A shadow on the curtain…

A warning of what this post is about…

It’s that time of year when the wonderful orb-weaver spiders are growing to their plumpest and it’s just as well I consider them to be a separate class from house spiders, as I walk into their webs in the garden several times a week. House spiders and shed or garage spiders make me phobic, but garden spiders don’t.

This shadow on the curtain net was what greeted me one early morning as the sun was coming up. Luckily the spider was on the outside of the window, so it gave me a chance to take a really quite close look without risk of disturbing it.

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News from the world of trees #8

Here is another selection of tree news articles from around the world. Click on each of the pictures if you would like to read the full stories.

Saving Congo’s forest and its Pygmies

In the DRC, the indigenous Mbuti people rejected a nature reserve that banned them from their ancestral lands. Now, working with conservationists, they are exploring ways to protect the Itombwe forest together, according to the Guardian…

Adonis is named Europe’s oldest tree

The Daily Mail reports that, according to scientists, a pine found growing in Greece was planted more than 1,000 years ago…

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2016 tree following 8: Still gall-watching

The oak shows no sign of autumn yet

As I suspected, the oak tree (Quercus robur) in the middle of Cardiff’s Thompson’s Park doesn’t know it’s autumn yet. When I visited it on September 9 it looked no different from a month earlier, apart from the fact that someone had removed the fallen branch.

Sadly I have had to give up totally on finding ANY acorns, despite the large size of the tree. They all seem to have been subsumed by wasp galls of various sorts, so I had to make do with inspecting those again.

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Tree following link box for September 2016

A mighty beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) at Minterne Gardens in Dorset a few weeks ago

Here we are again with the monthly shout-out to all tree followers. If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.

The September tree-following link box is now closed, but at the bottom of this post you will find links to all the wonderful contributions we received this month…

In my neck of the woods September tends to be a something and nothing month for trees, most of which seem to be looking tired but without any autumn colour yet. I will be interested to see how yours are getting on.

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News from the world of trees #7

Here is another selection of tree news articles from around the world. Click on each of the pictures if you would like to read the full stories.

The Great Bear rainforest is a model for how to save trees

The Great Bear forest in Canada is almost 16 million acres and home to thousand-year-old cedar trees and rare species. Here environmentalists and loggers have worked together, says PRI…

Help track down historic, royal mulberries

The Conservation Foundation is trying to find and survey ancient mulberries in London, says the Telegraph…

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2016 tree following 7: Searching for acorns

Change and decay in all around I see…

Here’s my August contribution to the tree following project, which you can read all about here. The August link box is here.

The old pedunculate oak (Quercus Robur) I am following every month in the middle of Thompson’s Park, Cardiff, is changing, and not for the better.

When I visited the other day we had just experienced heavy rain and strong winds.

Even from a distance I could see there was a branch down.

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Tree following link box for August 2016

The berries are growing but not ripening yet – can anyone identify this small tree for me? It reminds me of something like a Sorbus or a member of the rose family… but thank you to tree follower Karen Gimson, who says it is probably Crataegus prunifolia, which makes sense as its berries are like hawthorn but its leaves are like cherry!

Here we are again with the monthly shout-out to all tree followers. If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.

I know August can be a difficult time to keep up with the tree following, what with holidays and days at the beach. And in some ways trees look as if “nothing is happening”. So I was delighted so many regular followers – and two new ones – took part this month.

The August tree-following link box is now closed, but at the bottom of this post you will find links to all the wonderful contributions we received this month…

In Cardiff it has mainly been a cool summer. We had about three days of “heatwave” but more recently we have had wet and windy weather.

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