Trees
Sheffield’s urban forest
The plight of Sheffield’s trees is well known: you’ve probably seen articles in the news with Sheffield residents and famous faces up in arms over the dramatic changes to the city’s streets. But alongside the anger and passion there is a question: how can such a seemingly dramatic programme of felling be allowed to be carried out in an era of unprecedented red tape and environmental protection?
Extreme measures
Recently seen in Leeds: four birches, recently planted by a busy junction next to a brownfield development. Whilst birches are often used in this situation, what stood out was the planting detail.
When is a tree a trees?
We all know what a tree is, don’t we? But when does a tree stop being ‘a’ tree and start being something bigger, more complicated and perhaps even plural? Francis Hallé has approached the question from a morphological perspective by showing that through reiteration, trees can actually be forests, with branches functioning as individual trees or trees-in-waiting, and I was fascinated to read this paper which touches on this same question from a different perspective, showing that up to 40% of the carbon in a tree’s fine roots might actually have been produced by another tree.