Meles meles wrote:

Lilac in flower - especially on a splendid spring evening like today, with the fading sun slanting through the trees and the blackbirds, and then later the nightingales, giving their all fit to burst - always makes me think of 'A Man for all Seasons' and the scene when Henry 'unexpectedly' calls upon Thomas More; "No ceremony, Thomas, just happened to be on the river. Look, mud!":


What a grand entrance! But then, after the pleasantries ...

Henry: "What an evening, a man could fight a lion, eh?"
More: "Some men could your Grace".
H: "Thomas, touching this matter of my divorce, have you thought of it since we last spoke?"
M: "Of little else."
H: "And do you see your way clear to me?"
M: "That you should put away Queen Catherine, sire? Oh alas as I think of it, I see so clearly that I can not come with your Grace, that my endeavour is not to think of it at all."
H: "THEN YOU HAVEN'T THOUGHT ENOUGH!!! ... Hmm, Lilac, we have them at Hampton. Not so fine as this though."

A great scene ... but unfortunately for the lilac it was only introduced to western Europe, outside of its native Balkans, in about 1560 (via cuttings obtained by the Holy Roman Empire's ambassador to the Ottoman court), while the first reference to them in England is in the garden of the herbalist John Gerard in 1597. And I don't think the all-white cultivar, depicted in the film, existed before the 19th century.

Superb extract from the movie and a lovely bit of historical sleuthing there, MM - I am very envious that I did not spot the lilac error. But I suppose we should forgive Fred Zinnemann his faux pas as he was - quite accurately - letting Henry display his nasty narcissicism in this seemingly trivial incident with the lilac spray (not, alas, shown in your clip). Narcissists can't stand it when you show them up - revealing to the world their inadequacies - be they intellectual , theological or horticultural. Never try to better a narcissist - they'll have you on toast for breakfast if you do. And what a vandal Henry was - ripping off the branch of  More's lovely lilac blooms like that: if anyone did that to my lilac (now just coming into flower) I'd thump them - narcissists or not. But then, I'm an idiot - like More. Cromwell would have given Henry a cutting.

MM and Temperance,

"It looks like it might perhaps be a white/pale-blue variety of Ceanothus. Although commonly called American or Californian lilac, ceanothus is completely unrelated to Old World lilac, Syringa sp. Lilac/Syringa should be in full flower now (as LiR's above post says) - Ceanothus usually flowers around June."

spot on MM, indeed an American lilac and because I saw the word lilac...you are a "vat vol kennis" (a wealth of knowlegde. I found also: a vessel of knowledge)

And thank you very much for all the other information and for the trouble to put it on the board. I asked the neighbour from behind, but he didn't know it either and it is still not in blossem. I can make a photograph of it with an Apple I pad? size 5 on 7 inches I think, but I am not sure if I can transmit to my computer overhere. I have an internet link too on the Apple and access to RES overthere too, but then a new password and all that...it has not be  too complicated for me

MM and Temperance can you see the film here commented by the link that I provided upstream in this thread?...or is it just me, who can see the whole film?

PS. Temperance, I prepared the whole evening a reply for you on the "myth" thread and in my humble opinion you didn't kill the "exodus" thread and why not going on on the Exodus thread? But as you wish the "myth" thread is as good for a "thought exchange"...
PPS. I have never in my life studied religious matters that much as recently and the Bible and the Ten Commandments and the Hebrew alphabet...even not in the "retraite" each year in our Roman-Catholic college...no time to explain in English what "retraite" is, but as I am aware that MM knows a lot too about Belgium and France, he will have perhaps the time to explain it and in good English...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Paul, "retraite" ie retreat, has much the same meanings in English as in French: ie breaking off from a military engagement (eg Dunkirk in 1940), but also in religious terms (which is how I think you meant it) a period of removal from day-to-day concerns in which to recollect and examine one's faith etc. ... so your comment was clear.

Temperance wrote:

But I suppose we should forgive Fred Zinnemann his faux pas as he was - quite accurately - letting Henry display his nasty narcissicism in this seemingly trivial incident with the lilac spray (not, alas, shown in your clip). Narcissists can't stand it when you show them up - revealing to the world their inadequacies ...

Yes indeed, watching that clip from 'A Man For All Seasons' yesterday (I had to watch my DVD copy to get the words as I couldn't find the lilac bit on youtube), suddenly made me see Donald Trump in Shaw's portrayal of Henry VIII: narcissistic, arrogant, bullying, unstable, petulant, selfish and dangerous ... although the comparison is perhaps unfair on Henry who, for all his character flaws, was undoubtedly well-educated, intelligent and cultured.

MM, thank you so much for the immediate reply.

"made me see Donald Trump in Shaw's portrayal of Henry VIII: narcissistic, arrogant, bullying, unstable, petulant, selfish and dangerous ... although the comparison is perhaps unfair on Henry who, for all his character flaws, was undoubtedly well-educated, intelligent and cultured."

That's also spot on dear MM...

Regards from your friend Paul.

A bit about a "retreat" - I did attend a convent school between ages 11 and 18.  The religious (or at least religious for Catholics) idea of the retreat is as in "retreating" from the world and my understanding is that some convents and monasteries offer them periodically for the general citizen (Catholic citizen at least).  While one is "on retreat" it is deemed that one ought to fix one's mind on higher things such as prayerAt our school we used to have a couple of days (usually tacked on to the end of the Easter holidays) where Catholic pupils didn't have book lessons (though there were plenty of texts on religious matters for us to read) but had to go to the convent chapel for Mass, then perhaps later Benediction or Rosary or just to generally pray.  In between we would have time to read the sundry religious reading material and there were also question and answer sessions with a visiting priest.  It was always a visiting priest rather than the priest who had the responsibility of the convent chapel as his position.  One girl (not me) asked the question (they were put in anonymously as written questions) something like "Wouldn't it be better if retreats were voluntary rather than compulsory?"  Surprise, surprise, that question was never answered.

Thinking of trees, some conifers from the next-door garden (where no-one is living currently) have branches (if one can call them branches of conifer trees) coming into my garden.  I have cut them back periodically but I think I'll have to get a professional to do it but I'd rather wait until the birds have finished nesting.  (I think there is a family of bluetits in one conifer).  There's an ornamental cherry (well a couple - one in my garden and one next-door) that need pruning too.  There are a couple of holly bushes which I didn't plant so I think were likely self-seeded from bird droppings.  One had the red berries this winter just gone but I didn't bring any into the house because I thought they would help feed the birds.  I'm not sure of the lore but I remember something about holly and ivy having had a significance which predated Christianity.  (I rather like the various holly carols).  I think the lore was something to do with masculinity and femininity - I know the holly is one of the trees which has a male tree and a female tree.

Yes LiR, holly trees are either male or female and the red berries (symbolic of the blood of Christ) somewhat ironically only appear on the female trees. You can tell the trees apart from their flowers (they should be flowering about now) but it's not easy as the male and female flowers are very similar and both are very small. Most holly bushes that you find for sale in garden centres are females - to give nice berries - and so they will have nearly all been cultivated via cuttings rather than from seed. Accordingly most commercial stock is comprised of just a few distinct genetic lines, each of identical, female, clones.

And be wary of cutting down your holly trees: while cutting holly boughs for Christmas decorations is a regular and widespread practice, cutting down the whole tree is supposed to bring bad luck.

Talk of male and female trees reminds me of the legend of Shakespeare’s crab-tree. The story goes that in his youth William and some fellows had attended a Whit Monday fair in a neighbouring town but had misjudged the time needed for the return journey to Stratford. No doubt having a brace or three of bottles of cider on their persons (or under their belts) they settled down for the night under the (appropriate) shelter of a crab apple tree.

The legend has it that so affected was said tree at having such a prodigious wordsmith rest against it that the tree itself gained the gift of the gab and would thereafter relate tales to passing travellers or (in another version) would impart the gift of the gab to any traveller who touched it. The tree died in the 17th century but its stump remained a local tourist attraction in Warwickshire but was gradually whittled away and/or rotted down until finally being dug over in the 1820s.

This story of Shakespeare’s crab-tree gained great popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries and was the subject of various books and poems at that time. Normally as told the story states that when the young bard slept beneath its boughs the tree was heavy with blossom. The problem with this is that the crab apple (malus sylvestris) blossoms from the first fortnite in April until the first fortnite in May.

Let’s say (for argument’s sake) that the event in question took place in 1582 when Shakespeare was 18 years old. Whitsun that year fell on the 3rd of June which would have been far too late in the season for any crab apple blossom. Now in the Spring and Summer of 1582 the Julian calendar was still in use, so maybe it might make a difference if we use the Gregorian calendar*. Well that would actually make it even worse because then Whitsun would have fallen on 14th June – i.e. even later in the season.

Whitsun is a movable feast so let’s try another year when it fell earlier on. In the previous year 1581 Whitsun was on the 14th of May. Ah - that’s at the end of the first fortnite in May. But that’s the 14th May on the Julian calendar. It would have been the 25th May on the Gregorian, so still too late for crab apple blossom. The earliest Whitsun in that era came in 1573 when it fell on the 10th of May, but even that’s still too late as that would have been the 21st of May on the Gregorian calendar. And besides young Willy would only have been 9 years old that year.  
 
One particularly silly poem relating to the legend was written around 1830 by Douglas Jerrold. One verse in it goes as follows:

‘Since then all people vowed
The tree had wondrous power:
With sense, with speech endowed,
‘T would prattle by the hour;
Though scattered far about,
Its remnants still would blab:
Mind, ere this fact you doubt, –
It was a female crab.’

Leaving aside the unsavoury gender bias expressed, the primitive level of botanic understanding displayed there is also quite staggering. Not only does malus sylvestris blossom well before Whitsun (on any year using any calendar) but the crab apple is also a hermaphrodite tree.

* When William married Anne Hathaway in November of 1582 the Gregorian calendar had only just been introduced the previous month in October. It wouldn’t be adopted in England, however, for another 170 years.

I hadn't heard that legend about the crab apple tree, Vizzer.

I went on an unexpected walk to the nearest shop to my house because I had unintentionally run out of cat food.  I walked across the hill (which now has houses on it though in my childhood half was a cow pasture and half was a golf course) on to which my house backs and noticed on the bit that used to be a golf course there are some hawthorn trees with reddy-pink blossoms (I have seen such blossoms before but never really thought about it - I wonder if the coloured (well not white) blossom bearing trees were cultivated specially.  Also, does anyone have any idea when we started using privet as hedges between gardens.  I was thinking about privet because I am going to have to hook some of mine with my walking stick (which I don't need all the time) in order to be able to cut it back.

Lady and Vizzer,

of course I had to seek for crap apple tree, as I had not the slightest idea. I thought already at Japanese kerselaar (Japanese cherry); but after research (not found the first time in translation to Dutch) it is in Dutch "wilde appelboom" (wild appletree) and after a film in Dutch about the difference between a wild one and a cultivated one with eatable apples, I learned that the wild tree is the forbear of all later apple trees...
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-uk-native-trees/crab-apple/


What one learns all on this board each day...

And of course I have to ask what "privet" is too...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

A bit about a "retreat" - I did attend a convent school between ages 11 and 18.  The religious (or at least religious for Catholics) idea of the retreat is as in "retreating" from the world and my understanding is that some convents and monasteries offer them periodically for the general citizen (Catholic citizen at least).  While one is "on retreat" it is deemed that one ought to fix one's mind on higher things such as prayerAt our school we used to have a couple of days (usually tacked on to the end of the Easter holidays) where Catholic pupils didn't have book lessons (though there were plenty of texts on religious matters for us to read) but had to go to the convent chapel for Mass, then perhaps later Benediction or Rosary or just to generally pray.  In between we would have time to read the sundry religious reading material and there were also question and answer sessions with a visiting priest.  It was always a visiting priest rather than the priest who had the responsibility of the convent chapel as his position.  One girl (not me) asked the question (they were put in anonymously as written questions) something like "Wouldn't it be better if retreats were voluntary rather than compulsory?"  Surprise, surprise, that question was never answered.

Thinking of trees, some conifers from the next-door garden (where no-one is living currently) have branches (if one can call them branches of conifer trees) coming into my garden.  I have cut them back periodically but I think I'll have to get a professional to do it but I'd rather wait until the birds have finished nesting.  (I think there is a family of bluetits in one conifer).  There's an ornamental cherry (well a couple - one in my garden and one next-door) that need pruning too.  There are a couple of holly bushes which I didn't plant so I think were likely self-seeded from bird droppings.  One had the red berries this winter just gone but I didn't bring any into the house because I thought they would help feed the birds.  I'm not sure of the lore but I remember something about holly and ivy having had a significance which predated Christianity.  (I rather like the various holly carols).  I think the lore was something to do with masculinity and femininity - I know the holly is one of the trees which has a male tree and a female tree.

Lady,

first about the second paragraph. I had to look for the word "lore" that I never met before and in the paperback Collins they say:collective knowledge or wisdom on a particular subject. And then you used in another message the word "folk lore" . It is the first time I read the Dutch word "folklore" written as this. And I think now I understand it that much better.

First paragraph:

yes for me too from  12 to 18 (I was 11 while my anniversary was on the end of the schoolyear) in a Catholic college in Belgium (no mix yet, only boys at that time) three days retraite each year (and yes I remember perhaps around Eastern) And as we were a 100% Catholic school population, the whole flock had to do it.
And yes also a visiting priest or brother to give "sermons" (sermoenen) to bring us more close to the Catholic ethics. But we liked much more in the lower "9 to 11 years" the brother telling about the story of Richard Lionheart and the treacerous John, who during his captivity...and we hung at his lips and the hours passed without we realized it...
But yes we could also collectively read in the "study" from a library of religious literature, of course with the "nihil obstat". But many times glided a not too much religious work between the rest, and as I from 10 on was a fervent reader, I many times read a lot of interesting literature during that time and as such wasn't bored at all...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

I thought already at Japanese kerselaar (Japanese cherry); but after research (not found the first time in translation to Dutch) it is in Dutch "wilde appelboom" (wild appletree) and after a film in Dutch about the difference between a wild one and a cultivated one with eatable apples, I learned that the wild tree is the forbear of all later apple trees.

Paul – it’s understandable that you might have thought that the story regarding the blossom of the crab apple may have been reference to the Japanese cherry. The stunning blossom of the Japanese cherry is world famous and rightly so. The blossom of the crab apple, however, is less well publicised yet is no less luxuriant and abundant in its display.
 
The crab apple is not only of use as a fruit tree but has also been used as a hedging plant since ancient times. In Saxon England crab apple would have joined (among others) hawthorn, dogwood, damson, buckthorn, wych elm, privet, hazel, dogrose, blackthorn, willow, rowan and spindle. Study by the late biologist Max Hooper suggested that hedges can be dated according to how many different woody trees there are in it. Hooper’s Law says that a new species of woody tree tends to join an existing hedge about once every 100 years. Using Hooper’s hypothesis and supplementing it with data from parish boundary records etc has resulted in estimates for some existing hedgerows being up to 700 years old. In others words some hedges which were first laid in the 14th Century are still doing their job today.

Vizzer, thank you so much for the reply and the mentioning of the use for hedges and the dating of 700 years old hedges. I suppose, have to search for it, that here the hedges between parcels were trees to halt the wind in this flat land of the County of Flanders...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

here the hedges between parcels were trees to halt the wind in this flat land of the County of Flanders.

Use as windbreaks is a primary feature of hedges. The Fens of eastern England, for example, are generally hedge-free which means that cold winds from the north or the east hit the city of Cambridge (50 miles inland) with such intensity that the university and its colleges may as well be on the coast. Rival Oxford by contrast is much further inland and consequently more sheltered by hills, woods and hedgerows. Such is the difference that some commentators have suggested that this is reflected in the personality of the alumni of the 2 ancient universities. The gentler climate of Oxford is said to produce ‘poets and philosophers’ while the harsher Cambridge climate is said to produce ‘monks and mathematicians’.

Historically the study of the use of hedges is fraught with difficulty. The reason being that, as a living organism, a hedge by definition is taken for granted in the landscape. A scribe recording a boundary is likely to produce an account or a map based on topographical features such as dykes, banks and streams etc. But recording extra details of whether any plants (let alone what type of plants) are growing on a dyke, along the edge of a field or beside a road would be superfluous to requirement. The landowners, magistrates and bailiffs etc would really only want to know exactly where the boundary was – nothing more. A peasant or serf, on the other hand, whose job it was to maintain the bounds (often a hedge) and who would know, not only the names of the plants needed for the task but also the best and most effective ones, would likely have been illiterate and thus only able to pass on such knowledge orally.  

An example of the problem regarding the documenting of the history of hedges arose in 2001 with the publication of a book by Roy Moxham called The Great Hedge of India. This book stated that during the 19th Century an enormous hedge existed across the middle of India as part of an internal customs border created by the British. The primary purpose of the hedge was to interdict the trade in salt to ensure that due tax was paid on the commodity. Moxham suggested that this hedge was over 900 miles long, 8 foot high and 4 foot thick. Many people (myself included) viewed the book as a hoax. The claim was seemingly too fantastical. Surely, even in the age of great industrial advances with the likes of railways, telegraphs, trans-oceanic cables and steel bridges etc, such a gigantic botanic entity would have been considered, not just a great wonder of India but a wonder of the whole world. Yet there are very few written records of this hedge, no remnants of it today, no contemporary photographs of it, nor even any paintings or drawings.  

I have since modified my view on the matter, however, but only a little. Firstly, to dismiss the claim out of hand would contradict what I wrote earlier regarding the problems with recording the history of hedges. And in a country such as India, with a tropical and sub-tropical climate and with a massive and ever-increasing population, it is more that possible that, even a 900-mile hedge could completely disappear within 100 years. Moxham himself wrote a retrospective article saying how, when he was researching the book, not only was the evidence for the hedge sketchy but that there wasn’t even any folk memory of it among the local population resident in the areas adjacent to where the hedge would have been:

The Great Hedge of India

Now, of course, this could be taken as being a double bluff by Moxham. In other words it’s a hoaxer hiding in plain sight by assuming the role of a sceptic of his own findings. Taking a more charitable view, however, it’s worth noting that Moxham states that when the hedge ceased to be of use, and as it was growing on government land, it was then built over, being converted into roads, railways and other uses thus literally eradicating it from the landscape. He also states that he did find one small remnant of the hedge and one old man who did indeed remember it. But the odds of finding some stretch of hedging along a 900-mile line is actually quite high, whether or not the hedge today was part of the original supposed ‘Great Hedge’. Moxham says that this stretch of hedge comprised Indian plum being a suitable thorn tree and also corresponding with the few contemporary reports from the 19th Century of it being one of the main constituent plants of the hedge.

My own view is that, if there was a ‘Great Hedge of India’ then it was more likely to comprise mainly dead thorny branches, twigs and logs etc. The name ‘hedge’ was probably more of an optimistic statement of intent or at least an exaggeration.

Vizzer,

thank you very much for these very interesting comments. I read them already some days ago and wanted to learn something more about the subject of India, but with a self imposed workload overhere, I need some more time to reply.

Again many thanks and with kind regards from Paul.

Vizzer, not thinking of the very new houses near the crematorium in my home town but some that were built there in the 1960s-1970s (some of that estate being behind where I live).  I live in a 1930s "semi-detached" house and when I was a child there was a cow pasture at the rear of it.  Of course, whatever the original hedge was had been removed when the 1930s "ribbon development" where I live took place though Sincerely Thine had not been born then.  However, the road I live on seems like the original long and winding road and I can remember what we called the "old road" or "old lane" where one bend in the original road had been left and a shorter new part of the road cut through behind two points (it was not that long, just a few hundreds of yards).  However we did used to play there and I can remember there was one stretch where the hedge was made up of damson wood (we used to eat the damsons in autumn if we could find them).  The hedge was not all made up of damson.  Now that hedge has gone with housing having been built, and even some of the hedges which abutted fields which are still fields which were there in my childhood have been removed when the road was widened and a pavement put in.  New hedges were planted but of course they are now ones that were built within living memory and any lanes joining the road where I live no longer have the old-fashioned "sunken lane" look that you sometimes see in old films.

That's interesting to read about the "great hedge of India" which I didn't know about before - Great Wall of China yes, but not about the great hedge.

Lady,

"and I can remember there was one stretch where the hedge was made up of damson wood (we used to eat the damsons in autumn if we could find them).  The hedge was not all made up of damson."

Lady, you know me, I had to search for...and thanks to you I have already learned a lot on these boards...

It seems after research to be a kind of a small plum: "kwets"
And in French it is also sometimes called that way
https://stephanedecotterd.com/2016/09/22/le-pruneau-la-quetsche-ou-la-prune-de-damas/
"Damson"..."Damas"?

And damsons are not plums
https://www.gardena.com/int/garden-life/garden-magazine/plum-or-damson/


Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

"Damson"..."Damas"?

Both the English 'damson' and French 'damas' derive from Damsacus (Damas in French) ultimately from the Latin damascenum, meaning (plum) 'of Damascus', and so are related etymologically to Damask cloth and Damascene steel etc. Supposedly damsons were first cultivated in antiquity in the area around the ancient city of Damascus, although that's probably false as the damascenum described by Roman and Greek authors of antiquity was more like a sweet dessert plum, rather than the astringent damson plum.

PaulRyckier wrote:

And damsons are not plums
https://www.gardena.com/int/garden-life/garden-magazine/plum-or-damson/

Damsons together with greengages, buttaces, mirabelles, victoria-type plums, indeed most of what in Europe are called 'plums', are all varieties of the same tree, Prunus domestica (sometimes referred to as Prunus × domestica) which is a hybrid of Prunus spinosa (the wild sloe tree) and Prunus cerasiferapecies (the wild cherry-plum tree). But yes there are several other closely related plum species from Asia and Japan that have also been cultivated for edible plums.

Vizzer wrote:

The crab apple is not only of use as a fruit tree but has also been used as a hedging plant since ancient times. In Saxon England crab apple would have joined (among others) hawthorn, dogwood, damson, buckthorn, wych elm, privet, hazel, dogrose, blackthorn, willow, rowan and spindle.

I was rather surprised that the wild European pear Pyrus pyraster wasn't included in that list as, unlike it's domesticated descendants, the tree is incredibly spiney (like the wild plum, aka the sloe or blackthon, which is mentioned) and so is ideal for use as hedging both for enclosing livestock or for keeping out predators, whether animal of human. But pears are generally not quite as hardy as apples, so maybe the wild pear wasn't very common in Saxon England and indeed I see from wiki that nearly all "wild pears" in England and Wales are actually thought to be domesticates that escaped from cultivation and that their establishment in the British Isles was probably due solely to human migration.

Pear can certainly be included in the list Meles. It’s hardy enough to withstand pleaching so there’s no reason why it couldn’t have been used at that time. Maybe your point about its rarity could be why it’s not among the favourites for hedging. Of the list, and among hedge-layers I’ve spoken to, I would suggest that hazel was/is the favourite go-to tree when starting a new hedge.  

Your mention of blackthorn is timely as I was thinking about Priscilla’s reference to hawthorn as ‘true hawthorn’ (a term I was unfamiliar with) and so presume that ‘false hawthorn’ must mean blackthorn which blossoms a couple of months earlier. We have about 4 hawthorn trees of varying ages on our patch (one a venerable 40-footer) and all still currently resplendent in may. I do, however, have a soft spot for the two small blackthorns which grow on a north-facing bank at the edge of our property. As small and slow-growing as they are, their flowering in March is always the first herald of Spring. As the name suggests blackthorn gives a very dense, dark wood and is consequently highly durable and long-lasting. It has a variety of uses and is popular for making walking sticks and bishop’s crosiers etc. On the Isle of Lismore in the Inner Hebrides, the chief of the local clan claims to own a crook which belonged to St Moluag who lived in the 6th Century:

Saint Moluag and Bachuil

As can be seen from the pictures in the link above, despite reportedly being nearly 1500 years old, the wooden staff is in incredibly good condition.

As with most things discussed here what I know about it can be written on the back of a stamp but I venture to suggest that what is often called a blackthorn - which produces sloes which are used in the making of sloe gin may well be a bullace tree. This is wild damson, flowers in March most splendidly and often grows tall it is less thorny than black thorn and the leaves are different. The fruit from both are sour but in our parts collected and used. I have never seen a sloe tree...… well yes, they were all infuriatingly slow in Lord of the Rings. I'll now look that up and possibly buy a larger stamp thereafter.

I've been looking on the internet to see if I could find any enlightenment to my own query about the history of privet being used as a hedging plant in gardens.

I found this https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-privet-hedge.htm#didyouknowout

and there is some information on Wikipedia also.  I suppose more unusual hedge plants hold more interest than the generic privet.

This is sad - apparently a tree which is reputed to be the UK's oldest tree - the Fortingall yew in Perthshire is in danger of having its lifetime shortened because people keep tearing off branches as souvenirs.  https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/threat-to-ancient-scots-yew-uk-s-oldest-tree-as-tourists-rip-off-branches-for-souvenirs-1-4936063

My two black mulberry trees (Morus nigra) are fruiting at the moment and so this afternoon I've been busy making mulberry jam and baking a mulberry tart. The leaves of mulberries are of course the usual food for silkworms but they much prefer the white mulberry (Morus alba) over the black-fruited M. nigra. White mulberries produce their fruit a bit later than their cousins and the fruit is smaller, less juicy and rather bland. However while black mulberry trees tend to be large, rather untidy, rambling things, white mulberries are amenable to being pruned very hard and so they can be made to form compact shade trees. I've got three white mulberries pruned into spreading parasol shapes to serve as shade for garden benches and picnic tables. 

The domestication of silkworms (sericulture) and silk production goes back thousands of years in China. The Chinese jealously guarded their monopoly on silk production - exported to the West via the 'Silk Road' - until a rival silk industry was finally established by the Byzantines. According to the contemporary historian Procopius of Caesarea, in about 552 AD the emperor Justinian sent two Nestorian monks to Central Asia, and they were able to smuggle silkworm eggs back hidden in rods of bamboo. While under the monks' care the eggs hatched, but the worms survived and their offspring were eventually used to develop a large silk industry in the Eastern Roman Empire, using delicate weaving techniques learned from the Sassanids. Then the Arabs, with their widening conquests around the Mediterranean, spread sericulture and silk weaving to North Africa, Andalusia and Sicily.

In 1147, while Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos was focusing all his efforts on the Second Crusade, the Norman king Roger II of Sicily attacked Corinth and Thebes, two important centres of Byzantine silk production. The Normans seized mulberry trees, silkworms, and silk production infrastructure, and deported all the workers back to Palermo, where they established their own silk industry. Then the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 brought an end that city's long-established silk industry and many of the silk workers left, with most going to Northern Italy and in particular to the cities of Genoa, Lucca, Florence and Venice, where eventually they established another flourishing centre of silk production.

Some workers also went to Avignon in southern France, initially weaving silk cloth using raw silk imported from Italy until the first mulberries in southern France were planted a few decades later after Charles d’Anjou obtained trees from Naples. Both silkworm breeding and silk production were in operation in Provence by the end of the 13th century, however by the end of the 16th century most silk in France was still being imported from Italy.

So damaging on the French balance of trade and the royal finances was the cost of this imported silk that Henry IV decided to give financial support to the French silk industry. This policy of support continued under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, with interest-free mortgages, grants, privileges, free water use for silk mills and factories, and bonuses for replanting orchards or woodland with mulberry trees. However the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 dealt a near-fatal blow to the silk industry, with many Protestant families - who were the large-scale silk producers - fleeing abroad.

In England James I had also tried to establish an English silk industry at the beginning of the 17th century. He had a four-acre mulberry garden planted in an area to the north of present-day Buckingham Palace, tended by the King’s "Mulberry Men". There is still a street called Mulberry Walk, just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, which was where many of the nobility had their just-out-of-town houses and pleasure gardens. James imported 10,000 mulberry trees from all over Europe, and the king required landowners "to purchase and plant mulberry trees at the rate of six shillings per thousand". But James made the mistake - some say he was wrongly advised, deliberately, by the perfidious French – of ordering the black mulberry instead of the white version; it being the white mulberry that is the natural food of silkworms. Unfortunately, once the error had been discovered it was then found that the white mulberry tree grows less well in England and so within a few years James' ambitious silkworm project had failed. 

The French silk industry however survived the Huguenot diaspora and then went on from strength to strength with production reaching a peak in the 1850s. The weaving and dyeing was mostly done in Lyon while the growing of mulberry trees and the breeding of silk worms was conducted across south-central and south-eastern France. In 1855 the French industry as a whole employed between 300,000 and 350,000 people, but  just a year later a virulent epidemic progressively wrecked silkworm breeding and silk production plummeted. It wasn't until 1868 that Louis Pasteur succeeded in creating a system for selecting out infected eggs, but then the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, both hindered the industry's recovery. The final blow was delivered by the appearance of the first synthetic fibre, nylon, in 1938.

Black Mulberry (Morus nigra):


White mulberry (Morus alba):

Buckingham Palace estate was a failed mulberry plantation. Prior to building their townhouse there the Buckinghams had hoped to realise profits from their mixture of swamp and scrubland one mile beyond the prime real estate in London by starting a local silk production industry. The guild they sponsored still exists as part of the haberdashers' worshipful society, though it is not recorded if it ever had any members beyond the Duke himself.

PS: should have read your post properly

I don't think any of those trees still exist in what is now the gardens of Buckingham Palace, however there are still quite a lot of black mulberry trees in old, long-established gardens, throughout England, that would all seem to date from the first couple of decades of the seventeenth century. For example there is one still growing in the garden of the house in Sudbury, Suffolk, where the artist Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727, and which he recorded as then being already more than 100 years old. By contrast white mulberries are surprisingly short-lived for trees: they, like humans, rarely live for longer than a century.

Such excellent posts, MM.

I remembered that Thomas More had a mulberry tree (Erasmus had a joke with his old mate about  "morus" and "More") and, while googling for info on this, I stumbled upon this site which I thought was jolly interesting. Apparently there was a mulberry plantation in Chelsea too...


https://www.moruslondinium.org/research/chelseas-short-lived-silk-farm



PS "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" should be our new National Anthem.

There are also many ancient mulberry trees in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, mainly in the various gardens run by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and inevitably many of these old trees are claimed to be descendants of a particular one that, so it is claimed, was planted by William Shakespeare. It might be simply a good tale to relate to visitors, but given Shakespeare's dates, his rise under James I, and his majesty's zeal for the planting of mulberries, it's not so improbable.

According to tradition there was once an ancient mulberry tree growing in the garden of New Place in Stratford - which had once been Shakespeare's home - and which had supposedly been planted by him. In the 1750s the original tree had become so famous that the then resident of New Place, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, had become utterly fed up with constant requests to see it, and so he chopped it down. A local entrepreneur, Thomas Sharpe, then bought the wood to fashion Shakespeare souvenirs (although he made the mistake of flooding the market with them all at once and so people became suspicious), nevertheless at around that time, such was the apparent interest in the tree, that there may well have been many who took and raised cuttings from the original 'Shakespeare' mulberry when it was still alive. Certainly Shakespeare was familiar with the very delicate flesh and staining quality of ripe mulberries: Coriolanus, for example, holds his head low, "now humble as the ripest mulberry that will not hold the handling".

I didn't realise that there was a "Heritage Industry" as long ago as the 1750s, MM.

Then, in the Catholic church, every Catholic church is supposed to have a piece of "the one true cross" (well that's what the teacher told us when we were in primary school).  Well, if so, each piece must be only the size of a splinter.  The story is that St Helena (mother of the emperor Claudius - as in the first Christian Roman Emperor - not as in "I") went to Calvary and had some excavations done to find the cross on which Christ was crucified and the true one was revealed by a miracle.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/True-Cross   Even though I'm Catholic I'm a bit sceptical about that.  Who's to say the Romans didn't re-use the crosses they used for cruxifixction?  Would the cross have been abandoned on Calvary after the death of Christ?  I don't know if the Romans had a wood/tree of choice for making their instruments of death or whether they just used what grew locally.

I think that, like with all the pieces of the 'true cross', to account for the thousands of assorted souvenir trinkets that were all supposedly made from the wood of 'Shakespeare's mulberry', it would originally have had to have been a truely enormous tree! 

Although it seems people in the 1750s were fully aware of the probability of fakes. In response to this genuine scepticism (and it seems the market was indeed rapidly flooded by many 'authentic' pieces), the men who had genuinely and legitimately obtained some of the original timber, were all quick to accompany their products with signed certificates of authenticity (the principal purchasers were three local wood carvers/turners; Thomas Sharp, William Harborne, William Hunt; and a Mr. Pierce, who was an ivory turner and jeweller). 

A large number of objects, supposedly certified by these gentlemen as being made by them in the mid-18th century using wood from the tree have survived, including elaborately carved goblets, bowls, small caskets, tea caddies, toothpick cases, snuff boxes, and sugar tongs, and often bearing a likeness of Shakespeare, such as these certified by Thomas Sharp:

 

Incidentally Shakespeare also makes reference to a mulberry tree in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' where the tree is a key part of the story of 'Pyramus and Thisbe'; that's the play-within-the-play, performed at the wedding of Theseus and Hyppolyta, in which the role of Pyramus is played by Nick Bottom and Thisbe by Francis Flute.

The original story as recounted in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', is that Pyramus and Thisbe are two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupy connected houses but are forbidden by their parents to have any contact, let alone wed, because of their families' long-standing rivalry and feud. But through a crack in one of the walls separating the houses they manage to whisper their love for each other and eventually they secretly arrange to meet under a particular mulberry tree. Thisbe arrives first, but upon seeing a lioness with a mouth bloody from a recent kill, she flees, leaving behind her veil. When Pyramus arrives he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's veil now torn by the lioness and with traces of blood on it. Assuming that a wild beast has killed her, Pyramus kills himself by falling on his sword and in doing so splashes blood onto the mulberry tree. Pyramus' blood stains the white mulberry fruits, turning them dark red. Thisbe then returns and finds Pyramus' dead body under the tree. She, after a brief lamentation and mourning, then stabs herself with his sword and so dies next to her lover. In the end the gods listen to Thisbe's lament, and so they forever change the mulberry fruits into the stained dark blood-red colour, in honour of their forbidden love.

Or as Shakespeare puts it, via Peter Quince's hammy retelling of the tale,

This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,
The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,
Did scare away, or rather did affright;
And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,
Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.
Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,
And finds his trusty Thisby’s mantle slain:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He bravely broach’d is boiling bloody breast;
And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,
His dagger drew, and died.

Those wooden trinkets are not unpleasant on the eye, MM.  A Midsummer Night's Dream was a play I studied at school but I don't recall the mention of mulberry.  I do remember the teacher (a nun) asking what the meaning of Hermia asking Lysander to lie further off meant.  Of course, now I'd know that the appropriate reply was that it was a dramatic device so that when the juice is put on the young man's eyes (to make him love the first living creature he sees when he awakes) it will be put on the wrong young man's eyes so that Lysander will fall for Helena. (There's more too it than that of course).  But at the time I said something like she is telling him to lie further away - I was embarrassed to mention anything that might pertain to the sexual to a nun.

He whom nordmann calls Master Wobbleweapon did like his plays with a play did he not?  I seem to recall there was one such in Hamlet.


While I'm on this thread, are there any legends linked with the eglantine, dog rose, briar rose, whatever people like to call it.  I've mentioned before that a rose bush in the garden was cut back too hard and whatever had been grafted on to the dog rose was cut away so now I get briar roses when roses are in season.

The reference to a mulberry tree in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream" only occurs, somewhat latently, in the play-within-the-play (ie. that of 'Pyramus and Thisbe') which is intended to be performed at the marriage of Theseus and Hyppolyte, but in the event never actually gets to be performed. It just provides a comedic device/theme that reappears several times throughout the wider play.

But the allusions to the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe, and yes to the mulberry tree too, are very subtle. They were probably way, way over the heads of most of the Jacobean audience. But maybe there were a few, perhaps some nobles, classically trained scholars, and a handfull of other well-educated gents in the audience, who would have recognised the classical references. And then, they would probably then have smugly preened themselves for clever comprehension.

However in answer to to your question about wild roses, eglantines and the like, I do know that there is a suggestion that the nursery rhyme 'Here we go round the mulberry bush', originally had the words, '... round the bramble bush', although as is usual with nursery rhymes, the origins are obscure and often conflicting. Nevertheless while mulberries clearly grow into trees, it is brambles and wild roses that form compact low-growing bushes akin to those of the children's song.

Quote :

Vibernum plicatum - this is a cultivated form with dense ball-like flowers, known as the 'Japanese snowball bush':


... or another variety of Vibernum plicatum but with a more 'wild-type' flower head, this one is called 'summer snowflake':


Hope that helps, Paul. I'm no expert but am just thinking of the plants I have growing in my own garden.

  
MM, now the bush? (heester) that I mentioned earlier is in full flower...and it are cones (I guess some 12 cm at the base) of a hundreds little flowers, each flower has four white "petal" (I see now that it is the same word as in French) a 6MM in diameter. And the leaf is oval and in a pin a bit as on the first photograph above and about 5 à 6 cm width

I will ask the neighbour from behind too...

Kind regards from Paul.

MM, I sought a bit further in the images...

could it be this one?


Hydrangea paniculata
In Dutch "pluimhortensia" (plume, feather? hortensia)

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, if your mystery bush is indeed an hydrangea (hortensia in French) it should be in full flower now.

Also, returning briefly to mulberries, in response to LiR I wrote:

Quote :

... I do know that there is a suggestion that the nursery rhyme 'Here we go round the mulberry bush', originally had the words, '... round the bramble bush', although as is usual with nursery rhymes, the origins are obscure and often conflicting. Nevertheless while mulberries clearly grow into trees, it is brambles and wild roses that form compact low-growing bushes akin to those of the children's song.

I wonder whether the uncertainty in the nursery rhyme between a mulberry tree and a bramble bush came about through a mistranslation from French. A mulberry tree is une mûrier and the individual fruit is une mûre. However the same word, mûre, is used for the common blackberry, the fruit of the bramble bush (Rubus fruticosus), which is known in French as, une ronce, or as une mûrier des haies, or une mûrier sauvage (hedgerow mulberry or wild mulberry). There's a similar confusion in American English where the edible fruit of the black mulberry tree is sometimes known as a blackberry.

MM,

"Paul, if your mystery bush is indeed an hydrangea (hortensia in French) it should be in full flower now."
Yes it is the first year that it is that beautiful, more than a 1.5 M high and perhaps a hundred flowers...And the small flowers have indeed four "pétales" and the shape of the leafs is ok...I would say: mystery solved...and thanks BTW for all the trouble of trying to determine the bush...and we say in Dutch also "hortensia" and I found in the translating section after "hydrangea" also "hortensia" in English and even a third word that I forgot (and it was not the Latin name)

Kind regards from Paul.

Not May, I know but today I gathered a trug load of hazel nuts. My birthday gift fruited this year, thereby keeping to a local tradition of  having a nut bearing hazel  at the bottom of the garden; a Cadbury choc bar tree would come in handy now. A tree of mystical legend, I think - now I can douse.... not necessary this week as in error the hose was left on for 24 hrs -  that divine a great big future water bill. Will there be benefits else, I wonder? Was hazel a special tree?

Priscilla, I forgot to mention this at the time but I did note the date of your above post. The wild hazel nut, Corylus avellana, has a very close relative, the filbert, Corylus maxima, which was originally restricted to Asia minor but is now regularly cultivated in England alongside the European hazelnut or cobnut. The filbert takes its name from St Philibert's Day, 20 August, which was when the nuts were reckoned to be fully ripe and ready for harvesting. I wonder if the ten day difference between the traditional date and modern date (as evidenced by your post) for the peak fruiting time, isn't perhaps due to the shift from the old Julian to the 'modern' Gregorian calendar.

There is a viburnum fragrans in the front garden. It is a very "woody" shrub and has to be cut back periodically or it can become invasive.  It does have a story behind it - the garden of the house to which my semi-detached house is attached is something of a wilderness since my neighbour died but his father who had been a widower for a long time used to keep the garden immaculate.  The viburnum was in the garden when my parents bought the house but there is quite a nice if somewhat bittersweet story behind it.  The wife of the gentleman who kept the nice garden died fairly young of cancer of the breast (the son of the marriage was a very young child) and the lady of the couple who sold my parents this house was very kind and helpful while the other lady was ill and dying.  My former neighbour with the nice garden gave a viburnum fragrans cutting to Mrs __________.  Even though it was given to her predecessor in the house my mother would never countenance removing the shrub.  It's late flowering and the flowers do have a nice smell.  I think in the past people sometimes took cuttings when they were going to the cemetery which is further down the road.  My mother caught one of them once but she didn't have the heart to be nasty to the woman because she thought if the lady didn't have much financially and wanted some flowers to put on a grave she wouldn't stop her.  Sometimes sprays of flowers for graves are priced disproportionately highly I think.

Although one acquaintance of mine had a bush in bloom (not viburnum fragrans) and a member (now deceased) of the church I attend said something about such blooms would look nice on the altar at church.  My acquaintance was quite kind-hearted and said take some - then she went back inside.  When she went back outside the other lady had disappeared taking ALL the flowers from the bush!

Thinking about mulberries and silk worms, when I used to catch the train to and from Liverpool Street Station when working in London, there were still some houses standing that had originally been weavers'   houses in Spittlefields.  Would there have been mulberries growing near Spittlefields at one time or was the silk for weaving brought in from elsewhere?

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Thinking about mulberries and silk worms, when I used to catch the train to and from Liverpool Street Station when working in London, there were still some houses standing that had originally been weavers'   houses in Spittlefields.  Would there have been mulberries growing near Spittlefields at one time or was the silk for weaving brought in from elsewhere?

 
Lady,

as I read it now I think the cocoons or the silkthread came in from France for those expatriated Huguenots.
https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/huguenot-silk-weavers-in-spitalfields
http://www.museedelasoie-cevennes.com/savoiruk.html

And yes James I wanted a silk industry
https://www.humphriesweaving.co.uk/sericulture-united-kingdom/
But were for once these perfide English deceived by this tricky Frenchmen?
"King James was said to have purchased his mulberry from France and it was from there and Italy that much of Sumptuous silk fabrics that adorned the King was supplied. The big historic question will remain as to if the King was deliberately sold the Morus Nigra instead of the Morus Alba? In other words the red instead of the white mulberry in order to defeat his efforts. This is important as the leaf of the red is little use to the humble silk worm that needs the leaf of the white to feed its boundless appetite.

After the box tree moth (buxusmot), we have now the olive tree killer. For me it is more serious as the olive tree means jobs for many people. I read today about it in the paper.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48269311

Kind regards, Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

There is a viburnum fragrans in the front garden. It is a very "woody" shrub and has to be cut back periodically or it can become invasive.

Something which I hardly ever pruned was a mountain clematis, the dead creepers of which I recently had to remove from the tree it was draped over. Clematis have been recorded in European botany since at least the 16th century although the mountain clematis was first recorded in watercolour by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton to supplement his Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (1819):



Clematis became very popular in ornamental gardens in the second half of the 19th century and it’s easy to see why. The flowers are very beautiful, come in a variety of colours and are almost orchid-like in their loveliness but are a good deal hardier. The petals of our own particular cultivar ‘Superba’ were white. When I say ‘white’, I don’t mean the soft, greenish white of hawthorn may, I mean …. white! A brilliant, superb, Himalayan clematis white.



The supporting tree was a Chilean lantern and the 2 plants co-existed quite happily for many years, the dark red lantern flowers of the tree contrasting marvellously with the bright white of the clematis. First recoded in 1829 by French botanist Claude Gay, the Chilean lantern tree (Crinodendron hookerianum) is named after William Hooker who was professor of Botany at Glasgow University. At that time botany was a compulsory module for those studying medicine and Hooker’s courses were hugely popular both among medical students and others.

It’s not clear, though, exactly why Gay chose to name it after Hooker. Gay lived in Chile for extended periods and is responsible for the recording of many species from that country but there’s no obvious connection between him and William Hooker or between Hooker and Chile. It’s possible that the suggestion was made to Gay by Augustin Pyrame de Candolle, a Genevan botanist who was professor at the University of Montpellier and a senior mover and shaker in the French botanical establishment and who had been a mentor to Claude in his youth.

William Hooker had visited de Candolle in Montpellier in 1814 and the 2 had maintained a friendly correspondence. During that time, de Candolle had mooted a new system of botanical taxonomy which would challenge (or at least significantly reform) the established nomenclature of Sweden’s Carl Linnaeus which had been developed in the mid-18th century. Hooker had been very encouraging towards de Candolle regarding his reformed taxonomy and Hooker later promoted its usage among his own students at Glasgow.

One of de Candolle’s ideas was the concept of ‘la marche générale de la Nature’ which he mentioned in Principes élémentaires de botanique et de physique végétale. This was in Flore française (1805) a book he co-authored with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck a long-standing member of France’s Académie des sciences. Lamarck had been invited to join the academy by Louis XVI (i.e. under l’ancien régime and years before the revolution) and by the 1800s was developing a robust theory of evolution. The ideas of both Lamarck and de Candolle would later be hugely influential on Charles Darwin when it came to formalising his own theory on the subject. One of Darwin’s closest supporters and personal friends at the time of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 was Joseph Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and son of none other than the aforementioned William Hooker.
 
If it was an 'evolutionary struggle' between the Chilean lantern tree and the Himalayan clematis then on this occasion the former triumphed. The tree can now breathe free.



Chilean lantern tree (Crinodendron hookerianum)

What a lovely thread this was and so very interesting. I am in awe of the tree planting in some of your gardens - mine of local stuff such as hawthorn and hazel seems a bit bland. In the subcontinent I did plant some wild trees - one called the Jube-Jube tree - it had tiny sweet pink fruit like dolly mixture and birds loved them - especially cuckoos who fought great territorial battles in them - flashing angry screaming  red mouths when really wound up.. 
Several local gardens here have taken down large trees  so  the birds now all crowd into mine. As I recall in childhood everyone always had a hazel tree at the bottom of the garden but not now.
Today, drifts of white blossom on fronds of the May  over a small glade of bluebells, still delights.

Abelard wrote:

Priscilla wrote:

Tomorrow is May Day when the true hawthorn - May tree - bursts into blossom. I have one - not a hedge shrub and its fronds will be all white tomorrow.

Rituals abound all over Britain for this special day. I was the local May Queen for several years as a child ....

Dear all,

May 1st marked the feast of Beltaine: it marked the transition from the dark to the bright season, the resumption of hunting and war. This "rebirth" is linked to god Belenos (incarnation of light). According to the texts, druids lit fires to symbolically protect cattle from epidemics. This feast was therefore opposed to Samain - the ancestor of the Catholic feast of " All Saints " - which marked the return to darkness of god Lug. Traces of these practices remain on the night of Walpurgis, a Christianized pagan celebration: large fires were lit in Germany, Sweden or Central Europe.

Beltaine, the Feast of Renewal marked the transition from the dark season to the season of light, of agricultural work and rural activities. But also hunting and conquests, raids and wars.
Small branches of sacred trees are burned there:

Kind regards,
Abelard

The opportunity to invite tourists to join in with quaint local customs:

The Rowan Tree is traditionally believed to protect against witchcraft and magic.

In Scandinavia, rowans growing out of some inaccessible cleft in a rock, or crevices in tree possessed an even more powerful magic. Such trees were known as ‘flying rowan’. Rowan was furthermore the prescribed wood on which runes were inscribed for divination.
In the British Isles the rowan has a long and still popular history in folklore as a tree which protects against witchcraft and enchantment.
The physical characteristics of the tree may have contributed to its protective reputation. Each berry has a tiny five pointed star or pentagram opposite its stalk. The pentagram is an ancient protective symbol.


Rowan Tree: Mythology & Folklore

Lone rowan tree near Moffat, nicknamed "The Survivor"

In August 2021 I read The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge. I belong to a message board (now consisting of only 3 regular members) where we talk about books. I wrote the following: I have just started a totally different sort of book: The Secret Lives of Trees, by Colin Tudge. It is non-fiction and is going to be all about trees, their biology, metabolism, status in human lives, how they are differentiated from other plants and what makes them similar. It started off on a good and bad note for me on the same subject: the preface in two pages mentioned the NZ/Aotearoa kauri tree called Tane Mahuta (it is very famous in this country and now unfortunately there is a disease called "kauri dieback" which is threatening to kill it and others round it so people are being asked not to go into that particular forest or if they do, make sure to thoroughly wash their boots before and afterwards which of course not all people do. It is sacred to Maori. What upset me in this book is he spelt Mahuta two different ways in these pages. And a different way again in the index!
But I will continue and learn a lot. What I retain of it of course is another matter.
QuoteShare
Aug 13, 2021#125
I am still wading my way through The Secret Lives of Trees, and am starting to wish I had just skipped the first four chapters. They were so scientific and esoteric, talking of the structure of being and metabolism and chloroplasts and eukaryotic and other words and biological phrases I have no idea about. Now we are finally about to get to true trees, conifers, oaks etc., but on a quick glance through the rest of the book it still looks pretty scientifically orientated, so I may well give up on it or skim-read it.
It has made me wonder, though, why, if beings come to life and then go extinct, can they not come back to living when conditions change? He talks about plant forms not adapting to change or just finding conditions wrong for them. He does talk about evolution and its acceptance and the scientists behind it, and I can understand that all right. "Finally Darwin proposed that all the creatures that ever lived on earth are descended from the same common ancestor that lived millions of years ago...We share a common ancestor with robins and mushrooms and oak trees. This at a stroke answers the deepest question: why there is order in nature. To be sure we can say that God designed butterflies and bees along similar lines because he has a tidy mind. But we can also argue that butterflies and bees are similar because in the past they shared a common ancestor: the first ever insect."
Those are the easiest sentences in the whole book so far. He then goes on to say a family tree drawn on such lines should more properly be called 'phylogenetic', and I get lost again in the explanations of this.

Although I obviously accept the theory that all life is descended from one simple organism I find it difficult to grasp why after millions of years some organisms developed into humans while others remain simple organisms. And how on Earth did some take the path of becoming a cactus when others turned into elephants?

1400 year old Ginkgo Tree, Gu Guanyin Temple, China:




Wiki;
Fossils attributable to the genus Ginkgo first appeared in the Middle Jurassic. The genus Ginkgo diversified and spread throughout Laurasia during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous
The Ginkgophyta declined in diversity as the Cretaceous progressed, and by the Paleocene, Ginkgo adiantoides was the only Ginkgo species left in the Northern Hemisphere, while a markedly different (and poorly documented) form persisted in the Southern Hemisphere. Along with that of ferns, cycads, and cycadeoids, the species diversity in the genus Ginkgo drops through the Cretaceous, at the same time the flowering plants were on the rise; this supports the hypothesis that, over time, flowering plants with better adaptations to disturbance displaced Ginkgo and its associates. 
At the end of the Pliocene Ginkgo fossils disappeared from the fossil record everywhere except in a small area of central China, where the modern species survived.

The elder tree is an annoying one. It grows fast and thrives on heavy pruning to  redouble its take over efforts, its flowers do not smell very nice - even if it is used today in smart flavoured waters and later the clusters of red berries then lead to purple pigeon poo all over garden furniture and glass roofing for weeks. Its pithy stems once provided good arrow material for young Merry Men games in the wilder thickets of a a war time garden - but one grows out of that eventually. It was venerated in areas of Normandy in ancient times... I do not know why.

The pith of elder was a favourite maerial for making "bodied" floats in my youth.
https://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/2703-elder-pith-floats/

I thought I had written before about Colin Tudge's book but when I used the search engine for this site it didn't come up. But there it is. Today it wasn't a book but a radio interview this morning by a serious interviewer who does long interviews on important and/or esoteric subjects. One today was on the history of the banana tree. "Experts from Cambridge University look set to save the humble banana from extinction after developing a technique to graft different species of the fruit together, something previously thought impossible." They were talking to a Mr Drori who is the author of Around the World in 80 Trees and Around the World in 80 Plants. Bananas that we eat apparently are all of one species the Cavendish and attempts to make other edible species have not been successful so far.
Anyway you can find it by searching the RNZ site under Saturday morning or Kim Hill.