Acer Tree Quotes

I walked out this evening to the bottom of the garden and smoked a cigarette. Last week I planted an acer in the furthest bed from the house, in honour of our new baby. The sapling is as tall as me and, by all accounts, it can grow forty feet tall. So, in thirty year's time, if we're still here I can come back and see this tree in its maturity. But the thought depresses me: in thirty years' time I'll be in my mid-sixties and I realize that these forward projections that you make, so unreflectingly, in your life are beginning to run out. Suppose I'd said in forty years' time? That would be pushing it, Fifty? I'll probably be gone by then. Sixty? Dead and buried, for sure. Thank Christ I didn't plant an oak. Is that a good definition of of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize-quite rationally, quite unemotionally-that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

Though many pioneer tree species are intolerant of shade and so cause little problem in southern beech forests, Douglas fir Pseudotsuga menziesii has considerable shade tolerance and its wildings invade canopy gaps in indigenous forest, while sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus is the most shade-tolerant tree in the country, is multileadered, coppices, and is very difficult to remove as European foresters know only too well. Fortunately, herbivores find it highly palatable and it is not commonly planted.