Tree

During my regular morning and evening dog walk, I usually go up a farm track close to where we live. There is a rather overgrown hedge there and two lovely old Ash trees.

It almost always strikes me, each time I walk under the trees, how they impact on the local environment. Obviously, if it is raining, then they shelter the track from the worst of the rain and when the wind is blowing they give shelter from the wind. But I have also noticed that when the rest of the track is muddy the trees appear to have absorbed the water, or improved the drainage around them and that section of the track isn't muddy. 

Similarly in the summer when the rest of the track is dry and dusty, the areas under the trees remains slightly damp.

On hot sunny days the air is noticeably cooler under the trees and I have noticed on frosty mornings that the ground under the trees often remains unfrozen, even though there are no leaves on the trees then.

I have since noticed a very similar pattern in the woodland where we now live. There is an area of Pine woodland that I walk the dogs through in the mornings. It is quite sparsely covered in trees, but as soon as I walk from this area to the neighbouring grassy area there is a very noticeable difference. In the summer, it is cooler under the trees, but in the winter it is milder, yet there can be frost on the grass.  

The trees appear to act as air conditioning units protecting the ground below them from extremes of weather.

I have long been an admirer of trees. I find it difficult to understand how they can support the enormous weight of their limbs. Their forms are so beautiful and they not only provide the oxygen we need to survive, but they provide homes for so many birds and invertebrates. There is so much more that we are learning about trees and their ability to communicate with each other.

For the last twenty years we have lived in a house with all our heating and hot water provided by long-burning stoves. And I love working with wood, admiring the different grains and forms.

However, it is the impact that these two trees have on their immediate environment that really impresses me. That makes what has been happening to the Amazon rain forest even more concerning. If two trees can make such a difference, what will the impacts be of the loss of thousands of acres of rain forest?