The climate scientists are finally persuaded that Southwick Country Park’s solution to global warming is the right way to go. They should have asked us sooner.
Continue reading “Growing trees”Growing trees
Elena Aschiopoaiei has emailed her pictures of rain-soaked larch cones in the park.
Continue reading
Pink hawthorn
In the middle of the park, the hawthorn blossom is pink; not uniformly pink but definitely pink in places. It seems to be confined to the hedges at the bottom end of Sleepers Field right through to the hedge at the top of the little triangular field that doesn’t have a name. It’s very pretty.
Continue reading “Pink hawthorn”Mayflower
This is the blossom of the hawthorn tree. It is also called may or mayflower, and the hawthorn tree is still sometimes called a may tree.
Continue reading “Mayflower”Oak flowers
These are the flowers of an oak tree. Oaks are monoecious; they have male flowers and female flowers on the same tree.
Continue reading “Oak flowers”Late frost
There was a frost on Saturday night.
Continue reading “Late frost”More about our notable trees
By Patrick Jones
I’ve just been looking through the Tree Survey for the Country Park before passing it on to the committee and was amazed by the sheer number of specimen trees. I could not resist breaking it down. I don’t know if this has been done but the following are my (possibly inaccurate) figures.
Continue reading “More about our notable trees”Notable trees
Wiltshire keeps a record of all the notable trees on all county-owned land. Each tree’s species, approximate age and its grid reference are written down; it is given a number and its photograph is taken.
Continue reading “Notable trees”The Park’s Veteran Oaks
By Ian Bushell
Southwick Country Park has a number of veteran oaks and ten ancient oaks. There are no hard and fast rules about when and why an oak tree becomes classified as veteran or ancient; in different environments and soils oaks grow at different rates and girth is only an indicator. Here the underlying Oxford clay provides an excellent medium and the trees are large and shapely.
Continue reading “The Park’s Veteran Oaks”
There has been a lot of noisy forestry work going on in the park for the past few weeks. We have had both enquiries and complaints.
Continue readingThe blackthorn is in flower
The park’s hedges have burst into blossom and the park is looking wonderful. The show will only last a few days; come and see before it vanishes.
continue for More picturesOak gall ink
More about our oaks.
Continue reading “Oak gall ink”The Park’s Old Oaks
By Ian Bushell.
Southwick Country Park has a number of veteran oaks and one identified ancient oak, but what is a veteran or ancient oak? There are no hard and fast rules; in different environments and soils oaks grow at different rates. Here the underlying Oxford clay provides an excellent medium and the trees are large. One criterion for assessing veteran trees is those with a girth of 3.2 m are considered of potential interest, and those with a girth of 4.7 m as being valuable in terms of conservation.
Continue reading “The Park’s Old Oaks”
Oak tree number 5521 through the mist on Friday morning.
Our Famous Tree
A message from DKG
“Just to let you know, my photo of the lone oak with the cloud halo above it was shown on the BBC Weather report this morning”
