Oak in Autumn

The oak in full leaf with New Forest ponies underneath

2008-05-15T16:28:00.003+01:00

The leaves are come now. Over the next few weeks the only changes that will be seen is the slow darkening and toughening of the leaves. Little seedling oaks springing up under the big one, only to be eaten by the caterpillars that fall from the tree canopy when it rains. Acorns that fall rarely live beyond a year. Those that produce oaks are normally transported elsewhere by jays or other birds or animals. Come the middle of August oaks bring out more leaves the "Lamas Growth."

I will try to photograph that and will follow the progress of the oak apples from time to time. See a previous post for more about them. Soon I hope to put up a slideshow of the changes since last October. Meanwhile you can follow other trees in the sister blog Treewatch.

The story of the little oak

2008-05-07T22:44:00.004+01:00

October lots of leaves but starting to turn

November the leaves are falling

December no leaves, and start of March just a hint of the buds.

The end of April and the beginning of May. The leaves are back.

As well as the big oak I have been taking pictures of another smaller oak (probably about 60 years old and still quite small). These are the pictures from the end of October fully leaved after the summer to the start of May. Fully leaved in new green.

May Day and Oak apples

2008-05-01T21:16:00.008+01:00

First day of May and the leaves are getting thicker. I saw my first New Forest foal this morning. Standing awkwardly on it's four legs, with the legs spread out slightly wider at the bottom. They are tall but very thin and narrow. Didn't get a pic. Let's hope I find one under the tree.

I didn't photograph the foal but I did find an oak apple on a tree where I have been photographing the buds as they develop. Oak apples are the home of the larvae of gall wasps. In spring the gall wasps lay eggs in the leaf buds of oak and some chemical in the eggs causes the oak to develop these protective "apples" where the larvae live and are fed by the oak. Seems a bit improbable doesn't it? ... but you haven't heard the half of it.

This type of gall wasp (there are about a dozen that live on oak trees) is called Biorhiza Pallida. Alternate generations can fly. The flying ones are sexed and the females mate and lay eggs on the roots of oak trees. These eggs cause another type of gall on the roots. Eventually a flightless all-female generation is born from these galls. This generation all crawl up the trees and lays eggs in the leaf buds that cause the oak apples to grow. How did it all start? Which generation came first? You might well ask but don't expect a sensible answer.

Here is a picture of the wasps, presumably the wingless generation on the first and the winged second. These pics are taken from a German beetle site. The first pic is by B Belman and the second by R Werner. The site is:

http://www.koleopterologie.de/

I shouldn't really have used them but I thought you would like to see the pics

The galls seem to be all over this particular oak. I suppose lots of wasps laid eggs in its roots. It is less healthy than the main oak. I wonder if galls come more on old oaks like ivy. Or if they actually harm the oak. Anyone know?

PS Oak Apple day is May 29 to celebrate the restoration of Charles II who had previously hid in an oak tree at some battle or the other. People wore oak apples.

Spring is getting ahead of me

2008-04-29T23:17:00.004+01:00

Tomorrow will be different. 'll have time show a detailed version of how the oak has changed - or maybe won't. Anyway the tree will have changed even if haven't. So 'd better try to catch up. Here is the oak as it was yesterday. The leaves are showing now all right! And there's a chance to compare the new green with the old green in the title picture taken last October. And to look back to just over three weeks ago when it was covered in snow.

April 10: Back to the spring

2008-04-10T07:33:00.001+01:00

The green is there again. Soon the whole tree will be smothered in leaves.

Snow in April

2008-04-06T22:12:00.002+01:00

For the first time for maybe ten years we had snow today. Quite a lot of it. I was out to take pictures while it was still falling.

The green that we saw coming was covered in white. But not for long. Unlike the few sad remaining daffodils the oak will come through unmoved. Tomorrow it will be greener still.

April 4 - Yes the green can be seen

2008-04-04T23:50:00.005+01:00

Now for sure the green is there for real. You're not left wondering whether it is your fond imagination that sees a green halo around the tree. It's there the tree is green al around.

The buds start opening from the top with the lower ones not open yet. Like leaf-fall, leaf appearance is sudden. We've just had three or four warm days and suddenly the leaves are starting to open. Oh wonder of wonders!

Here you can see them looking up into the branches.

And here is a close up of the new leaves and the little oak flowers.

January, February, March the buds are swelling and the leaves almost here!

2008-03-28T22:06:00.005Z

January

February

March

There's a smidgen of a smidgen of colour round the oak

Like a little misty halo, like a shifting orange smoke.

There's a whisper of a whisper of flowers on the ash

Like tiny threads of cotton, like a greeny-yellow rash.

And for sure, there on the chestnut, there's a swelling sticky bud

(Though the fields around are soaking and the cows knee deep in mud.)

And the primroses are blooming, and it's fast becoming clear

There's a rumour of a rumour that spring is really here.

Christmas Eve

2008-03-28T21:44:00.003Z

When the sun is weak and the nights are long

You hear earth singing a different song.

The mist rises white from the grass all around

Life stirs in its sleep underneath the ground.

The deep dark earth, soon to be our home,

This is the place from where visions come.

The visions rise and seem to me

As solid as the trunk of the old oak tree.

And none would believe them if they didn't know

That something like the oak from dull earth would grow.

And just as improbable and just as odd

To this dark earth came the son of god.

Dec 8 - Another wet day and a rest for the blog. See you after Christmas

2007-12-08T21:53:00.000Z

Puddles, puddles, puddles. It's a wet day and the water sits on the top of the forest lawns. It takes ages to sink in which, I seem to remember, is because of the iron pan under the first few feet of soil which makes the New Forest bad agricultural land. And that is why it remained a forest. It wasn't worth making a fuss about so nobody did. So when we see the ground puddle-covered we should be grateful to the iron pan. Without that, our lovely forest would probably be concreted over.

A rest for this blog
This blog will rest for a bit although I am continuing to keep a record of the tree. I'm working on a definitive series of pics to show the leaf fall in stages and maybe a movie. This will take time so take a look after Christmas when you have a spare moment and wonder at the leaf change and fall over this sunlit autumn.

But another blog here
Meanwhile I have been persuaded by my daughter to start a St Nicholas Diary blog - so click here to go there. It concerns the trials of Santa Claus as he gears himself up for Christmas. If you want your grandchildren, your children (or yourself) to have a special mention in this blog email me or post a comment on the blog. I'll ask St Nick to see if he can oblige.

Dec 6 UK - Dark day for dark thoughts

2007-12-06T21:40:00.000Z

Almost pitch dark when I got down to the tree today. But eh outline of the tree looks wonderful against the dark sky.

We had the "Prayer of a tree" yesterday. It's nice - but it's really the prayer of a tree lover. It's a human prayer. The thing that has struck me most as I have worked on this blog is the complete "tree-yness" of trees. They live separate vegetable lives to us and probably are more indifferent to us than rocks and stones. At least, if rocks and stones ignore us, we don't think they are alive. Whereas trees seem almost like people. But they are not. As of trees their "vegetable love doth grow, vaster than empires and more slow." Almost true as the mycillae (is that what I mean - the root fungus anyway) of one would encircle the world and joins trees in some sort of web at least forest wide.

In searching around for a definitive version of the tree prayer last night I came across this. "An apple is the prayer of a tree." It sounds intriguing, but I don't know what it means either, so I just pass it on.

I think most likely the tree prays "send my roots rain." Maybe it prays that its acorns will fall off and give its branches a rest, maybe that the caterpillars will stop itching in the leaves. These are the equivalents of what most humans pray for. And quite right too. People spend a lot of time praying for more complex things too, mostly that that they won't live as ghastly wrecks. Trees seem to attain an amazing beauty however they grow. "What I do is me for that I came." No agonising for trees.

Look at the form of our tree as it rears up into the sky. That's something to wonder at.

Here are the quotes which I have misused tonight:
Vegetable Love comes from Marlowe's poem to his Coy Mistress where he is encouraging his mistress to "make much of time" as we poets say when we want to hurry someone into bed. It has nothing whatever to do with trees.
"Rocks and stones and trees" comes from Wordsworth's poem about the death of his love Lucy. Said by many to be his best.
"Send my roots rain" is from Gerard Manley Hopkins. I now find. It's an agonised poem of complaint about the injustice of God. Just what I say trees don't pray. Though how would I know.
"What I do is me" is Hopkins too. There's a pic of him on the link. Gosh he looked girly in his youth. Maybe nowadays he's be a member of a boys band.

The Marlows is the most fun for a dark winter night but the others are marvellous poems. If you want to see my two pennorth on prayer you can click here. I've just re-read it. Time I followed my own advice!

December 4 & 5 - A woebegone horse, the buzzards, and a tree prayer

2007-12-05T22:29:00.000Z

Well it was a nasty blurry day yesterday and here is a photo to match of a woebegone horse in front of our tree all out of focus and blurry. This was on the 4th. Today the 5th was a bit sunnier and here is a picture of Audrey carrying hay to her horses in a field nearby. Maybe the woebegone horse was hoping to intercept her. As you can see, there is still a lot of water lying on the forest lawns. Audrey seems to be stepping warily through it. And the soggy black leaves soak it up.

And here are the buzzards. They flew mewing over the trees as I was photographing yesterday. Probably a pair and this year's baby I would guess. Usually you see buzzards in two's but sometimes you can see six or so at a time.

Our local forester Geof sent me this "Prayer for a tree". Rather nice.

The Prayer of the Tree :
Anon.

You who pass by and would raise your hand against me, harken ere you harm me,

I am the heat of your hearth on the cold winter night,

the friendly shade screening you from summer sun.

And my fruits are refreshing draughts quenching your thirst as you journey on.

I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table,

the bed on which you lie, the timber that builds your boat.

I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your homestead,

the wood of your cradle, the shell of your last resting place.

I am the gift of God and the friend of man,

You who pass by, listen to my prayer and Harm me not.

Thoughts on trees, birds, beasts, prayers and humans tomorrow I hope. For now goodnight with a rather nice picture of a bramble leaf still in autumn greens and yellows with a tiny holly plant behind it. The bramble lives on the small scrubby set of bushes that grows round the roots of the tree. It tries vainly to climb up to the branches,

Decmber 3: UK - The trees are dormant - wither the blog?

2007-12-03T19:36:00.000Z

Well the leaves are gone. There is no two ways about it. On both the big tree and the small one.

And for the next few months there will be hardly any change in the tree that we will be able to see. There won't be much change in the bits we can't see either, as the roots become pretty much as dormant as the top of the tree.

There will be action under ground and even more under the leaf litter where the leaves will be recycled and their goodness will seep back into the soil for the tree to use again next year. Probably this year's acorns, the few that there are of them after a poor mast year, will be forming a tap roots. But we won't see any of this.

So wither the blog? In a week or so I expect it too will become dormant until the spring. (Except for a flurry if we get snow or more photogenic frosts.) But first I must tidy up properly. Turn the series of photos into movies or slide shows and put then up somewhere for the record. Try to summarise, if only for myself, what I have learned as the blog progressed. Try to continue to keep a record of the tree. Maybe still every day. Maybe only once a week or so. Try to prepare so we can catch the English tree in spring and the New Zealand one in autumn. Maybe try to arrange for photos of Californian oaks and oaks from elsewhere. Meanwhile there are still good photos to be taken. Here are a couple more. First the wonderful trunk in the last of the evening's winter sunshine.

And last, the sunset as I went up the hill from the tree to my home.

Dec 2 UK - A wild windy day

2007-12-02T20:05:00.001Z

The wind blew hard today and the oak was further denuded. But it hardly shows any more there are so few leaves.

The little oak is nearly as bare as the big one although it kept its leaves for a good 4 weeks after the big one started showing signs of colour turning and leaf-fall.

As well as the two trees, I've been photographing the leaves on a branch that hangs down low and has a convenient twig to grab it by. You can see it to the right of the title picture as it was back in October. Below is how it looks today.

Today is advent Sunday the start of the church's year. Perhaps the first day the tree is really bare of its leaves is a good point to start the year.

Finally a couple of pictures. One shows the depth of the leaf litter. Jeanie's boot is about 4 inches into the leaves. It is under this warm blanket that most of the action will take place over the next few months. Bacteria, and fungus, and insects will break this down overwinter while the eggs of gall wasps and the few acorns that there were wait for the spring.

The other photo shows new straight growth from the underneath of on an old broken branch. This, Hugh and Brian our tree panjandrums, tell us, is a sure sign of a healthy tree.

December 1 UK: What a difference a day makes

2007-12-01T10:36:00.001Z

Well the tree looks leafless now. It isn't absolutely and maybe there are about 100 leaves if you counted them. But up till yesterday counting looked impossible. The wind, yesterday and this morning brought down lots of leaves. Below is a photo of is what must be the last leaf on the tree to stil have some semblance of green. You can see the green (well it's more like yellow, really) just in the middle of the leaf. All around this solitary leaf are the buds ready come out in March or April to bring next year's leaves in their thousands.
The last green leaf

The little tree
Here is the other tree I've been photographing. It is a tree we have watched grow up out of the hedgerow. When we came here, about 40 years ago, it was invisible just part of the hedge. But it has been allowed to grow and is now a sizable tree. Probably it was 10 years growing in the hedge before we saw it and so must be about 50 years old. The photos below show the suddenness of the leaf fall in the wind and rain. Almost all the leaves fell during one day and a night.

The tree on November 22. This tree kept its leaves much longer than the big tree. Almost as green as summer.

November 27th, still most of the leaves are there, though they are all brown now.

November 30th . Still lots of leaves but they are beginning to go in the strong wind.

December 1 - the next morning. Nothing but a ghostly halo of leaves now. Tomorrow seeing the winds are strong it is liable to be completely bare.

November 30 - The last of the leaves are going

2007-12-01T06:59:00.000Z

A windy wet day and the leaves are flying. Mostly they come from another large oak, just to the left of the picture, that has more leaves on it than ours. It was dark dramatic light with the whole wood glowing with duns, and browns and oranges and just under the oak tree there was a white horse. Waiting to be mounted and to take the rider will-he nill he off to somewhere dramatic. The king of the Goblins or somewher of the kind. All very mythical and strange.

I'm pretty much used to the woods now but yesterday they seemed really dark and mysterious and reminded me of the scene in Disney's Snow White where she runs through the trashing trees. I still remember though I probably saw the film almost 70 years ago.

We were talking of trees and myth with the tree panjandrums yesterday. Bryan mentioned this book called The White Goddess by Robert Graves and I've been thinking about a poem by him about trees while I've been working on this blog. It's called "A boy in church" and ends with the memorable last verse about trees. (The title is a link.)

It’s pleasant here for dreams and thinking, Lolling and letting reason nod, With ugly serious people linking Sad prayers to a forgiving God…. But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying With furious zeal like madmen praying.

Anyway yesterday seemed very mysterious. Here is a picture that seems to show the last leaf being blown off the very top of our tree.

And here, to lighten up a bit, is a link to Panjandrum, a word that comes from a nonsense poem by Samuel Foote Perhaps a day like this is a day for "playing catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder runs out of our heels".

November 29 UK - Expert talk

2007-11-29T19:37:00.000Z

The experts came and talked. And pretty knowledgeable it was too, and pretty interesting, and very tiring. My brain needs time to digest it. I will try to pass on some of it tomorrow. Today I am not up to thinking so there arejust two photos. First, Hugh looks at the strange bumps that grow around the roots of old trees, no one seems to know why and below Bryan talks animatedly about how branches grow out of a sort of collar. Never cut that collar off!

November 28 UK - The rain and the brown in the leaves

2007-11-28T21:29:00.000Z

The oak stands proud again on another dank autumn day. Little seems to change but the small twig I have been photographing every day is now almost leafless. Compare it with the state it was in three days ago. I suppose all over the tree where knots of leaves remain they are falling one by one.

On the ground the leaves are almost all brown now and the wet sodden leaf litter is beautiful with bright tans and here and there a few yellows.

Tomorrow the chief tree officer of the national park (or some such panjandrum) is coming. I will pass on to you what Jeanie and I learn from him.

November 27 UK - Another dark day

2007-11-27T16:51:00.001Z

Another dark day and our tree hardly seems to change. In light like this it is the browns of the beech trees that stand out.

As a special treat for nerds I'm including a picture of the oak tree that featured in Blake's Seven. For a while this neck of the woods became popular with the television people. Blake's seven filmed an episode here (oh sorry I forgot it was actually on another planet) and Wayne Sleepe did part of a special where (I imagine) people danced around under the trees.

The oak in question has lost all its leaves bar about two. Our tree has a long way to go yet.

November 26 UK - A dark, dull, gloomy day

2007-11-26T16:44:00.000Z

A view through the dripping brambles shows our tree in the mist. It's been one of those awful November days when the dawn seems never properly to break. But it's still beautiful walking among the autumn woods.

I've taken the view through the dripping brambles. When I was talking to our expert Hugh, he told me that a lot of naturally sown oaks depend on brambles for protection in their early years. Unlike beech, they don't grow up through brambles, they have to grow up with them. (Oaks are much less shade-tolerant than beech.) The majority of seedlings start under the oak but very few of those survive the second year. Here is one of the seedlings that grew this year.

These year-old seedling form lovely tender food to the thousands of caterpillars that fall off the leaves (most of whom die in their turn of course, as there are not that many seedlings and lots of fallen caterpillars). Those seedlings that the caterpillars don't get, the deer or the cows or horses get instead. The acorns that are most likely to make it, are those carried away from the parent tree by jays and burried as a food supply and then not used. An oak has to be extremely lucky to survive it's first ten years. After the next ten, it becomes almost indestructible.

I was looking up through the tree at the dull grey sky and thinking that there really were quite a lot of leaves still there. But going back to the first photos I took it is easy to see how many have gone. Some of the leaves stay because oaks are descended from evergreen trees that grew in warmer climates and have not fully developed the abscission cells that break leaves off in the autumn.

Apparently leaves stay on young oaks up to 8 ft throughout the whole the winter as they do on beech and hornbeam. So please, please, please, use beech, or hornbeam (or even oak) for your hedge and never ever, ever use Leylandiai. It is impossible to keep these beastly trees in check. The trees get taller and the hedge planter gets older and soon the trees are up to 40ft and the hedge planter has rheumatism and would need to call in professional tree sugeons that would cost thousands and he wants to spend his money on cod liver oil and glucosamine and world cruises. Meanwhile the neighbours are in darkness with their flowerbeds poisoned. And both sides are hating the other through the impenetrable and virtually lifeless wood that Leylandiai always become.

Enough, except one thing I discovered by mistake just now. Merriam Webster do a lovely illustrated dictionary showing the names of parts of things. Here's a link to a bit of it on trees.

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/plants-gardening/plants/tree/structure-tree.php

I'll end with a beautiful photograph. A line of beech and oak this morning, beautiful even on such a gloomy day. The beech are the dark brown leavers, the oak the lighter and greener ones. The green stuff at the bottom is grass except for the holly and brambles which are the dark bits.

Nov 25 Uk - Stir up Sunday

2007-11-25T17:41:00.000Z

Stir up Sunday is a sort of joke. The prayer for the day begins "Stir up, oh Lord, the hearts of your people..." and the joke is that this is the day when you start making your Christmas puddings and "stir them up". The one person I mentioned it to today assured me that it was much too late and that his grandmother started making her puddings in August. Regardless you can still make them if you like so you can click here for a link to a recipe. I wrote a play that used "stir-up Sunday". It's very ingenious and all happens in the space of time it takes to bake a cake in the microwave (about 10 minutes), then the audience, or the actors can eat the cake at the end. Here's a link to the play - actually it makes an excellent two hander for a Christmas show so I hope you use it. Click here for the link.

Enough self promotion. Oh no, I've had second thoughts on that. We were talking to our friend Georgina the other night. She writes very nice poems and I asked her if she had one for the Blog. She said she hadn't written anything that fitted the theme. So I encouraged her to do so. Maybe she will. Meanwhile I wondered if I could do so myself. At the time, I could only think of two rhymes for "leaves" - "grieves" and "thieves". Gerard Manley Hopkins has used the first (quoted in an earlier post - click here for the poem) so I wondered what could be done with "thieves". Here is my contribution.

Autumn leaves, autumn leaves
Are of little interest to thieves.
In fact there's so many of them around
You can almost pick them off the ground.

You are invited to try your hand and see if you can do worse. Anyway here is today's tree photo and a series of photos of leaves taken in the last week.
November 19 - pretty green but especially in the leaf veins.

November 21 - about the same just a bit browner

November 23 - the green can just be seen in the veins.

and today - November 25 - almost everything brown now, in a day or two the twig will be bare.

Back to stir up Sunday. It is beauty like I have seen this amazing autumn, that stirs up my heart. I hope I have managed to pass on some of the joy of it to you. Here's today's sunset to end with.

November 24 UK - First frost

2007-11-24T17:48:00.000Z

x

It was the first real frost today and I managed to get to the tree while the ground was still white and the jackdaws were sitting on the top of the tree hoping that the sun would warm them.

Under the tree itself was a frost free circle, where the trees were a brigh orange. But all around in the open each leaf was framed in a coronet of frost, making each one a little jewelled work of art.

Here are a few of them. And at the end a reminder of spring a frost covered bud. This one had fallen but in our tree there are hundreds of thousands of them with next year's leaves and flowers hidden inside

Nov 23 UK - See the changes in the last month

2007-11-23T17:18:00.000Z

Here is the tree after a month. It's completely changed from a month ago. But over the past week it has hardly changed day by day. But each day a few more leaves fall.

The big changes came in the windy, rainy days about two weeks ago. As you go through the sequence you will see that as the leaves fall you can gradually see more and more sky through the tree. And the pool of leaves beneath the tree gradually gets bigger and bigger.

There are scatterings of leaves around the middle of the crown and quite a few towards teh bottom.

Not a big change around this time

A lot of leaves came off in the winds around this time.

Over these few windy days there was a big change. Leaves now orangey-browny-gold came down fast. The air was full of them.

The dramatic changes happened over these few days when the bulk of the leaves fell.

November 5 looks very different. This is partly due to the light of course but it was in the week starting November 3 that the big changes happened.

The tree is still covered in leaves, but the green is going all across the tree. There is a distincly golden tinge across the tree.

After a week the tree looks just almost like it did at the start but slowly, slowly the green of the leaves is going and the leaves will soon start to fall.

The tree looks as green as it did in the summer. But under it the leaf litter is starting to accumulate. For any of you who want to see the complete sequence I hope to put it up on a web album in the next few days. The sequence above are taken on bright days. The lighting on the dull days is so different it is hard to distinguish which changes are in the tree and which are caused by the different lighting.

November 22 UK - An expert pair of eyes and lots of new information

2007-11-22T17:57:00.000Z

Hugh arrived today and we spent an amazing couple of hours learning more about the tree. First he thought it had probably been pollarded at some time. (Pollarding means you cut the branches at about 8ft or so (2-3 metres) and then harvest the branches for first building hay-ricks on and then for firewood the next year. There is a nice article on pollarding at:
http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/woodland_manage/coppice2.htm)
Our tree is probably older than we thought (I guessed 350 years and it seems it was too little.) It's always been in the open, probably with cattle grazing beneath it (as they do now.) Barring catastrophe, our tree should outlive us with ease. It is perfectly healthy with very little fungus damage. There is hardly any sign of stag's head (or do I mean stag's horn?) growth except at the top right. See photo for an example of major stag horn growth in a nearby tree.

There is new good new growth from the middle left which I failed to photograph. Oaks can live more than one thousand years and it is nearly always the pollarded trees that live longest.

Here Jeanie and Hugh are measuring the tree at breast height (1.3 metres), so he can make an accurate estimate of its age. Hugh is amazingly knowledgeable and (oh it's wonderful to talk with someone who knows what he is talking about.) I have invited Hugh to contribute to this blog and I hope he will. Hugh asked us if it was a "named tree," as far as we know it isn't, so I am quickly naming it Yseult. Yseult, as those who knew her will tell you, certainly deserves to have a tree named after her. (The name is the cornish version of Isolde and is pronounced Izzult.)

Tomorrow marks one month since we first started photographing this tree and there should be a series of photos that show the changes so far, and as the weeks go on I'll pass on the information that we picked up from Hugh.

One more thing, there is a series of long black marks down the trunk which are where rainwater has flowed down from a little pool in the fork of the tree to a tiny pool at the bottom. Apparently areas like this are amazing places for finding different forms of life (insects, the birds that live off them and probably all sorts of bacteria).

November 21 UK - The leaves hang on the action and the beauty is underfoot

2007-11-21T19:43:00.000Z

The sun came out again today and the leaves on our oak hang on. They are probably there until there is a huge wind. Nothing seems to be happening but while the tree is sitting almost dormant there is furious activity under the leaf pile where bacteria and fungi, and worms and insects and mice(maybe) (and other things too) are busily eating the leaves and turning them back into carbon, nitrogen, phosphates and heaven knows what else. Click here for a nice simple article I found about it.

It's beautiful underfoot too with the oak leaves still patterned with green and gold. Pearl before swine in millions of leaves, each one a delicate thing of beauty.

November 20 UK - Puddles and rain and bare branches

2007-11-20T21:10:00.000Z

The rain goes on and the tree is looking distinctly bedraggled and sad. I'm reorganising my photos today so that i can show a sequence of them in the next few days when we are coming up to a month since we began. Just dank, and puddles and reflections from around the tree today.

November 19 UK. - The damp goes on

2007-11-19T19:48:00.000Z

The damp goes on, the leaves on tree stay on. The last stubborn few unwilling to drop. Underfoot the damp creeps through your shoes and fallen leaves join the mud in the puddles.

But, just here and there, amazing colours shine out in the dark dank woods, colours brighter than the leaden sky.

November 18 Uk - Rain, rain, rain

2007-11-18T16:50:00.000Z

Nasty rainy day, after weeks of dry weather the hard ground doesn't absorb it. The grass lies covered in puddles. Fallen leaves lie sodden in the puddles and the little streams. The tree, as you see, still keeps a few leaves though they are dripping with wet. More like clouds of colour here and there. The rest is black branches and the dull grey sky.

It's different in the Southern hemisphere as you can see in Lynette's first post today. Welcome Lynette! The oaks should be flowering over there by now.

It's nice to have rain and be out in weather that you can feel. Here are a few more pics I took. Leaves lying in the puddles, leaves on the tree running with water, drops of rain on those spiky bits of the oak tree that I think are caused by some disease or gall (I'm trying to get hold of some expert who will tell me) and finally the gorse flowering. The gorse only flowers when it's kissing time and that is the joke because gorse flowers all round the year if you bother to look carefully enough for the flowers. And there is no better time for kissing than when the rain falls on a grey day outside and inside there is warmth and kissing and love.

Spring Oak in New Zealand

2007-11-18T10:50:00.000Z

I read Nick's Oak blog while gazing out the window at my own oak - getting greener by the day as his turns gold. And after some delay while coming to terms with the technical side of things, here are my first trial pictures of the large oak out our window. I am very attached to the old trees of the New Forest, having spent hours and years walking with our first baby, David, under and through them for the three years we lived in April Cottage. "Our" oak is urban, but we watch it keenly as it goes through its seasonal changes. Just over a month ago it was bare, then one twig had green leaves at the very tip, then suddenly it was all bright Spring green, and now it's darkening as we head into Summer. Those of you who knew David as a toddler might get a sense of déjà-vu seeing his little brother, James, running under the oak this afternoon. I apologise for the poor photography - these photos were taken in late afternoon sunlight to play around with and get the hang of posting to this blog. In future we will head out in the morning and get the lighting better! Greetings to the New Forest from the Oak of Browns Bay, and Lynette.

Nov 17 UK - Tree remains unmoved by local burglary scare!

2007-11-17T22:20:00.000Z

Today I drove down to photograph the tree. Usually I walk, but today we were setting off shopping and to see an exhibition of paintings. When I stopped and got out of the car I heard a lot of whistling. "Gosh those buzzards are making a noise," I thought. There are a couple of buzzards living near the tree and they mew to each other a lot.

As I walked nearer the buzzards didn't stop and I realised it was a local burglar alarm. "Damn" I thought "another broken alarm." It most likely was but then I thought there is no use having alarms if everyone ignores them, so I reported it to the police.

The police were unmoved, as, of course, was the tree. I've known this tree for about 40 years now and not far from it have been all sorts of human dramas. And through all of them the tree has sat there, and inside the tree thousands of insects are living their improbable lives, as unaware of us as we are of them. I know it's all obvious, but it still seems strange.

All are but parts of one mysterious whole,
Whose body nature is and God the soul.

Said somebody. (I'll look it up and give you a link at the bottom.) It feels this way when you look at a beautiful tree like this. It feels there is some kind of understanding between you and the tree. But sometimes it seems completely untrue. Damn it all the tree should care about us!

Googling for it I find the quote comes from Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle I. You can read it here:
http://poetry.eserver.org/essay-on-man/epistle-i.txt
The gist of this part of the poem is a bit like Job, that we can't hope to understand the mind of God he says. "Can a part contain the whole?", Pope rhetorically asks. Well, in a way, "yes" is the answer and to be fair Pope seems to give some credence to this. You can "see the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour" as Blake said in Auguries of Innocence. Actually Pope's poem is a lot better than I remember it and I'll have to re-read it over the next few days. However the poem ends in a couplet that always annoys me:

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.'

Not to me it ain't clear, not to me it ain't right! I confess though it does give one answer to the problem of a wicked world and a loving God. To see my contribution to the debate, you can look at Christianity the Frequently Avoided Questions. A bit of a let down after Pope and Blake but it does have more laughs.

To get back to the burglar alarm I started with - if it was a burglary, I will let you know. But more likely it was just the rain getting into the burglar alarm. Enough. Time to end with a nice pic! Here's one of moss and fungus on a dead tree all quite oblivious of any human dramas or intellectual debates that happen nearby.
P.S The art show was interesting by a woman called Harriet Green lots of metallic leaf textures. Here's a link.

November 16 Uk - the sun shines the colours ripen

2007-11-16T21:14:00.000Z

Two pictures today. The big one shows the tree in context. The little one is the usual view. Other oaks around on the right or our tree have more leaves. The one on the left, close, is bare and the one behind that still almost green. Oaks show a lot of individuality in this but not, so I have read, in the size of the acorn harvest. With acorns it is either feast or famine and this applies to all the trees for many miles. The theory is oaks starve their acorn predators with lean years then suddenly overwhelm them with a huge harvest so some new oak seedlings are bound to succeed. This years acorn harvest around here was very small but there are lots of little seedlings under our oak so maybe last years was a bumper harvest. Click on the link for the article where I read about feast and famine in oak mast. http://www.hastingsreserve.org/OakStory/AmerSciMastKoenig_05.pdf
I've seen this myself but thought it was climatic rather than a strategy to maximise reproduction. The article has a nice picture from Les Tres Riche Heures of the Duc de Berry. Here's a link where you can see all the pictures http://humanities.uchicago.edu/images/heures/heures.html

Here are a few more pics I took this morning. First a shot looking out of the edge of the wood and then a picture of an amazing old beech tree not far from our oak. Last some lichen on the tree and buttercup leaves in the frost. There was quite a strong frost this morning. I thought frost brought down the leaves but it doesn't seem to have done.

November 15 UK - What happens underground

2007-11-15T22:01:00.000Z

Another amazing sunny day in one of the most beautiful autumns I can remember. It's wonderful to look at but not much is happening to our oak tree above the ground. Underneath an oak tree, tapping into its roots and connecting it to other oaks in the area is a network of fungus. These fungi have mycorrhizal associations with the tree and live simbiotically. The fungus get sugars from the sap of the tree and in return give the tree various minerals (most importantly phosphates and nitrogen.) Also the fungi can reach into much smaller spaces in the soil than the oak roots.

I was watching the BBC last night - a program called Natural Britain (or some such) with Alan Titmarsh (the biggest tit as he is unkindly known.) Private Eye have decided to hate him but I think he puts on a pretty good show. Certainly the photography was wonderful. Anyway he said that the average length of the roots of a beech tree when all put together was about 5 miles, however if you added the length of the mycorhizal fungus it would stretch round the world.

Anyway occassionally the fungus puts up fruiting bodies and these are the mushrooms or toadstools or whatever. Above are some pictures of some round our tree. They are some sort of russula. But remember when you see a mushroom this is like one apple sticking up from and underground apple tree. The real life of these fungi is underground.

And finally a picture of the little bullock that lives around our tree, some droplets or water that settle on the fallen leaves and, growing on the lawn, a little blue scabious(?) flower that seems to think it is spring.

Nov 14: Uk - Watching a painting change

2007-11-14T22:31:00.000Z

It was a dull day today and we got down to the tree late. The change in the tree is slow as the last few leaves linger on the tree.

So not much change there, but a few days ago Jeanie went down and painted the tree. Here are some pictures of the painting developing. The painting changed much faster than the tree, as you might expect. Finally there is a photo of the (almost) finished painting with me looking at the tree.

Tomorrow I'm hoping the southern hemisphere tree will have been photographed and will be here on the blog. I want to write a bit too about the fungus below (and occasionally above) the forest floor without which, I learn, the forest would hardly function at all. I've got some nice pictures and learned all sorts of fascinating facts to bore you with.

November 13 UK - How the leaves change

2007-11-13T21:25:00.001Z

Dull day today and a few leaves are still hanging on, though there are none on the highest bit of the tree on the right now.

Here is a series of photos that shows how oak leaves change. In fact it was a scan (taking photos with a scanner is a good way to get close up of small things provided they are reasonably flat.)

The colour change is due mostly to the loss of the green chlorophyll in the leaves. The production of it stops as the days get shorter, it gets used up in producing sugars from the air and sunlight and it gradually disappears from everywhere except the veins. (See the second picture.) In summer the chlorophylls in the leaf are the main colours and mask everything else. When the chlorophylls go other colours start to show. At first they mix with the chlorophylls changing the tone of the green and producing yellows and then they appear as the main colour. Finally as the leaves dry the brown colour of the leaf appears.

Oak leaves turn to brown quite quickly (beech leaves stay yellow much longer). This as far as I can discover is because there is a lot of tannin in oak leaves. The yellow orange colours are caused by carotenoids in the leaves. No English native trees have the spectacular reds and oranges of American maples. These colours are caused by a process that turns the glucose in the leaves into another colourant known as anthocyanin. This process is driven by sunlight and the most spectacular colours occur in sunny autumns.

(This is all a regurgitation of the books and online stuff I have read - anyone who knows more please add your knowledge.) Meanwhile you can learn more in Wikipedia or, if you like your science simple, try Science made Simple.
Or try about.com which is great for all sorts of things.

Leaf fall seems to be caused by a completely separate process. Though it too is triggered by the shortening days. There are special cells called abscission cells at the base of the leaf and these swell in autumn and cause the leaf to break off levering it away from the twig.

I picked up a series of beech leaves here they are. It is the yellow of the beech combined with the browny orange of the oak that makes the New Forest in autumn look as beautiful as it is.
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Click on the big photo just below this and you will be able to see the oak and beech woods at their best. I love them.

Nov 12 - Three Week comparison

2007-11-12T21:39:00.001Z

This blog has been going on for three weeks now and the changes have been big. From the solid green tree in the title picture to the almost bare tree where the sky shows through in the picture on the left.

The change has been slow day by day but over the three weeks the visible part of the process has almost finished.

So here they are in order three weeks ago (October 23), fifteen days ago (November 3), a week ago (November 8), yesterday (November 11), today November 12.

I've never really looked at a series of photos like this before and several things are surprising. The colour change is not the most noticeable thing (particularly on the oak tend to go from green to brown without ever being bright yellow. (It's the tannin in the leaves that does it - more of that soon). Most noticeable is the thinning of the leaves on the tree so suddenly we can see the twisted branches. The most noticeable colour change is on the ground replacing green grass with a bright browny-orange. Lastly the big changes are quick changing from a tree that is almost all green to one that is almost all bare.

Talking of big changes within the next few days the heading for this blog will become Oak tree in Autumn and Spring. The New Zealand oak is being photographed as I write this and daily pictures of that should come any day now.

Tomorrow I hope to show a series showing how a leaf changes colour.

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November 11 - Remembrance Day

2007-11-11T21:25:00.001Z

A bleak autumn picture for remembrance day, the day when England mourns the dead soldiers of the two great world wars and the countless other little ones that we have been involved.

Funny thing about memory is that we hardly remember things at all. I could not remember the tree full of leaves like it is in the title picture if the picture were not there.

I always feel very ambivalent about remembrance day, perhaps everyone does.

It seems right to remember the poor young men who were killed (and the ones that they themselves killed on the other side), but the sentiments we hear rolled out on days like this seem so completely false. "Their name liveth for evermore" it says on the memorial. Yet we know it's not true. Can we name one person who was killed in the hundred years war? Even, only 150 years ago, the Crimean War? There certainly must have been plenty. And I certainly can't think of one. It seems to me that, in truth, people love wars. The thought of them is exciting, they "stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood". If people didn't like wars why would we have them? For wars, I think, there is no such thing as bad publicity. That's why remembrance days fills me with unease.

The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of 1918. That is the time that is remembered, the time and day that the first world war came to an end. Strangely enough I have a sort of direct connection to it. My father fought in the first world war and wrote about it in a couple of books. On that day in 1918, aged about twenty, he was on leave in England, expecting to go back to fight in the next few days. He was so keyed up to fight that his first reaction to the news was disappointment. And the next bewilderment. I too am bewildered by Remembrance day.

Tomorrow back to oak trees and a look at how our tree has changed over the past three weeks. Not long till it is bare now. And not long till it is spring again either. Peace follows war just as surely as spring follows autumn and it will happen to the nasty little wars we are fighting at the moment. Let's hope it comes soon.
Finally a picture of thorns in the rain.

November 10 - Little by little the leaves go

2007-11-10T21:10:00.000Z

Look at the leaves lying in the hollows of the ground, and inches deep under the oak tree itself. There's glory for you. It's been a duller day today with the wind not as strong as yesterday. Still not cold.

November 9 - the wind blows - but I can only photograph flying leaves by getting someone to throw them up!

2007-11-09T21:31:00.001Z

Hi. It was really windy today and the leaves were flying about all over the place every time there was a gust of wind. However it was pretty hard to get them into a picture so I cheated. From now on this blog will have a zero tolerance policy to cheats unless they are me.

My wife painted the tree today and tomorrow we may have a painting on the blog. Meanwhile here are a few more of the pics we took today. First the tree from the other side next some nice colour in the leaf litter

November 8 - Rainy today and we suddenly notice a dead branch

2007-11-08T22:08:00.001Z

Rainy and dull and the leaves keep falling. A big wind is supposed to be on the way and there should be a big leaf fall in the next few days.

Me and my wife have been photographing this tree for almost 3 weeks now, but today was the first time we noticed that there is an old broken branch sitting up in the crown. See the little photos which show first the break then the dead branch sitting on the live one, then the tip of the dead branch going down and to the left. I don't know if it will fall or will stay there till the branch below it dies. Either way I'm taking extra care as I walk around the tree! The branch must have broken a good time ago - there are no leaves on it and the actual break is the same colour as the rest of hte tree

I've found a great photo on Flickr of autumn leaf colours in close up. n Here is the link
http://rwanderman.com/index.php?showimage=391
What happens is that the holes on the leaf close and no more chlorophyll is produced and so bit by bit the other colours (that are there all the time) start to show. After seeing this I'm going to try a few close ups myself. Thanks Richard Wanderman - the guy who took the picture.

November 7 - Another beautiful day

2007-11-07T18:55:00.000Z

It's another beautiful day and the leaf turn continues at its own slow pace. Leaves are falling now, quite a lot in the wind and there is windy weather to come at the end of the week.

Here are a few more pics taken today. The horse that, with the cows, the deer and (occasionally) the pigs, helps to keep the grass short and the straight line at the bottom of the foliage that is so typical of the New Forest. (Look above the horse's head to the right.) Next the twigs at the top right of the tree now almost bare. Then a close up of some turning leaves still on the tree, the colour in the leaf litter and , last, looking up the tree towards where a branch has broken off some time ago.

November 6: The leaves are looking sparser

2007-11-06T19:28:00.000Z

I've had a tiring day today so it's just the picture. It was taken towards the end of a sunny autumn day about 4 pm. I got one of the books I was expecting today so maybe I'll start to know more of what I am talking about soon.

November 5: Bonfire night and you can see the leaves falling

2007-11-05T22:16:00.000Z

Today when I got to the tree I found the leaves falling. It was cold, grey and a small wind was gusting, bringing down a scattering of leaves. Just now and again. Just a few but enough to show. It is the first time I have seen it this year. I managed to catch one in a photo, quite a trick with the long delay on my digital camera. Oak trees are individual and there are already one or two that have lost almost all their leaves ours is somewhere in the middle losing its leaves late but not last.

If anyone has read from the start of the blog, you may have noticed that I said this was a sessile oak. I was quite wrong it is a pedunculate oak. Look at the photo. The acorns are on little sticks (like elves' pipes) and the leaves slap up against the twig. Sessile oaks are the other way round and are mostly in the North of England. (I learn from the dictionary in my tool bar that "sessile" means sitting on the twig and "pedunculate" means on a stalk - or peduncle. The adjectives apply to the acorns not the leaves.)

Anyway I publicised this blog to all the people on my address book yesterday and lots of you replied (thank you) most of you seem interested. Some people were positively complimentary. One even said it was "better than watching paint dry" - how did he guess that that is the subject of my next blog?! I'm personally find the paint-drying process very visually exciting. (Alas I find I have been pre-empted at watching-paint-dry.com - though sadly their live web-cam is no longer active).

Talking of surprising things on the web (which we weren't) I learned the other day that for the last seventy years of my life I have been tying the bows on my shoes the wrong way. My shoe laces, which kept on coming undone, were tied with granny knots. Now my shoe laces stay tied up all the time just like everyone else's. Here is a link to Ian's Shoelace Site which has so transformed my life.

Anyway Lynette from New Zealand has come up with a wonderful idea. Outside her window is and oak tree that is just growing its leaves in spring and the plan is have both an oak tree losing its leaves and one growing them on the same blog. Let's hope we can make it work.

The last photos show various stages of an oak leaf changing colour with the last one showing a seedling growing up among the leaf litter. I imagine it is a seedling from this year. (I'm awaiting a book on the ecology of oaks so I'll start to know what I'm talking about - but if any of you know more, please comment.)

November 4 - The sun keeps shining - cold nights to come

2007-11-04T21:07:00.000Z

Our oak looks pretty green in this picture but if you look at the close up of the top of the tree (zoomed in from the same position) you can see that it is definitely turning. It was an amazing day today and my wife and I took some wonderful autumn pictures. Here are a few of them.

November 3 - A beautiful autumn day

2007-11-03T20:51:00.000Z

Got some wonderful pictures today of the oak the trees around it, the fungi beneath i, a fallen oak, so we can see its probable ultimate fate and much more. The new photos will, I hope, be on the blog tomorrow. Meantime above is the main picture.

The pictures were taken around midday, which accounts for the brighter light and the different shaddows.

November 2 - the oranging continues

2007-11-03T20:26:00.000Z

Another sunny day with the oak taken around sunset. No one could think of our tree as green any more!

November 1 - the changes really showing now

2007-11-01T23:09:00.001Z

The sun came out just as I took this - at about 4 o'clock this afternoon. Compared with the original picture (shown in the heading) you can see the change in colour and and a big reduction in the thickness of the leaves in the middle of the tree. More leaves on the ground too (where else can they go after all?!) This is quite hard to see because of the lighting in the first photo but there is no doubt about it. Little by little there is a change creeping up on the tree. Creeping up on me too come to that.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

October 31 - 8 days since the heading picture - Real change since yesterday

2007-10-31T21:06:00.001Z

For the first time since I have been photographing the tree every afternoon, I have noticed a real change since the day before.

Today the tree is looking distinctly more orangey than yesterday (see the post below). I was quite a cold night last night and the night before and maybe that is what is making the difference. Also, as a harbinger of things to come, I found the first bare branch - only a tiny one. But there will be more to later.

I've added a couple of pics from the leaf litter and area round the base of the oak. And a close up of the leaves.

October 30 - First week gone

2007-10-30T22:04:00.000Z

Todays picture is above
How many more weeks to go? My guess is four more will do it. But we'll see. The changes have been small so far but you can definitely see them. A definitely browner tinge all over caused by a lot of individual leaves turning brown.

This was a week ago - distinctly greener!
And hooray! We have caught up with today. So now there will be time for a bit more interesting stuff. As I research things like what lives around the oak. Why leaves change colour and what happens to them all over winter. Here are the pics. Or there would be if Blogger was working properly!!

Here are some of the leaves that have turned

October 26, 27,28, 29 Small changes, cloudy days

2007-10-30T21:39:00.000Z

Changes are pretty slow and most of the changes you see are really changes in the lighting on the different days. But slowly by slowly the colour is changing. October 30 - the next post marks the first week and you can start seeing the leaves beginning to change just here and there.

The first photo is now always at the top of the blog so that you can immediately compare it with today's picture of the tree. Each week I will try to publish a weekly change at at the end I hope to produce a stop motion video of the whole process and post it here or on You Tube.

2007-10-29T23:37:00.000Z

October 25
Another dull day and little change to be seen in the leaf colour.

2007-10-29T23:25:00.000Z

October 24

Dark autumn day. But really no difference to the leaf colour. Our oak is still green though many around it have started to turn.

2007-10-29T22:55:00.001Z

More pictures of our tree
Here are a few more pictures of the tree taken on October 23. It's out on it's own so the spread is huge, about 50 yards or so. Trees in woods have a much smaller spread and longer straighter trunks. Animals graze underneath it and that is why there is a nice clear space at the bottom. The cows and horses eat any branches that come down below about 6 ft. Trees in parkland often grow right down to the ground. The circumference of the trunk is huge too , if you're into tree hugging it would take about half a dozen people to get round it touching each other's hands.

Down below the tree is the leaf litter in the long low autumn light. It is this splash of colour at the bottom that makes autumn woodlands look so different. Sometimes the leaf litter looks brighter than the sky.

2007-10-28T21:47:00.000Z

Oak Tree in Autumn

October 23

This is an oak tree, about two hundred years old. Over the next five or six weeks the leaves will turn to orangey brown, fall off and leave the tree bare. Day by day this blog will publish a picture of the tree from the same position and we can watch the changes. I hope it will be an interesting process for me and for anyone out there reading this.