the effect of light through trees, moreover, they fail to capture the strong aesthetic component involved in Komorebi.</div>
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Less technical and more poetical attempts have been made in the English language to capture the event. Without a suitable term, several poets and authors felt compelled to invent their own words:</div>
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Dylan Thomas called it “windfall light”, in his poem "Fern Hill", writing:</div>
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<i>And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves</i></div>
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<i>Trail with daisies and barley</i></div>
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<i>Down the rivers of the windfall light.</i></div>
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The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins created the term “shivelight” for: <i>“the lances of sunshine that pierce the canopy of a wood”'.</i></div>
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The author C.S. Lewis was a fan of these "shafts of delicious sunlight" or “Godlight”, writing: <i>“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are patches of Godlight in the woods of our experience.”</i></div>
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Despite their efforts, none of these words have caught on. Komorebi, like several similar terms, highlights the influence of nature and aesthetics that is unique to Japanese culture. Perhaps, beyond poets and physicists, there is no need for an English equivalent. The experience - of observing sunlight through trees - might be enough. Indeed, the absence of a comparable word allows respite from the taxonomic rumination that occurs in most other aspects of life, helping Komorebi remain as one of life's “pure and spontaneous pleasures”.</div>
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Photos by the excellent <a href="http://larsvandegoor.com/" target="_blank">Lars van de Goor</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.awatrees.com/#blog" target="_blank">Read more...</a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-42394483508476713012016-12-17T04:39:00.000-08:002016-12-17T04:40:54.277-08:00How can Sheffield heal divisions over the tree-felling controversy? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>The <a href="http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/" target="_blank">Sheffield Telegraph</a> runs a debate feature every week called Telegraph Voices. A journalist contacted me last week, to take part in a debate entitled: 'How can Sheffield heal divisions over the tree-felling controversy?' As ever, it's tricky to cover such an emotive and complex issue - and to suggest pragmatic solutions - in just 300 words.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"There is little room for sentimentality when managing urban trees. Eventually every street tree will decline and need to be replaced. Some protesters seem to believe every tree is sacred, regardless of its condition. Outcry over every felled tree only entrenches the view that tree protesters are unreasonable. Just because you “love” trees doesn’t make you an expert on them. The protesters should (and many do) accept that tree removals and replacements are crucial to manage our city’s trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Council must remove dead, diseased and dangerous trees. However, the majority currently being felled are in good health. They are being felled because pavements or kerbs are slightly uneven. Government guidance is clear that imperfect pavements are acceptable, if it means large trees can be kept. From what I’ve seen, and from what the Council’s independent tree panel have said, many condemned trees can be kept, often with straight-forward engineering methods. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There isn't a professional arboriculturist in the country who thinks the current policy - to fell any tree causing minor pavement damage - is a reasonable approach. In this respect, the Council need to accept that it's got things wrong, and it should review this contract and the criteria used to condemn trees causing pavement damage. The Council need to be open and honest - if a tree has to be removed, we need to be shown that all alternatives have been fully considered - independently. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Replacing large growing trees with smaller growing species will result in an overall loss of canopy cover for Sheffield. The tree planting scheme could be more ambitious. Why not have a sliding scale, so the number of replacement street trees increases with size of tree removed? A small tree is replaced with a single sapling, while a large tree could have up to five saplings planted to replace it. These additional trees could be planted in Sheffield’s less well-off, less leafy areas. Such a system would encourage existing mature trees to be retained where possible, it would make a bold positive statement regarding the Council’s commitment to trees and reclaim some much-needed civic pride."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Adam Winson. Chartered Arboriculturist and Principle Consultant: AWA Tree Consultants. Kelham Island, Sheffield.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-5966907053813781332016-11-30T09:17:00.000-08:002016-11-30T10:55:21.159-08:00Sheffield Tree Desecration <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Picture the scenario...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Due to Council budget cuts, The Cenotaph (the national War Memorial in central London) has not had the maintenance it deserves and is in need of some TLC, so the Council outsource </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">War Memorial </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">management to a Spanish infrastructure services company, who are contracted to maintain it for the next 25 years. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The company then have a marvelous idea: To save on annual maintenance costs, they knock it down and tarmac the area over - thereby avoiding any future costs for the remainder of their contract. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Excelente!</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While this may beggar belief. A comparable situation is happening in Sheffield <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/30/sheffield-council-urged-to-drop-plans-to-fell-war-memorial-trees" target="_blank">now</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In late summer 2012, AWA Tree Consultants surveyed all of the mature plane trees along Western Road in Sheffield, and found the vast majority to be in perfectly good health. During the tree inspections, friendly residents asked what we were up to, and told us about the history of the trees. </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They were planted in 1919 to commemorate former Westways School pupils who died during the First World War and are listed by the War Memorial Trust and the Imperial War Museum. We assured </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the residents that the trees were in good health and so there was nothing for them to worry about. While some of the pavements were uneven as a result of the tree roots, at the time, it seemed inconceivable that this would warrant their removal, and that other engineering methods would be used to remedy the pavements. Since this time, the council contractors have identified the now infamous ‘misplaced kerbs’, and almost half of the War Memorial trees are scheduled to be felled.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mature urban trees and War Memorials are both powerful icons for the surrounding community. They both have great meaning and reflect our local identity. The special significance these trees have should not be underestimated. Not everybody is a ‘tree-hugger’, and the </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">religious and political views of Sheffield's community is varied; </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">however, the protection of these trees represents a ‘common cause’ for any reasonable person - in our respect for those who have died on our behalf and for our natural environment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After the fiasco of <a href="http://awatrees.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/welcoming-introduction-of-operation.html" target="_blank">‘Operation Arborcide’</a>, </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">if the council were to work with engineers, arboriculturists and the local community, to retain as many of these trees as is possible, </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it would create some well needed positive news for Sheffield. Alternatively, the additional bad-press and bad-will that will be created if they were to fall victim of the wider ‘<a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-tree-felling-policy-could-cause-a-chainsaw-massacre-expert-says-1-7299261" target="_blank">chainsaw massacre</a>’ is staggering. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The latest advice circulated to judges by Sentencing Council includes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/06/stiffer-sentences-thefts-war-memorials-heritage-sites" target="_blank">stiffer sentences</a> for damage to War Memorials, which are described as heritage assets. To needlessly fell these trees, in order to increase a company’s profit margin, is comparable with any other war memorial desecration – a crime against society itself. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-25265679012387959482016-11-17T14:22:00.000-08:002016-11-17T14:35:44.031-08:00Welcoming the Introduction of Operation Arborcide!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We have all seen how trees can strike at any time and any place without warning. The threat from trees is real and serious. So it is good to see South Yorkshire Police being deadly serious about protecting the people of Sheffield from the arboreal menace.<br />
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In the early hours of today, a dozen police officers demonstrated a range of tactics to protect the public, including <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/17/two-women-in-their-70s-arrested-in-dawn-stand-off-with-sneaky-co/" target="_blank">arresting</a> elderly residents who 'peacefully' protested the essential work to keep us safe from these deadly trees.<br />
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While there was the inevitable hand-wringing from <a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/nick-clegg-brands-early-hours-tree-felling-in-sheffield-as-underhand-1-8243144" target="_blank">Liberal politicians</a> and <a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-star-richard-hawley-blasts-police-protected-despicable-council-tree-felling-under-cover-of-darkness-1-8244386" target="_blank">pop stars</a>, most right-minded people know that the overriding priority of the police is to keep the public safe from all manner of threats from these marauding trees. It's good to know that, even in these tough economic times, the police have such substantial resources and a range of tactics that they can call on to protect us.<br />
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Assistant spokesman for South Yorkshire Counter Tree Policing, said: "All of our officers are playing their part and working closely with all of our communities to prevent the possibility of healthy urban trees being retained within the Sheffield City Region.<br />
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We continue to urge the public to remain vigilant and aware and to report any suspicious behaviour which may be tree-related to police."<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-30120706881080686022016-11-06T11:18:00.000-08:002016-11-07T04:11:37.316-08:00 Shinrin-yoku: Science or Art? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A new phrase recently entered the lexicon of forestry and trees - Shinrin-yoku. It's a Japanese term that roughly translates in English as "Forest Bathing", or visiting a forest for relaxation and recreation. I first heard it around five years ago, at a forestry conference, and judging by the number of raised eyebrows, this was the first time many other tree professionals in the room had heard the term too.<br />
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While Shinrin-yoku may sound ancient and conjure up romantic images of old Zen monks on misty pine mountains, in fact, it’s a fairly recent invention. In 1982 the Japanese Forestry Agency were looking at ways to engage the urban population with local woodlands and undertook a marketing campaign, creating the term to suggest visits to woodlands as a healthy lifestyle choice. As a piece of marketing it worked very well, and increased visitor numbers to local Japanese woodlands. It now seems to have captured the imagination of many in the West. A quick Google search reveals about 13 million English language results for the term, which shows how successfully the concept of Forest Bathing has struck a cord, with some suggesting it will soon be 'bigger than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/17/forest-bathing-is-latest-fitness-trend-to-hit-u-s-where-yoga-was-30-years-ago/" target="_blank">yoga</a>'.<br />
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However, since the initial Japanese campaign, promoting visits to woodlands as a healthy lifestyle choice, Shinrin-yoku now appears to have moved more into the realm of complementary medicine. Delve into the numerous websites associated with the term and you will soon be wading through a mire of new age gobbledygook, with promises that Forest Bathing will cure ailments, ranging from relatively harmless "stress relief", to less wholesome suggestions of how the practice will "beat <a href="http://www.cancerdefeated.com/this-special-secret-for-enjoying-nature-can-help-you-beat-cancer/2880/" target="_blank">cancer</a>". <br />
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Some of the more outlandish claims for the health benefits of Shinrin-yoku are linked to people breathing in “essential oils" derived from trees (known as phytoncides), in what seems to be a type of "arbor-aromatherapy". The idea that the smell of the forest might improve health is appealing, and there is some admirable and exciting <a href="http://college.nms.ac.jp/en/research/topics/fm" target="_blank">research</a> taking place in Japan; however, determining a correlation between the mixture of phytoncides in forest air and physiological changes in humans still requires a lot more rigorous study. (In general, numerous reviews conclude that the evidence for aromatherapy as an effective therapy for any condition is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22285469" target="_blank">not convincing.</a>) The smell of the woodland undoubtedly plays a part in the overall sensory composition when people spend time in the woods, but to claim that its all down to smelling medical/magical essential oils, reduces the complexity of the woodland experience. <br />
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There is a wide range of scientific evidence showing time spent near trees and in woods can bring human health benefits, especially in regard to reducing blood pressure, stress, fatigue, depression and anxiety. However, we still don't really know why trees make us feel good. From inhaling phytoncides, to hard-wired adaptive brain responses, or ‘<a href="http://awatrees.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/are-we-hard-wired-to-love-trees.html" target="_blank">biophilia</a>’, theories as to why woods and trees seemingly bring about these health benefits are still (educated and logical) guesses. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-44626188271626291882016-11-03T09:19:00.000-07:002016-11-03T09:19:56.475-07:00Enthusiastic Future Arboriculturist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the end of October we were helped out at AWA Trees by Elva Preston. Elva is currently studying Environmental Science at the University of Birmingham, and wanted some work experience as she is considering arboricultural consultancy as a career, following her degree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After her time with us, Elva wrote us this lyrical account of her first impressions of professional arboriculture:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Arboriculture. A word few have heard of, but is so important to our lives. The combination of helping the planet and the people was enough to get me hooked; spending endless hours surrounded by nature; then more brain racking hours writing, researching and concluding. The reward of a finished cycle, rough paper maps turn to pristine computer built precision. Repetitiveness and non repetitiveness are its pros and cons. Diversity at its best, travelling the country, putting up with all weather. A job that ticks all the boxes for me. This is arboriculture, the perfect but unknown. </i></b></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-65883996009078949552016-07-12T07:49:00.000-07:002016-07-12T09:39:07.847-07:00Thoreau and Arboriculture <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0s0jJjZO2RCNALjP9KiR7EtXRp-teyqnK9uB_tIjluIzuqb7uXCBELM-ZYHiS8-9q-M69XswrWfXGHI3pRqwvDNiGsnXbCN6_KRIMgnD2BT4WFDJJsoE9EcMt0AhOoI416g0VIbI12KG/s1600/Thoreau.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0s0jJjZO2RCNALjP9KiR7EtXRp-teyqnK9uB_tIjluIzuqb7uXCBELM-ZYHiS8-9q-M69XswrWfXGHI3pRqwvDNiGsnXbCN6_KRIMgnD2BT4WFDJJsoE9EcMt0AhOoI416g0VIbI12KG/s400/Thoreau.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">HENRY DAVID THOREAU was born 199 years ago, on 12th July 1817. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An extraordinary person and writer, he is often credited with anticipating modern ecology and environmentalism. His particular fascination with trees should also justifiably label him as one of the forefathers of modern arboriculture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The definition of arboriculture is the science and art of tree care, and few individuals embodied these qualities more than Thoreau. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trees were crucial to his writing, poetry, philosophy and spirituality; however, he also studied them scientifically, mostly via close observation, and describing them in exquisite detail.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thoreau is well known for rejecting the town for the woods, writing: “I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known” and he would sometimes refuse to make an engagement with a friend on the ground that he had "an appointment with a tree". </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, with his famous insight he also foresaw the value of trees to urban dwellers, writing: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">His passion for arboriculture - or studying individual trees - is nicely illustrated in a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fg_p47yoQzUC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=Why,+there+is+enough+in+that+tree+alone+to+keep+one+man+happily+busy+all+his+life!%22&source=bl&ots=pjIfvbcvjz&sig=v1pdhyFefWEy3eGOcxwbHhf0U6c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCguOZhe7NAhVkC8AKHe4iC5YQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">story</a> of when, one afternoon, Thoreau and two friends were taking a quiet rowing trip on the Concord River. As they rowed, they approached a fine old oak on the river bank, Thoreau ceased rowing, stood up suddenly in the tiny skiff, looked upon the huge tree with something akin to adoration and said, as one inspired:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Why, there is enough in that tree alone to keep one man happily busy all his life!" </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With fervor, he went on to tell of the rich rewards that would be awaiting whoever would take the oak tree for his lifework:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"The whole story of creation and all of natural history is in that one tree! Why does anyone want to take long journeys to study anything? It’s all here."</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-71142992813903582732016-04-17T12:45:00.000-07:002016-04-18T11:35:27.864-07:00George Orwell: Spring is here, and they can't stop you enjoying it.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">George Orwell is one of England's greatest writers. He is not
famous for nature writing, yet Orwell’s 1946 <a href="http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/some-thoughts-on-the-common-toad/" target="_blank">essay</a> about the arrival of Spring,
is a masterpiece. It’s a clearly written easy-read, avoiding any of the
flowery language often used in nature writing, and it highlights Orwell’s brilliant
insight, humanity and common sense truths that are still helpful today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He begins his essay by referring to the toad - largely
because he sees it as the underdog of the harbingers of Spring, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“because the toad, unlike the skylark and
the primrose, has never had much of a boost from poets”</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. He amusingly details
the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“intense sexiness”</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of the toads
mating habits, and notes how </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“a toad has
about the most beautiful eye of any living creature”</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Orwell then goes on to celebrate Springtime in general, highlighting its </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">universal impact on desolate post war London streets: </span></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London…</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suddenly, towards the end of March, the miracle happens and the decaying slum in which I live is transfigured.”</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And of
course, being Orwell, he considers the politics of enjoying nature, asking: <i>“Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring
and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically
reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning,
under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is
frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree
in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does
not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By asking this question, Orwell is referring to the once common belief
among the "Left" that a fondness for nature was the privilege of affluent sentimental
town-folk - the bourgeoisie. The focus of the Left has traditionally been on progressing
economic and institutional change and ‘Nature’ was thought to have little to do
with these issues. While this hostile attitude has thankfully diminished since 1946, it
does not seem to have disappeared completely. Recently in Sheffield, a grass-roots
<a href="http://www.savesheffieldtrees.org.uk/" target="_blank">protest </a>by residents against the unwarranted removal of many thousands of
healthy street trees, was <a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/letter-defends-sheffield-council-and-slams-lack-of-perspective-of-tree-campaigners-1-7739862" target="_blank">clumsily attacked</a> by members of the Labour Council
and Left-wing academics, who attempted to define the issue in terms of class, and
by portraying Sheffield residents love of their trees as a selfish indulgence
of the affluent. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It seems Orwell, a socialist, would have sided with the tree-protesters. He brilliantly rejects the notion of nature as being merely sentimental
as “demonstrably false”, noting how all cultures and classes have valued
nature throughout history and how "<i>if we kill all pleasure in the
actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If
a man cannot enjoy the return of Spring, why should he be happy in a
labour-saving Utopia?” </i> Ultimately, he suggests that if a modern, technically
and socially advanced utopia was ever achieved, then simple pleasures of
observing the natural world would become ever more vital: “<i>I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees…
one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable”</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He finishes the essay by showing how the ability to
appreciate Spring and Nature is a basic human right, that cannot be taken from
us:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Spring is here, even
in London, and they can’t stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying
reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair
of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the
important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily
they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured
in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are
piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the
lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round
the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they
disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.” </span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-80876666048632495912016-03-19T10:38:00.001-07:002016-03-19T10:38:32.566-07:00Marilyn Monroe: Trees give me a little hope <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Marilyn Monroe defines the 1950s. Even today, as an icon of American popular culture, she has few rivals. She epitomised the modern liberated woman - an endorsement of consumer culture and glamour - available to anyone using the right make-up, clothes and peroxide. The public perception of Marilyn Monroe seems about as far as one can get from the realm of trees. However, she displayed an ongoing and genuine affection for trees and woods, as evidenced from interviews with her friends, her writing and by some of her most enduring images.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The title of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Marilyn</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'s film </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The Asphalt Jungle</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> accurately describes her early environment. Born and raised in urban L.A., she endured a hard childhood in tough surroundings, growing up in foster homes and orphanages, before getting married at the age of 16 and finding work in an ammunition factory. It was while working at the factory she met a photographer which initiated her modelling and acting career. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One of the first photo shoots Marilyn had, in 1950 while still relatively unknown, surfaced recently when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(magazine)" target="_blank">LIFE magazine</a> was digitizing its stock of photos. The photographer Ed Clark, described how Marilyn would head out to the wooded areas of Griffith Park in L.A and read poetry, and he would follow with his camera. For the time, these early photos appear unaffected and relaxed, reflecting a woman com</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fortable around trees and in woodland environments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Ed Clark goes on to describe how he sent these photos to LIFE magazine in New York, but they wired back, "</span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">" before shelving the photos.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Later, as her fame increased, Marilyn moved from L.A. to New York and she was interviewed by journalist George Carpozi. He </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P8Y47HK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">recalls</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> how Marilyn enjoyed spending time among trees, so the interviews would take place while walking through Central Park. Then in 1955 Marilyn lived for a year in rural Connecticut with photographer Milton Greene, where she said it was the first time where she had ever seen natural woodland. She enjoyed walks through the woodland surrounding the property every day during this time. Greene describes how one day they were driving home from a friends </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">house and Marilyn looked up at the hillside and remarked that the trees were just dead, bare sticks. Then the next week, they began to turn green, to her it seemed like a miracle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shortly before her death in 1961, Marilyn wrote a <a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/01/men-are-climbing-to-moon-but-they-dont.html" target="_blank">letter</a> to a psychiatrist during a hospital stay:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Just now when I looked out the hospital window where the snow had covered everything suddenly everything is kind of a muted green. The grass, shabby evergreen bushes – though the trees give me a little hope – the desolate bare branches promising maybe there will be spring and maybe they promise hope. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Did you see ‘The Misfits’ yet? In one sequence you can perhaps see how bare and strange a tree can be for me. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I don't know if it comes across that way for sure on the screen - I don't like some of the selections in the takes they used. As I started to write this letter about four quiet tears had fallen. I don't know quite why."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Misfits film sequence referred to is a poignant clip from her last film, written for her by Arthur Miller, showing Marilyn dancing, barefoot, under a tree. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Marilyn struggled with addiction, depression and anxiety, and in her writing she displays an awareness of the potential of trees to improve her mental health, appearing to gain solace from the way trees<i> promise hope</i>. Yet, in retrospect, the writing also captures an unsettling melancholy - <i>see how bare and strange a tree can be for me - </i>even seeming to cause her to cry<i>. </i>She had previously remarked how trees appear to be dead in the winter, but have the wonderful ability to be reborn every spring. </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Against the relative permanence of trees, issues around human aging and cultural pressure to stay youthful must have resonated strongly with Marilyn. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps our reverence towards trees is, in part, envy at their apparent immortality - we have no similar chance to start afresh.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-73541772382651548192016-02-19T09:06:00.002-08:002017-02-23T03:00:10.439-08:00Neuro-Arboriculture: Your Brain On Trees. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Most tree problems are fairly straightforward to solve: the rooting environment can be improved, branches can be pruned or braced, and trees can be felled and replaced. It becomes much less straightforward when you add people. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Deep-seated, even <a href="http://awatrees.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/are-we-hard-wired-to-love-trees.html" target="_blank">hard-wired</a> emotions define people’s interactions with trees. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, the neurological basis of people’s connection to trees remains a mystery. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Research on the economic and environmental benefits of urban trees has amassed. It shows how urban trees reduce pollution, mitigate extreme weather events, reduce crime, increase property values, encourage retail activity and social cohesion, as well as confirming the long held intuitive belief that trees are good for human <a href="http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Health_Benefits_of_Street_Trees_29June2011.pdf/$file/Health_Benefits_of_Street_Trees_29June2011.pdf" target="_blank">health</a> and <a href="http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Trees-people-and-the-buit-environment_Winson.pdf/$FILE/Trees-people-and-the-buit-environment_Winson.pdf" target="_blank">wellbeing</a>. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Despite the value and benefits of urban trees, the uncomfortable fact is, the evidence is often falling on deaf ears. When decision makers have to balance the books, removing trees, or not planting and maintaining them, is still seen as a sensible cost-saving </span><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3439673/Chainsaw-massacre-Residents-fury-council-fells-3-000-trees-Sheffield-bid-save-money-fear-thousands-risk.html" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">option</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Despite the widely advertised economic value of </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/earth/tree-diseases/11998762/woodland-value.html" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">trees</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the most important factor influencing a decision makers urban tree management policy is often public reaction. And the public value nearby trees. Not because of what the latest research has to say about the environmental and societal benefits, but because of how trees make them </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">feel</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The last decade has seen an explosion in the field of cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Whether we know it or not, it influences most aspects of our lives, from education, economics, politics and our personal relationships. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Neuroscience has begun to understand how our unconscious, hard-wired emotions impact almost all decisions we make. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What if arboriculture was able to use this knowledge? Imagine if</span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> new a branch of knowledge could connect neuroscience and arboriculture: “neuro-arboriculture” - designed to understand the links between brain and tree. Neuro-arboriculture </span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">could help</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> understand what motivates some people to care about trees, why some feel indifferent, or why people are hostile to trees. </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It could help encourage people to value and engage with trees in their towns and cities, and it could help arboriculture finally move up the political agenda. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ultimately neuro-arboriculture could help us understand the profound and ancient connections between people and trees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As a relatively young discipline, arboriculture has understandably been anxious to be seen as legitimate science, and this meant a bias towards studying the more tangible and measurable aspects of tree management. Yet the separation between emotion and science is an outdated notion. N</span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">euro-arboriculture</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> - the neurological underpinning of the aesthetic and experiential value of trees to people - should be seen as fundamental, and this knowledge may become crucial if we are to preserve the urban forest. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The role of an arboriculturist is changing. No longer simply a </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">custodian</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of trees, increasingly they are the interface between people and trees. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps in the next century the most useful new discoveries in arboriculture will not be found looking within tree roots, cambium or foliage, but within the human mind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.awatrees.com/#blog" target="_blank"><br /></a></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.awatrees.com/#blog" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-21015843698077093782016-01-27T04:26:00.000-08:002016-02-28T11:58:05.581-08:00Sheffield Tree Felling:<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><i><b>The cherry blossoms</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">In Spring 2012 I wrote <i><a href="http://awatrees.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sheffield-hanami.html" target="_blank">Sheffield Hanami</a>,</i> about the cherry trees outside my house in Sheffield. In late Summer 2013 I came home one evening to find a "notice to fell" pinned on the tree outside my house. It stated the tree had “outgrown it's location” and was causing a “footpath obstruction”. Despite my best attempts to argue/pull-strings/beg, with anyone who would listen, the photos show what happened next. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">While all agreed that the tree was healthy, the highway engineers said that the kerb was "misaligned" and it couldn't be straightened if the tree remained.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">About half of the trees on my street were removed. Around this time, a similar story could be told for many of the street trees in the surrounding suburbs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">As someone who has always considered himself a hard-nosed professional when it comes to trees, I found it an intensely emotional experience. Initial feelings of incredulity were followed by anger and powerlessness,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> followed by </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">melancholy - </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">a kind of grief - when the tree was gone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Two years later, in summer 2015, trees in South-West Sheffield came under the spotlight, with the associated campaign groups gaining much </span><a href="http://awatrees.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-sheffield-chainsaw-massacre.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">media</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> attention. I recently noticed the picture of the cherry trees (below) on a campaign website and so I thought it timely to update on the trees and to provide a reminder of the original post, on the value of the much maligned old cherry trees that lined many of Sheffield's streets.</span></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.</span></b></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That was then and this is now. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We have a replacement tree, a flowering crab apple. It was more plonked than planted, but it's good quality tree stock, and with some luck it will last a lifetime. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The crooked kerb-stone, that was the justification for removing the tree, hasn't been straightened. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps the highway engineers thought it wasn't such a big deal after all. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It remains as a kind of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">irregular</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> monument to the tree that is no more. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-39653896186230036082016-01-16T06:38:00.000-08:002016-01-16T06:50:41.793-08:00Ackee: The Toxic Tree That Tastes Delicious. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ackee tree, <i>Blighia sapida</i>, is a tree of contradictions. In Jamaica, the Ackee tree is revered - more popular than Bob Marley. The Ackee fruit is the National Fruit of Jamaica, and forms the key ingredient in the National Dish of Jamaica, Ackee and Saltfish. However, the tree is also deadly. The fruits are highly poisonous, even having a specific illness named after them (symptoms include severe vomiting, coma and death). The Ackee tree is so toxic it is banned in the USA, with it being <a href="http://www.newsamericasnow.com/u-s-ackee-ban-remains-in-effect/" target="_blank">illegal</a> to sell or commercially serve Ackee fruit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a recent trip to Jamaica I was intrigued by the small ubiquitous tree, which made an attractive informal roadside planting along most roads we travelled along. On the same trip I was amazed by the delectable <a href="http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Jamaica-s-Ackee-and-Saltfish--2-among-world-s-best-National-Dishes" target="_blank">Ackee and Saltfish</a> dish (deservedly ranked second place in the "world's best dishes" by the National Geographic). During a tour of a local plantation and botanical garden our <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g147312-d1138566-Reviews-Sun_Valley_Plantation_Tour-Ocho_Rios_Saint_Ann_Parish_Jamaica.html" target="_blank">knowledgeable guide</a> described the tree, its role in the famous dish and its place in the wider history and culture of Jamaica.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tree is not native to Jamaica; the word Ackee is derived from the original name Ankye from the Twi language of Ghana. The exact date of the trees arrival in Jamaica is unknown, but it is believed that the fruit was transported to the Caribbean by slave ships sometime in the 18th century. Thomas Clarke, Jamaica's first botanist, is credited with formally introducing the plant to the island in 1778. However, the botanical name of the fruit, <i>Blighia Sapida</i>, was given in honour of Captain William Bligh, of “Mutiny on the Bounty” fame, who took young trees from Jamaica to London's Kew Gardens in 1793.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ackee is a member of the Sapindaceae family, an extensive family also known as soapberry. Species within this family include the tropical fruits lychee, longan, and guarana. It’s a tropical evergreen tree that can grow up to 18m tall, with broad pinnate leaves. The Ackee fruit takes seven to eight weeks to attain full maturity. At full maturity the fruits are pear shaped, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">approximately 10cm wide, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and acquire a red or a yellow tinge. The fruit pods split open while still on the tree to reveal three glassy black seeds surrounded by a thick, oily, yellow aril.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6WUWMjCNE2EPpwhm3vkEwgy7ApEmRmLJo3G54tEkbQSP1RIViKDE59t_zV0MjgP7wEQmIZAvV94yjYALL3FsoHnpjrSbTmPdxcfA3oao82Om6lxcREbkedgLpbU0GkhN2vGcc9zabHdB/s1600/Ackee+Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6WUWMjCNE2EPpwhm3vkEwgy7ApEmRmLJo3G54tEkbQSP1RIViKDE59t_zV0MjgP7wEQmIZAvV94yjYALL3FsoHnpjrSbTmPdxcfA3oao82Om6lxcREbkedgLpbU0GkhN2vGcc9zabHdB/s320/Ackee+Tree.jpg" width="190" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjujw8oih1x0iVXvYvyFozlz2QA4wyFb9WPxVk_gx9ovpLkFPNhcW5bHuYETdiBsFWKpkmv0gbbtOJg04n-3SNNZspmQ3xJNAF8GY1EIo6Gq461wzLQ477bbeZJUCFLKBBCImiF2aFoqpo8/s1600/Ackee4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjujw8oih1x0iVXvYvyFozlz2QA4wyFb9WPxVk_gx9ovpLkFPNhcW5bHuYETdiBsFWKpkmv0gbbtOJg04n-3SNNZspmQ3xJNAF8GY1EIo6Gq461wzLQ477bbeZJUCFLKBBCImiF2aFoqpo8/s320/Ackee4.jpg" width="177" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Properly harvested and prepared Ackee fruit is delicious, it tastes and looks similar to scrambled eggs and it's common to have it for breakfast. Ackee fruit are generally boiled in a deep pot for about thirty minutes, with the water then being thrown away. The prepared fruit is then generally sautéed with onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers, allspice and Scotch Bonnet chilli and then mixed with saltfish. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, both the skin and seeds of the Ackee are poisonous and if the fruit is under ripe it contains high levels of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23172539" target="_blank">toxic</a> hypoglycins which can be fatal. (Hypoglycin is also found in the seeds of Sycamore which has been linked to <a href="https://www.beva.org.uk/news-and-events/news/view/438" target="_blank">disease</a> in horses in the UK). An association between Ackee and Jamaican vomiting sickness (JVS) was first documented in 1904, and in 1937 the water-soluble toxic material was identified in the seed and pods. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even properly ripened Ackee has been known to cause poisoning if not prepared correctly as hypoglycin is not destroyed during cooking or canning. (In West Africa, the green fruits, which produce lather in water, are used in lakes as fish poison). </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ackee poisoning is a serious issue, the Jamaican Ministry of Health have reported 271 cases of poisoning since 1980, and the true incidence rate is believed to be much higher due to under reporting</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of this danger, great care is taken when harvesting the fruit and in the preparation of an Ackee dish. Traditionally Jamaicans say that Ackee fruit must "yawn" or "smile" (open naturally) before it is detached from the tree. There is an old Jamaican story/riddle that asks: "<i>Me fader send me to pick out a wife; tell me to tek only those that smile, fe those that do not smile wi' kill me!</i>" The answer to the riddle is the Ackee, referring to essential information on how the fruit must open on the tree naturally, or smile, before it is harvested.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jamaica is the only place where the Ackee fruit is widely eaten, and possibly because of this the tree has come to assume significant cultural importance, with the image of the tree and fruit appearing throughout the country. The anthropologist <a href="http://sociology.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/rashford-john.php" target="_blank">John Rashford</a> notes how Jamaicans have come to associate the Ackee tree with pleasure, overall wellbeing and national identity, he describes the Ackee as "the island’s colourful tree of life." Indeed, on my trip I was impressed both by the attractive tree, the delicious fruit and the pride the locals showed in the Ackee. However, the folklore and respect surrounding the tree also hint at it's potential as the island's lurid</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> tree of death. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-83099248990732414762015-12-22T09:50:00.000-08:002015-12-22T09:50:48.935-08:00Tree Surveys in the Bleak Midwinter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tree surveys in winter bring their own challenges. Trying to look up into the crown of a tree in the icy rain isn’t fun for long. The speed of a tree surveyor, moving from one tree to the next, seems to be perfect to avoid the creation of any type of body warmth. All before the inevitable raging against the dying of the light, as </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">darkness falls at 3pm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One aspect of surveying trees in winter that many arborists initially struggle with is identifying broad-leaved trees without leaves. In winter only a limited number of clues aid identification, mainly bark, twig, bud and the form or silhouette of the tree (however form can be deceptive depending on where it has grown and how it has been managed). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A useful short book, to help would-be winter tree detectives get their eye in, is published by <a href="http://www.field-studies-council.org/publications/pubs/a-guide-to-the-identification-of-deciduous-broad-leaved-trees-and-shrubs-in-winter.aspx" target="_blank">FSC Publications</a>. However, for more lyrical musings on the subject we can refer to Donald Culross Peattie, a Harvard-trained botanist who, in 1935, wrote the excellent and unique "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Almanac-Moderns-Culross-Peattie-Library/dp/1595341560" target="_blank">An Almanac for Moderns</a>": </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The hardwoods, those trees that shed their leaves, are withdrawn from us in winter; without their leaves they seem no longer to have faces by which to know them; they are headless trunks, nude trunks. To those not used to country sights it seems almost necromantic how a woodsman can walk through a snow-filled forest and with confidence lay a weathered hand upon one bole and another and say this is an oak and that a hornbeam. Only gradually one finds that he too is learning the subtlest differences, where all at first seem alike... out of the silvery winter ranks, individuals step forth, are marked, remembered.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After familiarity with twig and bud, scar and lenticel, bark and stature, comes a love of wood itself - first the dark stain of it; then a feeling for the very touch of it in the hands…A love of grain and pattern, a hatred of stain and veneer, a preference for mahogany in its natural ruddy brown and the understanding that American woods like black walnut, yellow poplar, and cherry birch are as fine as any mahogany. But indeed I am talking here about the man I would like to become rather than the one I am - about the fellow who can weigh a block of wood in his palm and with precision tell you what it is.” </span></i><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-27630635318171439092015-12-18T05:25:00.001-08:002015-12-21T04:45:01.183-08:00AWA Tree Consultants in Pro Arb Magazine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCtnfBwOkUA-W5Spv0akFL6cWlTAvArpCxDHasC6TNRpKsMQ15_Bhz4MVq9By6KTbVDYaqlZ0kijVer-BP7qGMnxEzcd9o-R9kmGD-rlkb-7LtTbUzVwul1_vdPsf9RH1j9Fkhynjf9_E/s1600/Guy+AWA+Tree+Consultants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCtnfBwOkUA-W5Spv0akFL6cWlTAvArpCxDHasC6TNRpKsMQ15_Bhz4MVq9By6KTbVDYaqlZ0kijVer-BP7qGMnxEzcd9o-R9kmGD-rlkb-7LtTbUzVwul1_vdPsf9RH1j9Fkhynjf9_E/s640/Guy+AWA+Tree+Consultants.jpg" width="337" /></a></div>
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Pro Arb Magazine is an industry magazine and website that offers business tips, latest news, and the latest equipment
information relating to arboriculture. The magazine promotes best practice and highlights
the positive aspects of the arboriculture industry, and works closely with the
associations to advance the arboriculture market in the UK.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://proarbmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Pro Arb</a> contacted us recently as they were looking for suitable
people to feature in a magazine feature that was promoting and focusing on young people in the industry. They interviewed Guy from AWA and asked questions
about him and his role within the company, as well as looking at his future
plans for his career within arboriculture. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s your full name, age and job title?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Guy Baxter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">24<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Trainee Arboricultural Consultant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Why did you choose arboriculture as your
profession?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">To begin with I kind of stumbled into
arboriculture, I was working during the school holidays as a gardener for a
large landscape company, and one day they needed help on the trees team. I
helped out and really enjoyed working with trees. From then on I didn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t look back, I worked full time with the
trees team, and from there it</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s been a natural
progression for me to study the subject and move into professional
arboriculture. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Is anyone else in your family in the
business?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Yes, my little brother is a climber and holds his
level three in Arboriculture. He</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s now studying his foundation degree in arboriculture at Plumpton College.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Did you go to college? If so, where and what
qualifications did you get?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I studied at Askham Bryan College to attain my
level three in arboriculture and Forestry, I then went on to Myerscough College
and completed my foundation degree. Now, while working, I am studying for a Bsc
in Arboriculture online, with Myerscough College.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What are the most important qualities an
arborist needs to have?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Tree identification and general arboricultural
knowledge, writing skills, the ability to follow instructions and good communication
skills with clients and senior staff. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What does a typical day at work include?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Get to the office, have a coffee. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Prepare a site plan using CAD (have more
coffee!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Discuss projects with senior staff or clients. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Site visits for tree surveys, mostly these
normally for BS5837 trees and development but we also undertake a lot of tree
risk assessments. On completion of the site visit we go back to the office,
(drink more coffee!), and upload the survey data onto CAD plans and manage the
tree data in preparation for tree reports. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What do you like most about the job?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The variety in jobs and sites, no two days are
the same. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">And the least?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">AWA provide a nationwide service and this can
often mean staying away and long distance driving; I hate being stuck in
traffic!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">How important is teamwork to the job?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Teamwork is very important as often multiple
people can be working on the same projects. I have to make sure I clearly
communicate my findings with other team members. The ability to take on board
criticism when learning is important, listening to what more senior staff are
showing you and the ability to apply this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s your favorite piece of equipment to use?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The Leica Disto D810, is a great bit of kit to accurately
map sites and plot trees. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What do you wish you</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">d known when you started out?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">How to use CAD (Computer Aided Design). I had no
knowledge of the system and it was a steep learning curve, almost every job will
require some element of CAD work, whether it</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s design or interpretation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What has surprised you most in your career?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The amount of work on CAD we do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s been your biggest challenge on the job?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Providing high quality tree survey data, plans
and reports often in very short amounts of time. It</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s not like at college where you can ask for an extension - meeting
client deadlines is critical. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">What skill do you wish you had?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Some more, higher level, qualifications to
supplement my existing qualifications> I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">d also like to get involved in other related areas such as bat
surveys. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Have you had any close calls?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Where do you hope to see yourself in ten
years</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US">’</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-hansi-font-family: Helvetica;">
</span><span lang="EN-US">time?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I hope to stay with the company and work towards
becoming a senior consultant. In ten years</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> time I hope to have undertaken an MSc in arboriculture and urban
forestry and to gain Chartered Arboriculturist status with the Institute of
Chartered Foresters ICF. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US">Would you recommend the job to others?<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Yes. Although consultancy work isn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial unicode ms" , sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t for everyone; you have to genuinely be
interested and get excited about trees. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Manager’s statement: <o:p></o:p></div>
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Guy contacted us earlier this
year, just as he was completing his foundation degree. I invited him over for a
chat and was immediately struck by his enthusiasm for the profession. We needed
someone with good technical knowledge, but as a small company, it’s essential to be able work well independently and get on as a team player. Guy
ticks all these boxes and has quickly proven himself as a key member of AWA! <o:p></o:p></div>
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Company Profile: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.awatrees.com/" target="_blank">AWA Tree Consultants</a> provide
professional advice on managing trees in the built environment, specialising in
expert tree surveys and reports. Based in South Yorkshire, we offer our
private, commercial and public sector clients across the UK a range of tree
consultant services, including: planning applications for development, safety
responsibilities and liabilities, mortgage approval and expert witness
work. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-39732761464723339642015-11-20T01:10:00.000-08:002016-01-05T02:23:28.436-08:00The Lime Trees of Rivelin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2dSLnxvhBt5TQ0MMfK92JP8ThA0BKj8ksKIGSfzipZTsXBnwXJJeV3R617rnrDKJUT51Vcvp_OtxrO5xuMiSPqtjWjbJD3QSvpmK6HU7ZaTaGqhAme5CfK5qlzH_wRrd-95bdEsixWS9x/s1600/lime+trees+rivelin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2dSLnxvhBt5TQ0MMfK92JP8ThA0BKj8ksKIGSfzipZTsXBnwXJJeV3R617rnrDKJUT51Vcvp_OtxrO5xuMiSPqtjWjbJD3QSvpmK6HU7ZaTaGqhAme5CfK5qlzH_wRrd-95bdEsixWS9x/s640/lime+trees+rivelin.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sheffield is famous for its trees. One of the jewels in Sheffield’s arboreal crown is the avenue of limes along <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Rivelin+Valley+Rd,+Sheffield,+South+Yorkshire+S6/@53.3859124,-1.5434931,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x48797f504629ddc9:0x85843741eb106d4d" target="_blank">Rivelin Valley Road</a>. At three and a half miles long, it forms the second longest lime avenue in the country. This spectacular natural monument is rooted in Sheffield’s history, but there are now <a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/new-branch-of-tree-felling-row-as-31-trees-set-for-axe-on-sheffield-road-1-7574595" target="_blank">concerns</a> that it is under threat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unlike most historic tree avenues, formed as a result of vanity projects of the aristocracy or wealthy landowners, what brought about Rivelin's avenue, over a century ago, was a combination of high unemployment and the foresight of a benevolent water committee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Water Committee of Sheffield Corporation was formed in 1830 (taking over from the private sector). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To aid in water provision for the growing city of Sheffield, t</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he Committee</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> built a series of reservoirs to the west of the city. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The River Rivelin starts</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> up on the moors, near north west Sheffield, and flows through the Rivelin Valley. The river proved ideal for powering the twenty mills that developed along its course. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Water Committees work included an agreement that they must supply compensation water into the River Rivelin, for the benefit of the mill owners and other users further downstream. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the turn of the century there were no proper roads along the <a href="http://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/reminiscing-around-rivelin-sheffield/author/davey-roy/" target="_blank">Rivelin</a> valley. All that existed was a network of farm tracks and disconnected bridleways linking the farms and the riverside mills. In 1905 the Water Committee suggested that building a 'good road' along the valley would be a solution to the high rates of unemployment that existed within the city. It made provision to buy the required land, noting that “In a few years the council, through the water committee, will possess 3.5 miles of tree lined road, running from Malin Bridge to Hollow Meadows in the north west of Sheffield". Work on the road began in November 1905, with an average of 172 men being employed on the scheme.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To create the tree lined road, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in 1906 </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the committee purchased 700 lime trees, from 'Messrs Dixons of Chester', at a cost of £147.00. Each tree was planted along the road within an iron cage, around 35cm in diameter and around 1.5m high. It's understood these cages were in place for the first 30 years of the trees lives, ensuring they weren't damaged by traffic or vandals. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When the new road was being constructed there were several places where existing mature trees stood in the path of the new road. Those that were in the middle of the road were removed, but there were several that stood on what was to become the footpath and others that encroached onto the road by only a small degree. The road builders were reluctant to fell the mature trees unnecessarily and many were allowed to stay – being incorporated into the road design. The council simply painted the trunks of trees that encroached the road with whitewash each year, so that traffic would steer around them. This solution worked well for many years, yet over the following decades, as the traffic and speed increased along the road, there were a number of accidents where the old trees were located, and eventually the decision was taken to remove them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the same time as the avenue was planted, the committee ordered many more thousands of trees to be planted around the nearby reservoirs. They purchased<i> "9000 larch, 9000 birch, 9000 scotch fir, 100 oak, 100 elm, and 100 sycamore trees"</i>. These were bought from 'Cilbrans of Altrincham', all for the price of £57.00 (what a bargain!).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today we reap the rewards of the benevolent water committee's actions over a century ago. In an attempt to create work for the city’s unemployed they created a majestic green corridor that connects the urban and rural - from the built up North West Sheffield suburbs, out to the wooded reservoirs of the Peak District. Their long-term investment should inspire decision makers today, to understand the unique potential of this linear tree feature, as an asset for future generations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Currently, Sheffield Council contractors Amey are scheduled to remove 31 of the mature lime trees within the avenue, as part of </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">highway maintenance works</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. While it is good to see that the trees are to be replaced, with similar lime species, the scheduled removal work will undoubtedly diminish the avenue as a linear tree feature. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The danger is that Amey's assessments only look at the risk of individual trees to roadside infrastructure, but the avenue, as a whole, must be taken into consideration when making any management decisions. It is crucial that the removal of healthy trees for causing "damage to surface" is truly a last resort. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-6198912864416656482015-07-17T01:04:00.000-07:002015-08-12T00:55:17.204-07:00The Major Oak of Sherwood Forest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHdRga2zWmMxGKTi9IQAskOMC6vAydGNNgX_5SYFzbBY6kU0OqxsCpUMiY9HwRjvD-zYev_9reY18ZqX_HJIOAyCvyugIMEUcG83aS8FJARqhR8LxQO7YsMv8eEvf3Nb7bGwsjd8lurYJ/s1600/Major+Oak+Robin+Hood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="612" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHdRga2zWmMxGKTi9IQAskOMC6vAydGNNgX_5SYFzbBY6kU0OqxsCpUMiY9HwRjvD-zYev_9reY18ZqX_HJIOAyCvyugIMEUcG83aS8FJARqhR8LxQO7YsMv8eEvf3Nb7bGwsjd8lurYJ/s640/Major+Oak+Robin+Hood.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Major Oak of Sherwood Forest attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. It was recently the clear winner in England’s tree of the year <a href="https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/england-tree-of-the-year/" target="_blank">competition</a>. Yet, if it was not for the work of a retired local man, it would have been a different story. The tree would have remained just another Oak in Birchland Wood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Hayman Rooke was born in 1723 in London. After a military career, "Major" Rooke retired, to Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire. In retirement Rooke studied antiquities, becoming a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians. He also took an interest in local natural history, and was especially keen on the nearby old oak trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This interest in trees led Rooke to become friendly with the Duke of Portland, who agreed to fund a <a href="http://www.awatrees.com/" target="_blank">tree survey</a> for the old oak trees around his estate. As a result of this, in 1790, Rooke published a book called ‘Description or Sketches of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CXxbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP10&lpg=PP10&dq=Description+or+Sketches+of+remarkable+Oaks+in+Welbeck+Park&source=bl&ots=5kGoDdJvwS&sig=gaiErXWo2z7GaBmtJUqstbSTEK0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=unyeVaTBKcysUaG_gLgL&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">remarkable Oaks</a> in Welbeck Park’. Then, in 1799, a pamphlet called ‘A sketch of the ancient and present state of Sherwood Forest’. Rooke was a skilled artist and the books contain wonderful illustrations of the trees. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZr752xXMRKBn7wH23uRSy5DjY-JwldMfwK9jqR9E-WvWh1NVgvFAd-3a1iD9s3OLcnz6V5qFHBipg07seEjDs_nXsBpjQ__5_IYK5ykWAcFdBZ_xeGLFGik7tKfP0TyT5SXTkM7dyn_dx/s1600/Dukes+walking+stick+Oak+Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZr752xXMRKBn7wH23uRSy5DjY-JwldMfwK9jqR9E-WvWh1NVgvFAd-3a1iD9s3OLcnz6V5qFHBipg07seEjDs_nXsBpjQ__5_IYK5ykWAcFdBZ_xeGLFGik7tKfP0TyT5SXTkM7dyn_dx/s400/Dukes+walking+stick+Oak+Tree.jpg" width="326" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first tree mentioned is The Duke’s Walking Stick. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Green Dale Oak was the most famous tree on the Duke’s estate and was the most discussed tree in the book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Near the end of the book, Rooke introduces us to ‘a curious ancient oak’. What we now know as the famous Major Oak. At the time of his writing, the tree was known as The Queen’s Oak and had the local nick name of Cockpit Oak. Interestingly, although all the other trees drawn in the book have names, Rooke doesn't refer to the tree by any name. He just titles the drawing ‘An Ancient Oak in Birchland Wood’. Given his local tree knowledge, it seems strange he didn't know the trees name, so why didn't he include it in the book?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's been suggested that "Major" Rooke could be found relaxing under the tree so often that locals began calling it “The Major’s Oak”. What is probably more significant is that readers of his book began visiting the area to see the trees he describes (during Victorian times, the Oak became a popular tourist destination). Because the tree was not named in the book, visitors would likely have referred to it as “The Major’s Oak.” It then became known simply as “The Major Oak”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is possible that not including the trees given name was deliberate, to give the impression Rooke ‘discovered’ the tree. Even so, full credit should be awarded to Rooke for the trees popularity. It was only following the publication of his book that the obscure “Queens Oak” began its journey to the most celebrated tree in England. Major Rooke died in 1806, but his legacy and passion for ancient trees lives on in the trees name. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZB2J5TTVe-kM87OTDECwX-_EBmfBRGhoC-6_oQYOc5FbWlv9TQdFoygIHf4ccKozOCFNis-LPzm-oROLqqy3p9_EuoXU2vyH7QP4I2z6QC_6s1weGF_X1Y3zc28ZEkxlIRgI56kJQQRWw/s1600/Major+Oak+Sherwood+Forest+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZB2J5TTVe-kM87OTDECwX-_EBmfBRGhoC-6_oQYOc5FbWlv9TQdFoygIHf4ccKozOCFNis-LPzm-oROLqqy3p9_EuoXU2vyH7QP4I2z6QC_6s1weGF_X1Y3zc28ZEkxlIRgI56kJQQRWw/s400/Major+Oak+Sherwood+Forest+a.jpg" width="312" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">1844 painting of The Major Oak by Henry Dawson</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(One thing Major Rooke didn't mention in his book was the oak trees’ association with Robin Hood. This was a more recent addition to the trees folklore, probably started by a shrewd Victorian tour guide. In truth, The Major Oak was only an acorn when Robin Hood and his Merry Men were gallivanting around Sherwood Forest.)</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-61662681770852430132015-07-09T09:21:00.000-07:002015-07-09T12:31:27.318-07:00Growing Our Business with the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) is the Royal Chartered body for forestry and arboricultural professionals. They are the UK's leading professional organisation relating to forests, woodlands and trees, and are the only body to award Chartered Arboriculturist status. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This year saw the ICF reaching its highest ever membership. It hoped to build on this by attracting more people into professional Forestry and Arboriculture, from school-leavers to experienced workers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ask an average member of the public to describe a Forester or Arboriculturist. M</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ost would describe a</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> bearded axe-man or a burley bloke swinging from a tree with a chainsaw. The ICF campaign aimed to show there is a lot more than this involved in the technical and varied profession of Forestry and Arboriculture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The campaign aimed to show the wide diversity of career paths related to trees and to focus on the benefits of membership. It used a number of case studies, each with a key message about the members connections with ICF. These are: Growing Talent, Growing Careers, Growing Credibility, Growing Influence and Growing Business. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ICF contacted me earlier this year, to see if I would be interested to apply to have the chance to be involved in the new ‘Grow’ campaign. I was lucky, and was chosen to take part. I described my case study with AWA <a href="http://www.awatrees.com/" target="_blank">Tree Consultants</a>, which was then used as the ‘Growing Business’ key message. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Grow campaign is now well under way. I hope my case study will encourage any aspiring arboriculturists to join the ICF. For existing members, I would say, don’t be shy about getting involved in similar future campaigns. I’ve had good feedback from the case study and think it’s been a valuable experience. Although, it still feels a bit weird to see my mug-shot splashed over banners, social media and leaflets!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Check out all the ICF case studies <a href="http://www.charteredforesters.org/grow/" target="_blank">here. </a></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-34562759692426613682015-06-15T08:01:00.001-07:002015-09-02T09:26:31.570-07:00The Sheffield Chainsaw Massacre?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqaGok0Ht2aAuvmeqeX02jYpbYnmlKs2iGn8RoRaHFFpRuinvtiF7Qj6z0K_6KKtAyCKdfq8ipgSiPDevMzXSL4qEcKEkU4tNl6bhWOQ_EIG9X5fankKmkGo55VkOcBUY-h4hlX9j2ndsQ/s1600/sheffield+tree+felling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqaGok0Ht2aAuvmeqeX02jYpbYnmlKs2iGn8RoRaHFFpRuinvtiF7Qj6z0K_6KKtAyCKdfq8ipgSiPDevMzXSL4qEcKEkU4tNl6bhWOQ_EIG9X5fankKmkGo55VkOcBUY-h4hlX9j2ndsQ/s640/sheffield+tree+felling.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A recent campaign has been in progress regarding the proposed felling of 12 Lime trees along Sheffield’s Rustlings Road. I spoke with a local journalist about this subject and the story was covered in the Sheffield Star and Sheffield Telegraph as well as other regional papers and media. I tried to be reasonably balanced in what was said and think the newspaper article generally reflects this (at the very least, it was good to see the title '<a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-tree-felling-policy-could-cause-a-chainsaw-massacre-expert-says-1-7299261" target="_blank">Chartered Arboriculturist</a>' in the press!). However, as is often the case, the final newspaper article was limited by the word-count, which meant that parts of what was discussed was missed out. As such, the full statement is given below: </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AWA: “Sheffield’s trees are special, they play an important role in making the city a great place to live and work. They provide us with a wide range of benefits, from improved health, air quality, wildlife habitats, and reduced flash flooding. Trees also increase property prices and retailers benefit from attractive tree lined shopping areas. My own research, published by the Forestry Commission, found that Sheffield residents with high nearby tree cover have a higher mental wellbeing than those with no trees; suggesting living near to trees may actually make people happier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our company’s work with Amey involved independently auditing their tree surveyors, to ensure only dangerous, dead or dying trees were to be felled; however, since this survey work, any trees moving kerbs out of line, or those considered as having ‘outgrown their location’ are now to be felled. Under this new criteria, up to half of Sheffield’s street trees could face the chop; a potential chainsaw massacre.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I believe that the arboriculturists within council’s trees team, and at Amey, do a difficult job and they do care about the city's trees, but they are restricted by the wider policies regarding kerb misalignment and replacing larger mature trees with smaller ornamental species. Large trees do require ongoing maintenance to ensure they are healthy but this should not be viewed as a liability, rather a profitable management of a valuable asset. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This program of tree replacement has been highlighted by the recent campaign to protect the lime trees along Rustlings Road, but this has been happening across the whole of Sheffield, and especially impacts more disadvantaged communities, who aren’t as mobilised to campaign about decisions to their neighbourhood in the way that more well-off communities do. So it’s important that the current campaign isn’t just to protect the 12 trees on Rustlings Road – it should urge the council to reassess the wider policy on tree removals. Sheffield’s streets can accommodate large trees and the benefits they bring are worth saving.”</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-12556753174454607602015-04-02T06:31:00.000-07:002015-05-11T04:48:44.252-07:00The trees are coming into leaf<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conventional wisdom has it that life speeds up as we get older. It certainly seems that the months and years fly by faster, and I'm always astonished to discover,<i> “It’s already April!” </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This feeling of mild anxiety - that time is passing me by - is never more prominent during spring. At this time of year nature is inexorable; stubbornly marching to its own pace, it races on while I am left incredulous, late to the party, <i>“Since when was the hawthorn in leaf!?” </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No doubt this simple wish to be able to slow down and enjoy the trees during spring has a deeper meaning, relating to our inescapable mortality! Yet the very value of trees in spring - the first flush of buds, shoots and leaves - is due to the fact these things are fleeting. It is precisely their impermanence that gives it meaning. T</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he lesson trees can teach us at this time of year - that impermanence is pervasive – is a valuable one, e</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ncouraging us to make the most of every moment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This idea is captured brilliantly by the author and pioneer of the ecology movement John Stewart Collis. In his wonderful short book The Wood, he thoughtfully highlights how the joys of spring can so easily escape us:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You have to keep your eyes open in the country if you want to see the spring before it is all over. This is borne in on me every year. The whole affair is so swift and so variegated that unless we are careful we miss half of it. During some months of summer and some of winter the casual eye sees little change, but during April and May the speed of appearance and disappearance is almost on a par with the cinema. One wants to see the show through again at once, and get the order of things right. Nothing requires more deliberate intellectual exertion than to follow the unfolding closely, nothing more time eating. I found it much easier just to get on with my job... and I often put off looking at something until 'later' - by which time it was gone. </i></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-92053298837258937972015-02-10T07:37:00.001-08:002015-05-11T04:49:09.716-07:00Nemophilist: One who is fond of the forest; a haunter of the woods.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Nemophilist" target="_blank">Nemophilist</a> (pronounced <i>ne-‘mo-fe-list</i>), is an obscure word that hasn't really been used for over 100 years – but it is a word that surely deserves a comeback! It means someone with a love or fondness for forests, woods, or woodland scenery, or someone who often visits them - a ‘haunter’ of woods. The word derives from the Greek ‘nemos,’ grove, and ‘philos,’ affection. The use of the word appears to distinguish it from the more formal pursuit of ‘forestry’ or ‘botany’ - suggesting a more artistic appreciation of trees, or the <i>simple delight</i> provided by woodlands. The first known use was in 1838, yet the word seems to have been championed by the writers and poets of The Atlantic Monthly, an American literary magazine, founded in 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You can spend days and not exhaust the study which one little triangular bit of overgrown pasture affords, -- spend them, not as a naturalist in close, patient study, because to such a one a square yard of moss is as exhaustless as the forests of Guiana to a Waterton, but as a nemophilist, taking simple delight in mere observation and individual discovery.</i> The Atlantic Monthly, 1860.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>To many persons Spring means 'ethereal mildness,' and to such her coming is indeed slow in our land, but the nemophilist who has listened through all the lengthening days of later winter for sound of earliest bird, is off to the woods before the snow has left the hollows.</i> The Swiss Cross, 1923.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>It - the train - had on board, among other things, an observing observer, and as we sped up the chromoesque Valley of Mill Creek, the said observer was charmed by the gorgeous nemoral panorama, for he was an enthusiastic nemophilist.</i> The Disciple, 1886 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And first, being a true nemophilist, I protest against botany…The botanist is not a discoverer; he is only a pedant. He finds out nothing about the plant…To study the plant, to see how it gets its living, why it will grow on one side of a brook in profusion, and yet refuse to seek the other bank, is not his care. It is simply to see whether he can abuse its honest English or New-English simplicity by calling it by one set or another of barbarous Latin and Greek titles. Pray, my good Sir, does a man go to see the elephant only to call him a pachydermatous quadruped?</i> The Atlantic, 1860.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The groves invite thee, dear nemophilist, to care-free revel in their vernal bowers.</i> Sequoia Sonnets, 1919.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, desiring enjoyment that shall be honest, cheap, satisfying, and attainable, I say, in the full faith of the creed of Nemophily, - Get into the woods! No matter what you expect to find there, - go and see what you can find. </i>The Atlantic, 1860.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-37414966797987911202015-01-30T06:19:00.000-08:002015-05-11T04:49:52.217-07:00I like trees, but...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9WHvTM5zvYRI-Q6_KZnA5yKA3mN3i4AhSvdu1C1Al4CD4NDqh7cSHkmpdgS58G21qgByZzPkyxPqiBsN6cn_zMpLW7Zduk7x8bY-GWcBDYNq-rUxnQVc_k9BerVv1aj_Ew45rxXTM4WMr/s1600/tree+hugger+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9WHvTM5zvYRI-Q6_KZnA5yKA3mN3i4AhSvdu1C1Al4CD4NDqh7cSHkmpdgS58G21qgByZzPkyxPqiBsN6cn_zMpLW7Zduk7x8bY-GWcBDYNq-rUxnQVc_k9BerVv1aj_Ew45rxXTM4WMr/s1600/tree+hugger+.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Urban trees have many objective benefits to people, the economy and the environment; with much research and policy supporting <a href="http://www.treesforcities.org/about-us/information-resources/benefits-of-urban-trees/" target="_blank">this</a>. However, it's less clear if the public’s perception corresponds with such research and policy. Increasingly, arboriculturists involved in public liaison have questioned whether the public are aware of, or agree, that urban trees provide such benefits. Yet without public support, there is little hope of sustainable urban tree cover. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When assessing public perspectives towards urban trees, a wide spectrum of views can be observed. For some people, trees are wholly positive, they seem to regard them as a remedy to almost all of society’s ills, and think that increased tree cover is pivotal if society is to progress. Trees in the urban environment are seen as synonymous with humanistic and economic progress, while simultaneously adhering to spiritual principles and the ethics of deep ecology. Yet any urban tree professional who deals with the public will be aware of the obvious discontent trees can cause. There are those who seem to view urban trees as a very real threat; to their property, wealth, health and even life. From death, by a giant limb smashing through their home while they and their loved ones sleep, or the fear of this event increasing stress levels, they see themselves as being under siege. Persecuted by an incessant threat and nuisance, they view urban trees as an uninvited wilderness, symbolic of a breakdown of civil society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These perspectives are extreme, yet negative perceptions towards urban trees undoubtedly exist, even if they seem unwarranted when considered against the wealth of evidence of the objective benefits they provide. Is it just misinformation and public ignorance that induces the view of urban trees as, at best, an irrelevant and dispensable aspect of urban life and, at worst, a fear inducing liability?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People’s urban environments are subjective creations of their individual perceptions; so any landscape is composed of not only what lies before <a href="http://student.agsci.colostate.edu/horton/Ten_views.htm" target="_blank">our eyes</a> but also what lies within our heads. The landscape author Richard <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ernest_Muir" target="_blank">Muir</a> details differences between what he called the <i>real landscape</i> and the <i>perceived landscape</i>, which is a selective impression of what the real landscape is like. The impression may be very close to the real landscape or it might contain important misconceptions. From this we can see that many of the objective benefits, as they relate to trees as material objects, are within the “real landscape”, yet they still have to be interpreted by the public individual, whose reality of living in close proximity to trees may be far removed from what research and government reports are claiming. Different individuals will therefore perceive the same tree completely differently. Filtered by cultural input, public attitudes towards urban trees are both diverse and malleable, so it's important to have an understanding of negative public reactions to trees and the implications this may have for those responsible for managing the urban forest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While an individual's complaint regarding a tree may vary, the underlying theme of most seems to be the perception of urban trees as representing loss of control over the individual’s local environment. In order to dispel such views, it's important for the public to be aware that urban trees are not simply an encroaching wilderness, but that they are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">being actively managed (which, of course, includes removing trees when needed). Similarly, informing the public about the myriad of benefits urban trees offer and reducing the misconception of trees as significant threats, would help enable the individual’s interpretive filter to perceive urban trees as the real assets they surely are.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-67771654300302023362014-12-01T02:57:00.001-08:002015-05-11T04:50:39.551-07:00The World's First Tree Preservation Order<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCXpWN5mqCn6_L9EsC9P9nPF_xw7lnyaJvhfllwk8t3DZo9yjsKM9Nu3InxaiCUYIGKNLzxvYoyBfFKJAfZfiF5NhM70Jd8ygY4yr4K9khq_GtGWALYrZCBY-6qGYwD2cyQsIapP8npnjJ/s1600/Tree+Ancient+Greece.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCXpWN5mqCn6_L9EsC9P9nPF_xw7lnyaJvhfllwk8t3DZo9yjsKM9Nu3InxaiCUYIGKNLzxvYoyBfFKJAfZfiF5NhM70Jd8ygY4yr4K9khq_GtGWALYrZCBY-6qGYwD2cyQsIapP8npnjJ/s1600/Tree+Ancient+Greece.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the turn of the 20th century, in the face of overcrowded slums and uncontrolled urban growth, the UK Government implemented some of the first ever campaigns to tackle the problem of poor urban environments. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This political commitment ultimately led to the creation of the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act, which brought most development under the control of councils, through a system of development plans. This Act also protected certain trees, by means of Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs), w</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ith private tree owners now having to seek formal permission from the newly appointed authorities to fell, lop or top their own trees. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The TPO system is regarded as one of the oldest formal tree protection systems in the world, and is one of the few with the prospect of criminal proceedings against those who transgress it. </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since 1947 the impact of this system on our urban trees has been wide reaching. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost 70 years on from when our first Tree Preservation Orders were confirmed, the UK is a very different place, yet urban trees still face many pressures, and it </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">remains a powerful legal mechanism for delivering tree protection. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would, however, be a mistake to think that the UK’s TPOs were the first written documents that protected trees by the use of Law. In fact, one has to travel back over 2000 years, to 92/91 B.C in Ancient Greece, to find the world's first Tree Preservation Order. Customarily engraved on a heavy stone tablet, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qwQgIC-3eIsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">the document</a> details specific laws in relation to tree protection and the regulation of tree cutting:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>περὶ τῶν κοπτόντων ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι. μηθεὶς κοπτέτω ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τόπου· ἂν δέ τις ἁλῶι, ὁ μὲν δοῦλος μαστιγούσθω ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν, ὁ δὲ ἐλεύθερος ἀποτεισάτω, ὅσον κα οἱ ἱεροὶ ἐπικρίνωντι· ὁ δὲ ἐπιτυχὼν ἀγέτω αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἱεροὺς καὶ λαμβανέτω τὸ ἥμισυ</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>About Those Cutting Wood in the Sanctuary: No one shall cut wood from the sacred place. If anyone is caught cutting wood, a slave must be flogged by the sacred men, but a free man must be fined as much as the sacred men decide. The one catching transgressors must bring them to the sacred men and will receive half the fine. </i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While it is possible other written regulations relating to damaging or felling certain trees existed; these usually formed a small part of the texts alongside other rules. This was the first text to concentrate exclusively on the protection of trees, issued </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in an attempt to make the prohibition against the destruction of the trees more widely known</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and it gives specific details concerning the punishment of those who transgress the rules.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although separated by two millennia, the tree protection mechanisms share similarities. In the 1940s, our Tree Preservation system was created as a means to offer practical protection to trees under pressure from new housing, roads and industrial development. In Ancient Greece, sacred trees were also under pressure - wide-ranging deforestation around this time meant that the destruction of sacred trees, for fire-wood and grazing, was a real problem. The sanctuaries’ required their own firewood for sacrificial rituals and so this was likely one of the main reasons why the trees were so rigorously protected</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Similarly, the implementation of the TPO regulations in the 1940s reflected a wider cultural shift, of both the growing belief in the link between public health and urban trees, and the protection of important trees was seen by many as a moral duty in and of itself. In </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ancient Greece</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, special trees enjoyed specific legal protection both as a practical means to manage a shortage of wood, but it also reflected the wider</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> culture, where</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> tree veneration and the</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> belief in the sanctity of trees </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was prominent.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-9106268207999862732014-11-12T09:52:00.000-08:002014-11-13T07:07:41.296-08:00Charlotte Mew on Men and Trees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today we are increasingly aware of the importance of urban forestry to human mental and spiritual well-being. The prose and poetry of Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) reflects the early development of such thinking.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Charlotte</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">lived, for the most part, in poverty and despair. Tormented by her brother's and sister’s mental illness, which confined them to asylums and early death; she vowed never to marry as she feared she might carry a hereditary mental illness, and this fear and grief ultimately led to her suicide. Despite this, she</span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> produced poems of unique beauty and passion. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thomas Hardy wrote that Charlotte Mew was “far and away the best living woman poet, who will be read when others are forgotten.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charlotte clearly regarded herself very much as an urban person, but understood that trees played an indispensable role in urban life. In her poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/182312" target="_blank">The Trees are Down</a> she creates</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> vivid images of urban trees being removed and explains how upset she feels about it; for any hard-nosed arborist struggling to empathise with an upset member of the public, it should be required reading:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>the branches as they fall,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>With the 'Whoops' and the 'Whoa', the loud common talk,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The poem ends:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>hearts of the planes;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>In the March wind, the May breeze,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>They must have heard the sparrows flying,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying -</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Hurt not the trees.'</i></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Her writing about trees reaches a peak in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">her essays <a href="http://studymore.org.uk/xmewmt.htm" target="_blank">Men and Trees</a>, where she gives a polemical account of the importance of trees in relation to people; placing them in their historical and cultural context with a particular emphasis on the negative impact of the mismanagement of urban trees.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The London trees are all prisoners of men, some unreasonably mutilated like the lopped crowd in Greenwich Park, while, now and then, there is a wholesale massacre such as that of the seven hundred in Kensington Gardens, which took place, no one knows why, some thirty years ago, against which even the executioners protested and perhaps the homeless rooks as vainly. In my own wooded neighbourhood one after another falls; progress pulls down the old spacious shabby houses and puts up flats for the half-world; a popular draper rears a proud red monument to success; the green vanishes: even tomorrow one may miss the familiar plane of yesterday, and the birds go with the trees.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You are looking at something', said my blind friend quietly. 'Not here', I told him.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"It was a tree outside the British Museum they were felling last week, with all the instruments of butchery, the axe and the rope and the saw, and the clearing round it like a scaffold; it went on for days and I didn't altogether care for it."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'No,' he agreed, with sudden animation,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"I really can't bear to see a tree cut down - a big tree: it's a sort of sacrilege. I suppose we belong, of course we do - I anyhow - to the Dark Ages." ...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>How happy the trees must be to hear the song of the birds again in their branches. After the silence and the leaflessness to have the birds back once more - to feel them busy at the nest-building" ...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Of old time the tree was the pillar of the temple. It is a clear echo of, the earliest true cults, this, to hear - to feel - to have the birds; a return to the day when the tree was a sentient being with a soul of its own, or when later it became the abode or haunt of the spirit. The steeples are empty. Here is his inherent Paganism: ages before the steeples the primeval church was the forest, and the secret of all things was within or behind a tree...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The oldest inhabited world, as we look back on it from our cleared spaces, is a dense and infinite forest, a world of tree-haunted men and men-haunted trees...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>One may read whole libraries about the tree. Tree-myth, tree-marriage, tree-burial, tree-murder (under 'Forestry'), shelf upon shelf of books, dreams analysed and prayers dissected, millions of words strewn round it like its own dead leaves, and outside these stands the living tree, aloof, splendid; as magical as it was before one of them was written; and sometimes - there is always this about the city tree and the trees of commerce, and those forlorn ones grouped round a deserted house-something tragic and touching too....</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And this beauty. The scientist puts it into schedules and cuts sections of it and labels specimens for museums, and while he is busy the soul of it makes a little journey and comes back when he has gone to bed. No soul can breathe buried alive beneath the weight of all these tabulated facts.</i></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-23949280109217263742014-10-24T08:13:00.000-07:002015-05-11T04:42:16.906-07:00Do Trees Have Feelings?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some people relate to trees almost as inanimate objects - <i>green things that stand in the way</i>.</span> However, modern research has undermined this view and is showing trees as having ever greater levels of sophistication than previously imagined. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In their own way, plants can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Oj2er-91s" target="_blank">see</a>, <a href="http://www.livescience.com/27802-plants-trees-talk-with-sound.html" target="_blank">hear</a>, <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/24/153583873/do-plants-smell-other-plants-this-one-does-then-strangles-what-it-smells" target="_blank">smell</a>, <a href="http://modernfarmer.com/2014/10/plants-can-tell-theyre-eaten/" target="_blank">feel</a> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> it is possible they even have a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598926" target="_blank">memory</a>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trees can <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855">communicate</a> with each other too; using mycorrhizal fungi, their roots exchange information and even goods to other trees in need. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Obviously trees don't have brains, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">some believe that trees may have something akin to a nervous system and</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> produce some of the same <a href="http://morgan.wells.edu/faculty/jschnurr/Biol385/insects%20and%20hormones.pdf" target="_blank">hormones</a> that animals do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s clear that trees can sense and react to their environment, but does this mean that trees think? Are trees conscious?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>What is it like to be a tree?</b></i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one of the most influential essays on consciousness ever written, the philosopher Thomas <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel" target="_blank">Nagel</a> asks us to consider “what is it like to be a bat?”. His interest wasn't in bats, but in how we define consciousness. Nagel argued that an organism is conscious if and only if there is something that it is like to <i>be</i> that organism – something that it is like for the organism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following Nagel's thought experiment, if you were to trade places with a tree, what would it be like? Would you be left with any experience – however indescribable – some spectrum of sights, sounds, feelings? If so, then that is what consciousness is in the case of a tree. However, if being transformed into a tree were tantamount to annihilation, then trees are not conscious. For </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nagel, e</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ither the lights are on or they are not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps imagining oneself as a tree may say more about the limits of human imagination than anything else; but if consciousness is something within oneself that is aware of oneself experiencing reality, “the feeling of what happens,” then we are surely safe to say trees don’t possess it. Certainly, no rational person would claim that a tree feels emotions, and without</span> a brain a tree can’t feel pain, so it would follow that trees cannot think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, i</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">f we define consciousness as just being aware of one’s environment - the state of being awake - then the sharp line currently separating animals from trees becomes less clear. In this case perhaps trees may qualify as sentient</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. J</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ust because a t</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ree offers little outward signs of consciousness is perhaps deceptive. Whether or not trees seem conscious to us is not the point; just how would trees appear if they were conscious – perhaps exactly as they do now - would you expect them to talk? </span></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">necessity of c</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">onsciousness.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We face many of the same challenges as trees, obtaining food and water, surviving and reproducing. We are built from the same atoms and have the same ancestors, b</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ut our evolutionary branching point was truly ancient. The last common ancestor of plants and animals is likely to have been single-celled and is estimated to have lived 1.6 billion years ago </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- close to the root of the evolutionary tree. From that time on trees have had a distinct lineage, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">completely independent to us animals; evolving their own unique processes that has allowed them to successfully assemble into complex, elaborate organisms.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Impressive as it is, consciousness only evolved</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> because it was useful for us - a social species that moves around a lot - but consciousness may have been unnecessary or even a disadvantage if you are rooted in the same spot for hundreds of years.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are still many unknowns surrounding a trees sensory system, </span>and there are sure to be further revelations <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which will astound us - but this should not be confused with what goes on in our cerebral cortex. Ultimately, it seems very unlikely that trees have significant inner lives, but they have managed just fine without this. Moreover, in attempting to increase the value of trees by superficial analogies - crudely trying to attach consciousness to them - we actually diminish their unique stature</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After all, a tree can </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">live for a thousand years and eat sunlight, isn't</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that enough? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.awatrees.com/#blog" target="_blank">Read More...</a></i></span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3987462941000347691.post-72068197567663549052014-10-12T12:20:00.000-07:002014-10-22T08:14:33.764-07:00AMAZING FACTS* ABOUT TREES THAT YOU DEFINITELY DIDN'T KNOW! <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: medium;">There are just
so many interesting facts; the internet is full of them! You probably know most
of the more common facts about trees, but here are some amazing facts* about
trees that you didn't know. OK so they may be unfounded but –
after all – this is the internet, so who really cares, as long they blow your
mind!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">7: You probably know that the root system is one of the most important parts of the tree. But did you realise a</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> tree’s tap root extends down three times as deep as the tree is tall!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">6: Concrete has been used for many amazing things throughout history, including architecture, infrastructure and more. Now used almost universally in modern construction, concrete has changed our understanding of trees. We now know filling cavities in trees with concrete gives them superior strength and helps them heal! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">5: Trees that overhang into adjacent gardens can unfortunately cause disputes between neighbours; but did you know that a tree that is situated on a boundary between two properties legally owns itself?! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">4: Some trees are protected by law; but did you know all Silver Birch trees are legally protected in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK, and</st1:country-region> cutting
them down is punishable by being burned on the left thumb with a hot iron (so that if apprehended again, that mark betrayeth them of the felony before, whereby they are sure at that time to
have no mercy).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">3: Painting pruning wounds on a tree is an easy, simple way to aid in healing, protecting against decay, insects, and fungi - whatever the weather!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2: Trees near to your home may look nice, but i</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">f a tree is planted within 30m of your property foundations, this will decrease the value of your property value by up to 70%!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1: With the tough current economic climate, every penny counts – so don’t be fooled into paying through the nose for so called ‘professional’ tree surgeons. Yes, they may be fully trained, qualified and insured; but with the help of the internet, a chainsaw and a pair of ladders, pruning large trees is a doddle! What’s the worst that could <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTmgW3DZl-4" target="_blank">happen</a>?! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>(<b>*untrue</b>)</i> </span></div>
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