Monday 25 January 2016

Well Preserved

Staying in Birnam vicarage in the seventies when a family member was the incumbent enabled us to make numerous visits to those great trees the Birnam Oak and the Birnam Sycamore, respectively some 600 and 300 years old. A link here to a page in the site of the Ancient Tree Forum.

http://www.ancienttreeforum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Birnam-oak-and-sycamore-Pro-Arb-June-2015.pdf

To survive so long those trees will have needed to be respected throughout their lifetimes somewhat more than when, in earlier history, Malcolm ordered his army to cut limbs from the trees of Birnam Wood in their advance on Macbeth in Dunsinane. Even he was less brutal than SRWT whose approach to oak recently has shown no respect at all and who plan  to take dire revenge on the local sycamores. But Shakespeare himself would struggle to find words to describe the entrenched philistinism we sometimes observe.

One of Blacka's sycamores:


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