Author name: Richard Clarke

The photo above shows one of the other nearby oak trees to the one shown in the previous blog/post. This individual has a canopy more vertical than the one in the previous picture, the top part of the canopy having a dense leaf coverage while the middle part of the canopy is far more open, […]

Above is a photo of a mature oak tree in Pearson Park, Hull. I was surprised to learn that there are over 500 species of oak tree globally, although all are native to the Northern Hemisphere. presumably some oaks have been introduced to areas in the Southern Hemisphere with climates similar to those to the

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