Dieback

Bunches of fruit on the Rowan trees are now showing up as a dull orange or bronze. They will continue to ripen in coming weeks into a bright red.

But looking carefully reveals that many of these patches on Rowan are not berries but dead leaves at the tips of branches.

Some of this dieback occurs in most years but there's much more of it this year with bronzed patches visible on most trees. This is not the same as Ash Dieback even though an alternative name for Rowan is Mountain Ash.

The cause is likely to be weather conditions rather than a disease, but we would like to know even so.

The bronzing to be seen at the end of  branches of Red Oak is simply emerging new leaves before they become green.

Certain sycamores on Blacka suffer a kind of dieback on leaf margins, spoiling the appearance of the trees from late June on.

These sycamores, strangely enough, are not the ones targeted for removal by the managers who prefer to take a chain saw to perfectly healthy specimens.

From certain angles it is not unlike an effect of variegation.