June 2023

Seen beneath the tree shown in the previous blog were these two objects. They are two seed pods of the plane tree, the one on the left being open and revealing the many seeds, each with a delicate ‘wing’, awaiting to be carried off by the breeze, an example of wind-blown reproduction. These round seed […]

Today’s photo shows another young plane tree (s.p.b.) planted in the landscaped area beside the Tidal Barrier spanning the River Hull near the mouth of the River. A common ancestor of today’s plane trees has been discovered in plants fossils from the Paleocene geological era, this being approximately 60 million years past, in an era

Apparently the word ‘plane’ goes back to early modern times in both French and English to identify this tree, although the word may have ancient Greek origins, and certainly one strain of plane tree is native to the eastern Mediterranean region. So the plane tree cannot be classed as a native species (s.p.b.s) and was

Above, another scene that may give some impression of the wildwood environment. In the wildwood plants and trees would all have been in competition for ground water and nutrients and for sunlight, ecologically a ‘dog-eat-dog’ environment. Of course, eras before the Halocene (since the last Ice Age) would have had their natural flora and fauna

Wildwood is the word used to define the natural vegetation that colonised the land as the ice sheets retreated after the last Ice Age, this before the influence of Man on the Natural vegetation and landscape. The above shows a section of the vegetation on the upper scarp slope of the lower Lias escarpment just

The current long, hot, dry spell of weather has resulted in very high pollen counts in the air, certainly in eastern England. At this time of year the air is full of pollen from both grasses and trees, the former now in full flower, the latter coming to the end, in most cases, of their