Outdoors Les Davies MBE

West Countryman’s diary

THElongest day will have passed by the time you read this month’s edition and I wonder just how fast our summer is going to disappear? Only a few weeks back it was wet and cold. The thought of seeking shelter from the sun was something I had not even given a moment’s thought to, yet here I am doing just that. With that need to escape from the sun, comes an understanding of how woods work and how team work can pull the tree through a long hot summer. Deciduous trees need the equivalent of an “animal herd” to survive. The lone tree is capable of looking after itself, but to be really successful, it takes a co-ordinated approach.

The next time you take a walk in Rowberrow forest, take a little time out to rest in one of the beech plantations. The first thing to notice is the immediate drop in temperature. On a hot summer’s day this is such a welcome break from the relentless attention of the sun’s rays.

Lie down and look up through the tree canopy, where the sunlight is gently filtered down to the woodland floor. Very little if any other growth exists here as the trees keep the soil moist and prevent the chance of water loss through evaporation. It’s a team effort that is enabling everyone to live.

The high tree tops still allow sufficient light for food production through photosynthesis. No-one is being pushed out from doing that, but together they shade that all important woodland floor containing the water reserves so carefully collected during the wetter months. A big hole in the tree canopy will lead to a hole in the parasol and a drying out of the soil below.

The answer to survival can therefore be summed up with yet another acronym: ALTI or All Level Team Involvement. The question then arises, how do the future tree replacements survive in this light-starved environment?

Being unable to photosynthesise and produce their own food, these infant trees rely on “mother’s milk” or sugars to be more precise. They are fed by the larger trees through their root system – all they need is water. An attachment to the mature trees continues for a long time until it is their chance to take over.

The trees not only shade out the woodland floor, they also

With LES DAVIES MBE

keep the humidity high by transpiration, the discharge of water droplets from the underside of the leaf – I suppose you would call it sweating!

In our temperate climate we have become quite accustomed to seeing large stands of conifers, whose natural surroundings would be much further north. They are more used to long winters and short summers where they need to maximise on both food production and growth. Hot weather can bring them under stress through lack of water.

Very large conifer forests, such as in Canada and Siberia can create their own clouds. Even if no rain falls, they have the effect of cooling the air and reducing water loss. The distinctive “pine smell” that hits you as soon as you go into a conifer plantation is created by natural chemicals given off by the trees.

If produced in sufficient quantities, it is to these chemicals that water droplets attach themselves and form clouds. Such small clouds can occasionally be seen drifting along the tree tops of Rowberrow forest well below what would be normal cloud height.

For trees, everything is done in slow time, that’s why they live for so long. We can look at a tree and wonder what it has “seen” during its life. We can also look at the same tree and realise it’s not able to get up and move if it doesn’t particularly like its surroundings. Darwin’s work on evolution not only identified the survival of the fittest as being the key to success, but also the survival of the most intelligent as being a major factor.

Trees are very intelligent and have mastered the art of survival over thousands of years. Change is a natural occurrence and it’s not change itself that causes problems, it’s more the rate of change. We all know about the increase in carbon dioxide levels and the threat it poses. Scientists’ knowledge of the past has revealed very high levels of carbon dioxide, but life was able to adapt to this change because it was gradual.

We however have accelerated the levels at such a rate as to make it difficult for things to adapt quickly enough! Maybe we are not too late to slow things up a little; has the pandemic made us think about what we are doing?

I had some lovely responses from last month’s tree/face pictures and thought it would be good to put a couple more in this time. The “mouse” is growing on a lime tree in King wood, whilst the scary tree face was provided by Judith Tranter from the Mendip Society and is in the society’s nature reserve at Tania’s Wood near Ubley.

Hopefully you will be finding more of your own!