Tag Archives: Plas Newydd

trees

Historic Trees

This cedar at Charlecote seemed particularly monumental, then I read about these trees in Mary Elizabeth Lucy’s autobiography. She lived there from 1823. The beauty of trees is that they have long memories.

and can remind you of days gone by. Like this chestnut tree at Hever Castle, home of Anne Bolyne

What tales it could tell; Henry VIII, cavorting in its shadow, but it is discrete, it looks away and stays mum, a survivor.

Here’s another survivor; a chestnut at Ightham mote, in Kent. You can tell its a sweet chestnut, even in winter, by its spiraling bark.

Here’s a relative youngster, not Bill, he’s there for scale — another chestnut, this time at Upton House. The heritage trees at National Trust Properties can be huge but don’t get the attention from visitors that they deserve. It’s usually on the way home that I wish I had brought my tape measure to record their girth and try to work out their age.

Monterey pines at Plas Newydd on the Anglesey bank of the Menai strait, only about the same age of me, but beautifully lopped by the tree surgeons of the National Trust, to grow straight and tall and strong.

So few of our trees have the room to reach their full potential — or our hedges, for that matter!

Here’s a hedge with attitude. Yew hedge at Powys Castle.

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Ecology, Wales

Special trees!

Encountered by chance at Plas Newydd in Anglesey — reminded me of the power of rain and light.

Monterey Cypresses — native to California but thriving in Anglesey. Bill for scale!

These specimens seem so much more robust that the ones in pictures from California but I suspect this has to do with the wonderfully consistent rainfall in North Wales and careful arboriculture since they were planted in the 1950s — just look at the carbon they have sequested in my lifetime!

When we planted our 7000 trees in 2006 we didn’t really realise we were replanting a rainforest — but all the clues were there.

Here is some of the evidence of the rain forest potential of one of the wet western parts of Britain in which we live:


Trees dripping with mosses.
Mosses and ferns blanket the moist peat of the woodland floor.
Rainfall of up to a couple of metres per year — I stopped measuring it because, until this year, it really didn’t vary much.

Ferns and lichens and mosses taking advantage of every surface.

Forest floor before the explosion of all the other plants in the spring.
And a few weeks later.

Shamrocks, violets, wood anemones and blue bells scrambling to catch the light before it is stolen by the bracken or the tree canopy.

This cool, damp, verdant place bursts with life — these boletus fungi appeared all along the path between aspen and oak in the few days we were away, does anyone know what sort they are?

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